Which physics engine do you want for Gamestudio?

Some day we'll go to replace the current ODE engine, but with which one? Please take a minute to fill in the poll. Thank you.

I vote for bullet, because it start lagging only on 3000 boxes and isn't 20mb size. Newer PhysX. Personaly, I hate when with 5mb game comes 20mb driver. It's quite annoying. Newton 2 is no need because it's easy used by plugin. Waiting for Microsoft to release some physics - <lol>, have you seen their Microsoft Physics Illustrator? It's poor and lagged.

I dont know how licensing will work but Havoc will be released soon. It is more powerful than physx(imo) and doesnt need a driver.

As in the listed ones, i also voted for the Bullet.


edit: then i want to switch my vote from bullet to physx.

Newton 2 Please

same

Just some info about each (from various sources), since I had no clue about them:

PhysX:

Newton 2:

Bullet:

Given that nVidia is now tossing mad money at Physx development, I think that'd be the way to go. They're integrating it into their PPUs (and, should it become a de facto standard, it'll ultimately work well with other PPUs). It's also being used in a number of high-profile titles such as Medal of Honor: Airborne, Unreal Tournament 3, GRAW, etc.

But the three engines are all probably pretty decent for general purpose.

The PhysX driver requirement is unacceptable. Otherwise I wouldn´t mind PhysX either even if it is overhyped in my opinion. I hope nVidia will solve this differently in the future.

I also voted for Newton 2, in my opinion, newton is a as ichiro said, very fast engine, which also runs well on older Hardware.

I'm for PhysX. Please consider 3 things:
- I think it's actually planed by ageia to release smaller drivers
- Most of todays gamers have already installed the driver because of some big, commercial games
- Just remember that what you get here is really next-gen and with the support of nvidida the possibilities of the SDK will even grow, such as graphics card support for physics simulation

As all these physic engines are grown up and stable, there are only small differences between them. But in my opinion PhysX beats all others.

Even a 3MB driver is unacceptable to me. Every project you release will need this driver. Why can´t it simply be a dll or lib like all other physics engines? No one owns this physics card flop anyway.

What does "next-gen" mean? I already said it in the other thread but "next-gen" is nothing but marketing nonsense. It makes absolutely no sense.

I agree that it probably will become better with nVidia. But since CUDA is free, the other engines also will support GPUs sooner or later.

nVidia won´t build PPUs and it won´t bake physics into hardware. GPUs already are very fast vector processors which can be used for physics via CUDA (and of course the CUDA technology will be improved in future generations).

please don't always use 'next-gen' it's more a kind of marketing trick than something real(nearly as bad as 'web 2.0'). Really everyone is using that words to describe their products...

@topic
I voted for newton because it's easy to handle, really robust and exact AND with version 2.0 there will be a linear solver = more SPEED. Also it will have particle physic afaik

The main reason because I didn't choose ageias physiX is the driver size which is currently enormous big.
With

It has to be Havoc if your aiming GS at semi-pro developers for 2 main reasons:

- It's a good, well known engine, also gives you extra clout with publishers; it really is a well known brand.
- Its that well known for a good reason, its a very good physics engine, it has wide support accross a large number of 3rd party tools available out there.

Of course it comes with the major downside that it can be expensive and that cost would likely be born out to the end user, so most likely this is not a viable option.

Therefore I would cast my vote to Newton simply because it has been a part of GS for a long time, all be it, as a 3rd person tool/plugin. So if any engine has earned its inclusion with GS it's that one.

