Let's Ditch PhysX !

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    • Let's Ditch PhysX !

      I hate to say it, but PhysX is officially more trouble than it is worth. It is too hard to download a particular version of the SDK, and their API moves every few months and invalidates the GCC code.

      Let's move to a new physics engine, shall we? Whatever we do, it should:
      1. Be freely available - open source, hopefully.
      2. Be distributable with GCC.

      Oh yeah - and it should work too!

      Which one should we choose???? There are some good candidates out there.
      Mr.Mike
      Author, Programmer, Brewer, Patriot

    • I've heard of a lot of people supporting ODE. I haven't used it myself, though, so I can't say much for or against it.
      Feel you safe and secure in the protection of your pants . . . but one day, one day there shall be a No Pants Day and that shall be the harbinger of your undoing . . .

    • RE: Let's Ditch PhysX !

      Originally posted by mrmike
      Let's move to a new physics engine, shall we? Whatever we do, it should:
      1. Be freely available - open source, hopefully.
      2. Be distributable with GCC.

      Oh yeah - and it should work too!


      Damn, too bad, without the third requirement, we could have used my stuff... :D

      ;)
      "There are of course many problems connected with life, of which some of the most popular are: Why are people born? Why do they die? Why do they want to spend so much of the intervening time wearing digital watches?"
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    • There are some wrappers for physics engines like Gansta Wrapper at sourceforge.net

      The Gangsta Wrapper
      An abstraction layer allowing the use of different
      physics libraries through a consistent API. It's possible to swap between different physics engines without altering code. Interfaces are provided to connect it to your visualisation framework of choice

      I haven't used it myself but saw some project with it runs good.

      I like your books! Your books are really good courseware for me!
      A Paradigm Programmer

      The post was edited 2 times, last by biablo ().

    • RE: Let's Ditch PhysX !

      Bullet looks like it may be a very good engine. It has an easy API and lots of samples for usage. Its written by an ex-Havok employee.

      Too bad about PhysX. Their documentation is great. I'm probably going to still read them as a physics reference.

      Bullet is open source and free for commercial use under the ZLib license. I don't know much about the GCC or ZLib licenses only that they are apparently different. ;) So this may not pass your criteria, Mike.

      Oh, this is my first time posting and I want to say your book is tattered and falling apart in my home office. Its refreshing to see an engine architecture that, well, works.

      Regards,
      Steve
      Steve Jones

    • Every frame you check for collisions by cycling through ODE "spaces" and telling ODE to check for collisions between different objects. So you won't be getting any onLostCollision callbacks unless you write one yourself (not hard to do). I like this way of doing it because you can adapt it to games with different collision systems. It's a tad more difficult but reading the well built documentation should teach you all you need to get started.

      (I'm worried I'm making this sound too complex the whole process took around 7 lines of code for me. ODE does most of it.)