Which Physics Engine?

You might also check Novodex - free for noncommercial use (I think).

thanks Anonymous

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Original post by Anonymous Poster newton is very nice!

Yes, it is!! Realy the best physics engine to have if you want a good free physics engine. =D

You did say open-source, and free. But whenever these physics engine threads come up, I must plug TrueAxis. Best physics engine I've ever worked with (includes Tokamak, ODE, and Newton), and free for non-commercial use.

The problem with true axis is that it is probably better than Tokamak, but not better that Newton or ODE. It is faster than Newton, but is come up really short on stability, features, and robustness. And is has roughfuly the same features of ODE but it is not faster plus ODE is open source.
The other point is that it is in a no man land territory, It does not has the quality of commercial engines like Novodex or Meqon (not even close) and I doubt it will ever had it because as all of the other free solutions, it is a one man project, whoever is has the same license than that of professional engines. So I do not see really what reason is there to choose it over any other solution.
I use to work with ODE, because of the open source, but I got fed up with the lack of progress and bugs, so I relaxed my requirements and tried Tok and Newton, I really like Newton the accuracy and stability.

There are some open source wrappers build on top of ODE, that makes up for some of the bug, and stability problems you could check Opal
http://ox.slug.louisville.edu/~o0lozi01/opal/index.php
or Gangsta on Ogre forum
http://www.ogre3d.org/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=10758&highlight

On the trueaxis website it says that it can handle collisions of high velocities. is ODE capable of handling high velocities on the order of 300 m/s?
and I can us ODE as a refrence to my own custom taylored physics engine right?

Yes, you CAN handle collisions at high velocities in ODE. Either you sweep primitives (i e, ccylinder surrounding a sphere trajectory) or you subdivide the timestep enough.

If your high velocities are for small objects like e.g. bullets, just use a ray.

I'm currently integrating Newton into my engine and would say if you want to try Newton then wait for version 1.35 which is due to be released 'soon', especially if you want to use its car template.

Really not trying to start an argument here, but a lot of things posted were just contrary to my experience. ODE more stable and more feature rich then TrueAxis, cite some sources please? TA innately handles all high-speed collisions because of the swept-technique, has built in support for vehicles and vehicle templates, support for arbitrary convex hulls, and TriMesh collision actually works. In ODE, some triangles miss collisions, some work, no rhyme or reason, how can this be workable for a game? When's the last time Tokamak had a real update? May 2004. TrueAxis is getting better and better every month, and questions are asked and answered extremely quickly on their forums. Every bug that's been found has been fixed by the next release.

Just my $.02

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Original post by Aph3x If your high velocities are for small objects like e.g. bullets, just use a ray. I'm currently integrating Newton into my engine and would say if you want to try Newton then wait for version 1.35 which is due to be released 'soon', especially if you want to use its car template.

I give another vote for Newton. However, they've said they're releasing 1.35 "soon' for many months. Still waiting on that two-different-changes-to-the-same-material-interaction-definition-causes-the-settings-to-be-ignored bug to be fixed.