Other than that, the floor is very much open

Just my random £0.02 for the day

I was browsing around for some videos in an attempt to avoid work:

Newton:
Balls and bricks: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PDYrcl_i3AA
27,000 balls in realtime: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VmQgKqEF-s8
Animated ragdolls: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FUjLx5DAb5k
Train: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XUkbYGxvHu0
Tracked vehicle: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L_dqMUPeO3w

PhysX:
Deformation: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Ht_FZYeUlQ
More balls and bricks: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KTy9MKkRlsI
Cloth: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dviWZcphcIQ
Accelerated: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RNYLkwxF2EM
In C4: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1H4bH4YPVyk

Bullet:
2006 contest: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ojW93DmLkps
800 spheres/cubes: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3gpcCWKyrGA
Rube Goldberg: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gie7x_nRkq0
Fluids (non-realtime but fun): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bhnZIxjuxvs

And finally, actual physics in action:
Cars: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BM2gLjfE_3Y

I think that most of the PhysX demos you'll see will be a) accelerated, and b) stuffed to the gills with fancy-looking models, so take them with a grain of salt. :-)

As Ichiro said, PhysiX is owned by Nvidia, and Nvidia I believe already released support so that the 8800 series(and possibly 7800 series) can do additional Physics work like a seperate PhysX card would have done. Then there are plans for their future graphics cards to have this much more solidly implemented. That's why I choose PhysX, I think it will be around for a while, many big dev houses already used it, and probably most people already have this driver installed on their computer. If not, it's not hard install it on your computer, you don't need a Nvidia card or PhysX card to get the demos working either.

The PhysX/Newton/... implementation won't change the way you work with the physics engine in GS. PhysX is very robust, has a nice interface, tons of documentation, is fast (probably faster than the others) and it does provide a particle solver too. PhysX provides even more features then Newton, these are no arguments against PhysX.

A nice feature PhysX also provides is an remote debuger. With this, you can watch your world as physical shapes in an standalone application, interactively change params like the mass or add forces with your mouse _while running the game_. This helps you to fine tune your physical values and to find seldom bugs.

The only downside of PhysX is the current driver size, at this point I absolutely agree with you. But as I said, more and more games will need the driver. It would be interesting to see some statistics how many people have it installed.

thought more on this.
as TWO said if you look from feature and performance side Physx is better than others. Its more likely has more Pros than others but has a Con. like driver size.

I d still prefer Havoc over Physx if it was currently available.

And i find "soft bodies and cloths in realtime applications" fun :P Physx seems to have best softbody support.

Havoc or PhysX.

There is no other choice if you want GS to be taken seriously and you dont' want to have this conversation next year with "bullet" replacing "ODE" (it's not this enough, it's not that enough, it doesn't do this easily, it doesn't do that).

Let's get off the "Open Source For Free" bandwagon and pony up some cash (or MB) to be in the big leagues!

I will predict that it is more likely that Physx and Havoc will be around for the next five years than any of these other (comparatively) backyard solutions; no such guarantee with Bullet (never heard until now), Newton 2.0 (it's been 2.0 for HOW long and still not part of GS even through a plug in?), or anythng else that will come up.

The 20MB Physx driver. Yea, that's pretty much a deal breaker if you want to make casual games. But do you NEED Physx for a casual game? I dare say not.

However consider every other game. 20 MB is, what, 3, 4 animated MDLs? If you put it this way, it doesn't seem like much at all! And considering those of us making RPGs with game size in the 100's of MB, this driver would harldy be noticed!

So my solution I have not heard people mention: go hardcore. go for Physx (or havoc) BUT KEEP ODE AS A DLL. That way, people like me that NEED the best physics processing out there and could USE the PPU can take advantage of the e-Next-Gen-2.0-etc-etc solutions and others who don't NEED that much power can rely on ODE (or bullet if Conitec or Community has the time to integrate both).

Don't short change yourself community. You are being given an option (even if not taken) for GS to "grow up"... don't stunt it by making the same "cheap" decisions as in the past.

Hold on here...

The driver only needs to be DL'ed once right?
If there are updates you may need to patch or reinstall but am I correct that once you DL the Ageia driver for one game, you don't have to do it for others?

Because if the above is true, then ALL arguements against Physx for it's driver size are moot! I mean a 20MB download may not be right for your target market (casual games or dial up users) but I think the majority of gamers have no problem doing so if you make it easy for them to find it.

