Physics engine and Irrlicht

[Anthony]

Homepages of:
Box2D - Bullet - Newton Game Dynamics - Ode - Open Dynamics Engine - Physics Abstraction Layer - PhysX by nvidia - Tokamak - True Axis

Engine not (yet) participating in poll*:
Havok

As I am pretty new to Irrlicht I would like to know wich physics would work best with Irrlicht.

Do I need a wrapper (actually what is a wrapper) and if so, wich one?

Iyad:
A wrapper is a kind of package which combine the different libraries, making it more easy to use them. There are many wrappers on this forum (newton, bullet, PhysX, ODE,...), search for them. I was using wrappers before to introduce myself to physic engine, but they remove a bit of the flexibility of the engine. So now i directly integrate them with the project.

Best physics engine for car physics?

Escen:
I only have experience with Bullet and Newton, I do recommend Bullet in general. It has more features (like softbodies) and a larger active community. Both engines have a standard raycast vehicle, the Bullet version is more advanced, but if you want your tires more active in your scene (like a Buggy ) Newton has an standard CustomMultiBodyVehicle, very easy to use. You can achieve the same in Bullet with a little bit more work (there is also a forklift example)

I am using Ubuntu, wich engine would be best?

(a reply on someone question who is using Ubuntu)
serengeor:
Bullet is good to go on lots of platforms, for Unix you should probably choose sdk that is with unix line endings, and there should be no problems(I tried it on ubuntu 10.04, and It worked out of the box).

Please leave your suggestions as it should be an evergrowing list. Well if one links is dead you could say evershrinking list .
If you have a question about wich one you should use, ask here. Answered questions will be editted in this top message.

*) at least not yet. How to add them to the poll? Guess once in a while the poll should be recreated (in this thread) because once voted I can't change it, didn't knew that. Maybe not a bad idea as the outcome will be more alive .

[Iyad]

You can use any physic library, i personaly use bullet because its open source + very fast and good for games.
A wrapper is a kind of package which combine the different libraries, making it more easy to use them. There are many wrappers on this forum (newton, bullet, PhysX, ODE,...), search for them. I was using wrappers before to introduce myself to physic engine, but they remove a bit of the flexibility of the engine. So now i directly integrate them with the project.
check out this link : http://www.irrlicht3d.org/wiki/index.ph ... sLibraries

[Anthony]

Koel, that was a link I was looking for .

As I do know c++ I will not to use wrappers myself I think.

Thanks Iyad

[Luben]

Even with the wiki page, i think it might be a good idea to vote in this thread to get a general idea of what physic engines are actually used by the community. A link to this thread could be added to the wiki page as well. It'd probably help people making up their minds about which engine to use.

[Anthony]

Was thinking that. The poll should be used as a reference to point out the engines and their as popularity and uses. Also when a new one comes out (not an update) I will add dates to the entries, so low rate can have the meaning that the engine is new and by that low rated. But as they all appeared just now it doesn't matter yet.

As licences can be changed I am leaving that to the homepages to point it out to all.

[Kojack]

Don't forget that the windows version of Havok 2010 is available for free (even for commercial use), thanks to a deal with Intel.
http://www.havok.com/index.php?page=general-information
It's not the friendliest physics library to use, but it's powerful.

AMD didn't want to miss out. Nvidia has physx and Intel has havok, so AMD has partnered with Pixelux to make a free version of Digital Molecular Matter 2 (the sequel to the soft body physics system used in Force Unleashed). But it's been delayed and still isn't out.