Physics Engines

From Gamedev.org wiki

Physics engines have two core components, a collision detection system, and the actual physics simulation component responsible for solving the forces effecting the simulated objects. There are three major paradigms for physics simulation: Penalty methods, where interactions are commonly modeled as mass-spring systems. This type of engine is popular for deformable, or soft-body physics. Constraint based methods, where constraint equations are solved that estimate physical laws. Impulse based methods, where impulses are applied to object interactions.

Finally, hybrid methods are possible that combine aspects of the above paradigms.

edit

Physics Engines

  • Physics Abstraction Layer (http://pal.sourceforge.net/) - A physics engine wrapper that supports multiple engines and multiple physics file formats such as COLLADA.
  • Bullet (http://bullet.sourceforge.net/) - Bullet is a free software physics engine, hosted at Sourceforge. It is published the zlib license making it free for commercial use.
  • ODE (http://www.ode.org/) - ODE is free software licensed both under the BSD license and the LGPL. ODE was started in 2001 and has already been used in many applications and games, such as BloodRayne 2, Call of Juarez and S.T.A.L.K.E.R
  • Newton (http://www.physicsengine.com/) - Newton Game Dynamics is a free, but closed source physics engine for realistically simulating rigid bodies in games and other real-time applications. In contrast to most other real-time physics engines it goes for accuracy over speed.
  • PhysX (http://www.ageia.com/) - PhysX can refer either to a proprietary realtime physics engine middleware SDK developed by AGEIA (formerly known as the NovodeX SDK) or their PPU expansion card designed to accelerate that SDK. Only games that use the PhysX SDK can benefit from the presence of a PhysX card.
Retrieved from "http://www.gamedev.org/wiki/index.php/Physics_Engines"