PhysX or Bullet?

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Original post by orphankill Would anyone recommend either PhysX or Bullet? Which do you prefer? Is the fact that PhysX is not open source effect your project that much?

Well I use Bullet, for me it does matter that it's open source. Partly out of principle, and partly because I actually have poked into the code (at a basic level). Does it matter for you? I guess only you can answer that...

Havok is also available for use in non-commercial products, so that could be another direction to go. It all depends on what your needs are though - PhysX is quite capable, but you wont be able to port to other platforms in the near future, because they haven't released the SDKs yet (only to corporate clients). Bullet is certainly a decent physics engine, but Newton Dynamics or ODE should do the job equally well.

An FPS often doesn't have ridiculously high requirements for physics, so take a look at a few packages, and see what feels most comfortable.

I implimented NVIDIA PhysX into my custom game engine and it works fine. My inspiration is the Unreal Engine since it's the perfect engine in my perspective and it uses PhysX for its physics. I've heard people being very pleased with Bullet however and I know Havok is a very up-to-date, widely used physics/animation engine used in many great commercial games(my favorite, Halo 3), but only it's non-commercial copy is free and I have no idea what the price of it is for commercial use. I like PhysX because it comes with so many examples but a little draw back is I can't find any tutorials other than the examples it comes with lol.

Havok is also free for commercial games on the PC. Please discuss license issues (and all other questions) on our forum here:

Intel forum on Havok


We are glad to help!


Cheers,
-Dirk

[grhodes_at_work corrected URL reference and activated the link]

[Edited by - grhodes_at_work on July 16, 2008 9:57:27 AM]

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Original post by DonDickieD Havok is also free for commercial games on the PC.

I know it's just wishful thinking, but I really wish Havok would be similarly free on Mac OS and Linux. I honestly don't understand why it's not . . . Mac OS and Linux use Intel processors just as much as Windows does. I know the question has been asked before over on those forums with no real response beyond there not being any plans to release the free Havok for Mac, Linux, or 64-bit Windows, but it's still a shame.

It's not that I'm necessarily in love with Havok as a physics engine -- although I do think it's a great one, I'd be just as happy with PhysX or Bullet for physics. What I do love about Havok is the animation integration and IK library . . . I really wish it was feasible for me to exclude Mac and Linux users, but they make up almost half my potential niche market.

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[Edited by - mayor_yar on July 21, 2008 12:18:45 PM]

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[Edited by - mayor_yar on July 21, 2008 12:20:27 PM]

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Original post by mayor_yar there is also "PhysBAM" which is i believe open-BSD, and is pretty good. (can be gotten here -- http://physbam.narod.ru )

Have you ever used this library? Are you sure it can be used for real time simulations? I cant even find any Documentations.

hrm.. i think there is documentation in the package, but i know it is used to make ;very nice simulations