What a physics engine you use for 3d game?

[flyaflya]

I think physics engine is more import than 3d display engine, such as <half life>, it use havok engine, it make the game more really and more fun, our indie developers can't get these commercial engines. What a physics engine you use in your 3d games? I'm a newbie for 3d game development, now just know ODE.

[Applewood]

This is the new kid on the block:

http://www.continuousphysics.com/Bullet/

It makes havoc look pretty silly when you factor in the price difference... :D

[ChrisP]

Hadn't seen that Bullet one before, thanks for the link.

The only other one I know of is Newton Game Dynamics (http://www.newtondynamics.com/). Never used it, couldn't tell you how good it is, but I've played around with a demo and it seemed pretty solid. It was just a simple demo though; rigid bodies (crates) getting chucked around in an environment filled with crossbeams. I have no idea how its more complex features stack up.

[Jim Buck]

2.5 years ago, I worked on a demo where I decided to use Newton. I was deciding between that and ODE at the time. The open-source ODE was pretty solid, but the closed-source Newton had more game-code type of features like callbacks when objects first collide (for firing off sound effects, etc). Doing it again, I think I might prefer the open-source codebase, though. I had run into a few problems with Newton when I had a very complex ragdoll, and I never knew if it was me improperly using Newton, or if Newton just couldn't handle the ragdoll I was throwing at it.

[Applewood]

Which bullet also has covered - it's fully free and open source.

Honestly, all these others pale by comparison, even the commercial ones ime.

[HairyTroll]

Which bullet also has covered - it's fully free and open source.

Honestly, all these others pale by comparison, even the commercial ones ime.

Except that bullet has a C++ only API. At least ODE, while coded in C++, exports a C API.

[Bad Sector]

When i thought about giving ODE a try i stumbled on it's usage of "int" for pointers in many cases and i wasn't able to compile it under Athlon64. That was a couple of years ago though, so things could have changed since then.

Bullet seems to be fine and it's the physics library that Blender uses, so it seems to be good. OTOH, however, the motion in the video with the house seems very unnatural to me...

EDIT: in any case, i'm making my newest engine in Java and i'm interested in learning and implementing a rigid body physics engine, so it doesn't really matter anymore for me :-)

[flyaflya]

ODG is more well-known, Bullet is use bender, don't know is it suitable to use Bullet in other 3d engine like ogre,.

[HairyTroll]

OTOH, however, the motion in the video with the house seems very unnatural to me...

It seems as if the ball is 'dropped' sideways and not thrown. It looks very weird though.