Seriously, if this driver is once per version and not once per game, there is NO reason not to vote for physx.

This is what I wanted to tell you, it's once per version. All gamers should have the driver already installed. Downloading and installing the new driver is very easy too, no manual uninstalling or any other problems.

Much ado about nothing then!

The physx driver issue is then somewhere in annoyance between Automatic Updates and DX... not quite as common or invasive as the Updates but still requiring updates like DX does for the most current games to play.

P'shaw... I don't see why anyone (except those developing casual blah blah and dial blah blah) would not want to vote for Physx now!

And let's face it, none of the others even DARE use PHYS in their name!

I really like the look of newton, but I am already able to use it with A7, thanks to ventilator. Newton is most probably slower than PhysX and has less features. I really like the features of PhysX and thus voted for it. The most important difference I see between Bullet and PhysX is the work NVIDIA puts into PhysX.

Bullet gets funded by Sony Computer Entertainment. They hired Erwin Coumans (a former Havok employee) to work full time on it.

If Gamestudio has PhysX built-in like currently ODE (directly in the acknex.dll), won´t every project need the driver then no matter if it uses physics or not? That´s unacceptable to me.

I think if you absolutely want to use PhysX then the dual physics engine solution like Fastlane69 mentioned would be best. Replace ODE with Bullet in all editions and offer PhysX for the professional edition as an add-on. There already are physics engine abstractions layers out there so maybe this wouldn´t be that much work. It also would be one more good incentive for the professional edition again (at least for people slavishly following marketing hype :p).

I don't really understand why the driver would be an issue though. It would be a very small install compared to a regular project size, and it could be included in your install process. Perhaps Conitec could also make it so that if you are not using the physics engine, you can set a certain define and you won't need the drivers at all.

not everyone wants to do big games. there also are small casual games, visualisations, simulations,... and not everyone wants to distribute their project as an installer. it's about freedom to do it like you want and this driver makes no technical sense at all.

i voted for newton and dislike physx in its current state but somehow i like the multiple engine idea too.

I want whatever physics engine has the least problems with stuff suddenly flinging around inexplicably and bouncing around the level!!! so, the most reliable.; which one is that? It seems like they all do the same thing, but which is most stable and compatible with hardware,and easiest and quickest to work with?

The main problem that people have with PhysX seems to be the huge driver. Just for information - I can guarantee that you won't need the driver when physics is not used in your app.

It is very likely that in the future the PhysX driver is automatically installed, or at least available when you install an nVidia card, and will probably become just as easily available as the DirectX library.

What we certainly won't do is implementing different libraries in the Commercial and the Pro Edition. We will support only one library, and will maintain backwards compatibility to the current physics functions.

if that's the case i will change my vote from bullet to physx.

same.

And I change my vote from Newton 2 to PhysX, too.

same here

OK, so now that this seems to be decided, when will this day be? Still this year?

I don´t know much about how different the PhysX API is to the ODE API but what if it makes sense to do things differently to give the user more flexibility/possibilities/power?

functions are overloadable, overridable etc in A7. I guess this will be the way out.

I don´t think backwards compatibility is important since physics will behave differently anyway with a new physics engine. All the ODE tweaks and workarounds in your code will have to be reworked. :p

Backwards compatibility is very important and esp. for almost finished projects that can't switch to the new toys because of time constraints or other reasons. 3DGS has always been BC for a certain period of time (before removing it) when switching languages (WDL vs. C-script and now C-script vs. Lite-C). It would only make sense to do the same for physics. Your old ODE code will work just like it did before and if you want to upgrade to whatever is chosen then you can and the engine will use the new one.

Being 100% compatible won´t be possible without keeping ODE around (please don´t! :)) even if the current physics functions stay exactly the same. For example because ODE in Gamestudio uses a big matrix solver by default which works differently to the approximate linear solver of PhysX or because PhysX does vehicles differently. People who need ODE for whatever reason should just keep using the older gamestudio versions.

exactly. backward compatibility cannot be the measurement.

and what about defining phys vars inside med and saving them in mdl. Like i have a model with skirt(say a group in med.) and i want to define skirt as cloth so when i put the model in the level, skirt acts as cloth and the character acts as rigid.

