The Best Physic Engine for commercial,multiplatform project?

Nadro · Post by **Nadro** » Mon Dec 04, 2006 7:25 pm

What is the fastest, easiest integration in Irrlicht and multiplatform (Windows,Linux and MacOSX), so the BEST physic engine? This engine must be free for commercial projects.

Anteater · Post by **Anteater** » Mon Dec 04, 2006 8:08 pm

Eternl Knight · Post by **Eternl Knight** » Tue Dec 05, 2006 3:01 am

Well, you have three different requirements for your physics engine there that need to be addressed separately.

Fastest is a point of contention, so I won't go into it in detail. Suffice to say that the speed of the engine must be weighed against the accuracy of the physics solution. ODE is pretty good for this, as is Newton & Bullet - all have their own ways of maintaining plausible accuracy (ODE will remove angular momentum, Newton applies damping, etc). I tend to prefer ODE when using simple shapes (spheres, boxes, capsules, etc) and a fixed timestep, Bullet when using complex shapes (arbitrary triangular mesh, procedurally defined surfaces, etc) and/or able to use an arbitrary timestep that can change per frame. ODE is faster than Bullet, but has some restrictions. Newton sits somewhere between the two with less restrictions that ODE (but more than Bullet) and faster than Bullet (but slower than ODE).

All three (Newton, Bullet, & ODE) have support for the three platforms you describe.

"Best" is simply flamewar territory (trust me on this), so I'll avoid it. A good paper to read that does a comparison for you (with verifiable test results) is located here. Bullet has been upgraded quite a bit since then (it gets a significant update almost weekly at the moment), but as far as the other engines go - it is still valid

--EK

3ddev · Post by **3ddev** » Thu Dec 07, 2006 7:43 am

On Irrlicht I use Newton threw IPhysics. It is really fast, and the examples for use with Irrlicht are great! Personnally, using ODE, you might be coding forever!

Eternl Knight · Post by **Eternl Knight** » Thu Dec 07, 2006 10:46 am

Personnally, using ODE, you might be coding forever!

Well, that isn't that accurate - there is already a base to work from with ODE & Irrlicht - MyWorld. Given such a base, it is well ahead of even my current choice (Bullet).

evak · Post by **evak** » Thu Dec 07, 2006 3:10 pm

IF your willing to drom Linux which isn't really feasible for a real commercial game, then you can always use PhysX from Ageia. That is free for commercial games on all computer platforms but not consoles.

TheRLG · Post by **TheRLG** » Thu Dec 07, 2006 6:47 pm

evak wrote:IF your willing to drom Linux which isn't really feasible for a real commercial game, then you can always use PhysX from Ageia. That is free for commercial games on all computer platforms but not consoles.

I didn't realize it was free for any commercial games. I thought that was only free for non-commercial.

Eternl Knight · Post by **Eternl Knight** » Thu Dec 07, 2006 7:33 pm

They recently changed their license (one assumes to get more developers onboard). I think that the whole "GPU physics" thing is beginning to bother them (as it completely undercuts their business model).

--EK

TheRLG · Post by **TheRLG** » Thu Dec 07, 2006 8:26 pm

The AGEIA PhysX SDK is free for non-commercial use. Standard pricing for commercial use is $50,000/title/platform. Licensed developers who implement PhysX accelerator support in their PC title are not required to pay this fee.

. . . Yeah, that's not confusing. . .

Luke · Post by **Luke** » Fri Dec 08, 2006 7:10 am

RabidLockerGnome: That license has changed but for some reason they are slow to update the front pages...

Eternl Knight · Post by **Eternl Knight** » Fri Dec 08, 2006 7:22 pm

I have confirmation from one of the developers involved - the license has definitely changed. You can believe me or not, but it sounds like it wouldn;'t affect your choice anyway

Press release for license change also here

--EK

TheRLG · Post by **TheRLG** » Fri Dec 08, 2006 11:03 pm

hehe Don't worry, I believe you.

I think PhysX is probably the best bet if you're doing windows-only gamedev, and then either ODE or Newton otherwise.

Fr4gz0r · Post by **Fr4gz0r** » Sat Dec 09, 2006 12:20 am

Havok is the ultimate (also used in Half-Life 2) u need to pay for it but still it's the best of the best out there

.

Luke · Post by **Luke** » Sat Dec 09, 2006 2:40 am

From http://devsupport.ageia.com/ics/support ... tionID=378 (to see you may need the register)

Free:

* Commercial & non-commercial use on PC
o Must keep registration information currect
o Must agree to the EULA at the time of download (pops up, but is copied below)
o Available for Windows & Linux (soon)
o No PhysX HW support requirement
* PS3 platform (through Sony pre-purchase)
* All platforms through some of our middleware partnerships, such as UE3, Gamebryo 2.2, and others

ChrisC · Post by **ChrisC** » Sat Dec 09, 2006 11:45 pm

I actually quite like bullet, I used ODE for quite a while, but have been frustrated by the slow pace of development and build issues on differing systems.

While CMake and JAM (used on bullet) are frankly not really up to the job, I have used bullet and irrlicht with older gcc implementations (think mingw here) and also latest Linux gcc implementations, by creating a trivial Makefile for it.

Bullet handles a wide range of collisions shapes rather well, ODE probably has the edge on Bullet for joints and definably on documentation!