Physics engines? (simple)

[wyrmmage]

I, too, agree with Dorth; it would be very nice to be able to compile the engine without physics

[Brainsaw]

Hello,

I am currently working on a Irrlicht-ODE wrapper, but due to a lack of time I am not able to do as much as I would like to for it.

I could compile ODE in MinGW (code::blocks), though it lacks precission, sometimes, it misses collisions with cylinders, and i don't know if it would work well with arbitrary triangle meshes. But for a basic engine, it should work. In fact, anything that don't rely on an external library (like Physx or, in an rare case, Newton) and can be compiled under Linux, should be (theoretically) capable of compiling under MinGW, for the compiler is the same in structure.

Check out the table under http://opende.sourceforge.net/wiki/index.php/Manual, it shows that the cylinder is not well supported in ODE, does neither collide with other cylinders nor with capsules. But apart from that I like the ODE (though I can't really say why ). I will post the wrapper in the forum as soon as I get something more going.

Actually what would be better, is if ISceneNode could have member functions like addForce and setVelocity added. Or some sort of those kind of functions for time based movement (as long as there's an addForce one).

Just derive a new class from ISceneNode and add those functions there. Works fine in my (not yet released) wrapper.

edit: for some strange reason my post gets empty when BBCode is enabled ... sorry for the empty post.

edit: dev-fixed, was the URL, please encode all special chars in order to avoid interpretation by BBCode

[Mel]

To tell the truth, after seeing how many people is trying to add physics to Irrlicht, wouldn't it be easier that the engine had its own, at least, a simple, physics system? I know the answer to this is mainly no, but just noticing how many projects there are already.

[Sylence]

Many people try adding network, sound, scripting, ... to the engine. So add them aswell ?
Irrlicht is a graphics engine. Physics is no graphics, sound, network, and others aren't.

If someone wants to make a game one can use irrlicht and add all the other stuff that is needed for a game or use a game engine. Simple as that.

[Dorth]

Also requiring "A" physic engine doesn't means requiring the same one. Performance, target platforms, supported features, licenses, support, those are all things to take into consideration. Better have all parts separated yet easy to merge than all shipped together.

[Virion]

physics directly affect the rendering results so it could be part of "graphics" as well, just my 2 cents.

[Brainsaw]

Imho Irrlicht has already - for a graphics engine - quite a lot of stuff that is not directly for graphics. It's nice to have it e.g. handle events without external libraries, but things like physics and sound should imho not be included directly. Would be a game engine in that case, and would make it too complicated (at least for the small team that keeps it running and provides some great work).

[Mel]

Then why Nvidia sells PPU within their graphics cards? shouldn't them be a separate product aswell? Although this might be just a simple matter of proximity, i mean, moving graphics may require physics simulations, 3DSMAX now ships with the Havok engine,where before it was a separate plugin, for example.
Keeping everything in the same place makes sense.

[Brainsaw]

imho Nvidia has released their physics engine because it is (like the graphics) also accelerated by their cards. I don't see any direct relation to the graphics also calculated by these.

[christianclavet]

Physics calculations are not only used for games. They are used for demos, and other kind of applications like simulation (not only flight simulators)

New graphic accelerator cards coming out today offer solutions to compute physic in hardware based and not only the direct rendering of the geometry. So theses 2 components are really useful for displaying and animating something on the screen.

For me, animating a mesh (that one of the thing that a physic engine does) is not considered as game component, and more related to graphics.

That would complement well the basic collision system that we have right now.

As for what make a game engine, physic is only one component, but you need a LOT more to create a title.

Adding a simple physic system to the collision system wouldnt change that fact. For a medium to big title, you will surely require a full physic engine anyway. For demos and small applications, this would offer new opportunities.