[Like in hl2 or vampire:The masquearade bloodlines]

maybe in mdl8 ?

This suggestion of Quadraxas is fantastic. It could be saved in MED or WED. But it would be very easy just to select the type (box, sphere, cylinder) and the mass (e.g. 2 kg) and maybe something about friction (0..100 percent). Then a pre-defined action or even the engine could handle the physics automatically.

Yeah, the same thing i want to ask.

actually i'd like havoc physics, so far it's my favorite and it's very clean physics...

agreed, i think havoc has this ability, considering that hl2 used havoc

i guess it can be done with any physics engine that supports clothes. (I guess it's about source engine more than havok, considering both hl2 and Vampire:TMB uses source)

but if nvidia decides for ongoing support in all their gpus then physx will be by far the fastest solution.

Why do you think Intel bought Havok? To have another thing to use their upcoming Larrabee chips for. Every physics engine will support vector processors of some kind in the future to make it run much faster.

I also think that Havok currently is the best physics engine but it is expensive for commercial use. PhysX for sure will be nice too for Gamestudio and a step forward from ODE.

how about just tidying up the current physics engine (so stuff doesn't flip around randomly?) if that's done, why do we need a new one? other than the coolness factor

I think JCL pretty much decided this when he said he'd model everything, himself.


This obviates the need for ANY physics engine any any drivers and/or legal requirements found in the use thereof. I therefore change my vote from "PhysX" -- which I think would otherwise be a fantastic choice in that its continued development by an established company would lead to a stable and predictable simulation -- to "Other."

It doesn´t seem to be that easy to fix ODE. Otherwise it already would have been done over the last few years.

I think all three are better than ODE in this regard. But approximate linear solvers are more susceptible to such flaws so i would say Newton´s solver would be most robust which requires the least tweaking work.

The other Physic Engines have much more features than ODE.

Here are more videos from PhysX:

http://youtube.com/watch?v=_yGJPoTnK6c&feature=related

http://youtube.com/watch?v=fjB4EzbIgSw&feature=related

http://youtube.com/watch?v=gMQDPLcqt8s&feature=related

http://youtube.com/watch?v=5Ht_FZYeUlQ&feature=related

http://youtube.com/watch?v=dviWZcphcIQ&feature=related

http://youtube.com/watch?v=CsoxCEVHEuQ&feature=related

http://youtube.com/watch?v=fXkSxph75_I&feature=related

cool videos, the ragdoll character and the material video is cool imo. I wasnt aware of that materials thingy in physx.

PhysX Car Wash: http://de.youtube.com/watch?v=o07KjfBx8GE&feature=related
(Fluid physics)

HMMMMM.....
I will change my vote from Newton to PhysX, too.
Because I think that PhysX is amazing and faster then Newton.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=VuPN800KS6Q&feature=related

An extra driver necessary to be installed is no option.
It's already an annoyance with OGG played via media player.

Even if 90% of all target pcs have this driver installed, you still have to worry about the remaining 10%.

Shrug. Wouldn't that be taken care of by the "Requirements" statement of your game? Wouldn't that dismiss that 10% and thus you don't have to worry about it (as much; even if you say "P4 only", there is always that CS call from a "386" user who can't understand why it doesn't work)?

But an excellent point about the ogg driver. Even moreso than Media Player, isn't it's drivers added to the resourced version and thus an example of how this might work?

Well not everybody uses NVIDIA cards. Besides that I to this day didn't read any solid facts on what NVIDIA exactly wants to do with PhysX - maybe they'll just put extended support for it in their Quadros or stuff. I wouldn't base the decision here on some "maybes" and "probables"...

It might also be a matter of price - I'm not sure about it but afaik using PhysX does actually cost you a lot. The SDK may be "freely available" but I don't think it will be without charge if you use it in a commercial product (Ichiro's quote of Sony having "licensed" the SDK sounds pretty much like that)...

With Bullet there is a free, professional and powerful engine and if you like having NVIDIA work on a physics engine they to some extent support bullet too...

Concerning the PhysX driver issue:
Apart from the fact that this extra need to install a driver is annoying there imo also is the problem of this being an additional source for errors of all kinds. I mean if the physics engine is housed in Acknex itself you're much safer when looking at the bug side. You won't get strange behaviours on some PCs with new updated drivers or have to do a more extensive bughunt - with the physics engine being in Acknex you can make sure everyone uses the very same engine and are safe from possible problems an external driver provides...

I also think kind of a new philosophy shines through here now. I mean to give an example look at that whole shader discussion. Even at times of a GeForce 5 shaders didn't have a high priority because we got told that the "average user" wouldn't have such a card yet and Acknex isn't meant to mess with the AAA titles and their features. So why suddenly things like that are considered and we even discuss things that people might eventually have with GPU generations still to come? I mean we really were often told that this still is an Indie engine so with defining your product this way there should be no big discussion about PhysX being an option...

With that said I think Bullet provides really lots of things: It's multi-threaded, doesn't really lack anything an Indie misses, is supported by many companies and used in big commercial titles too and it also might be familiar to some degree for those who use Blender (which especially in an Indie community with many non-commercial developers is widely used)...

So maybe we should check the point of the costs first because I'd rather like to see some money spent on different areas of the engine instead of physics...

Enjoy your meal
Toast

http://developer.nvidia.com/object/physx.htm

K - so for hardcoded integration into Acknex you don't need the source code?

Enjoy your meal
Toast

Nope, you'll only be needing the SDK for it. So no worries about license fee's (unless you want the source code and have $50.000 lying around)

I download the sdk And see the demos
the only I can say is change the ODE now

Without hardware the demos are incredible
if the nvidia series 8.. 9.. will be support
physx by harware then not question
waht physics engine will be

PhysX - Petition affiliate number 1

So jcl, when will the Physics-Engine get changed?

i know this topic is old but..any news on that?

If Physics is changed to PhysX,you can leave ODE physics?

Long Shot but Havok?

I prefer Havoc, it seems to be more powerfull then the rest.

i'm not sure if anything of that will even happen. ofc, maybe it will but i wouldn't bet on that.

you always can use VeT's Newton2 wrapper. he still needs to add joints but it's usable

PhysX! yeah!!

PhysX comes with a harmless licence, more features than all the others, the highest speed and at least an okay accuracy.
Newton is very accurate but not as fast as the others and does only support rigid bodies. I also don´t like its licence too much.
Bullet is nice too but due to nearly no documentation not that easy to use. It is not as fast as PhysX but still very fast and has some nice features. The accuracy is similar to PhysX but it is open source with a nice licence.
Havok is nearly as fast as PhysX and nearly as accurate as Newton. But the free version does only support rigid bodies and has a very strict licence and I dobt that many here would be willing to buy a licence of Havoc...

PhysX is definatly the best choice
(I btw also tried ODE and True Axis, but they are both not very great)

Hi. Can you say when do you plan to replace the ode engine? Because I want to buy 3d game studio but not with ode.

buy it - since it'll be replaced you can learn using 3dgs until then. the new physics engine should be out when you're about to need it.

Newton, i can even help with it

Thanks for Newton but i need soft-body support))
@Vet check your PM

I prefer PhysX, becurse i is a very good Physic enging with many effects and all Nvidia Gerforce 8xxx with newest driver can use it. (since dirver 177.xx is the Physix driver includet and it works great ).

By
White_Wolf

Can't really apreciate the Nvidia PhysX, because it's not supported by ATI. This would mean your product can't be run optimal by app. 48% of the computerusers. I think thats why Havoc is much better. It's just better supported

Am I getting this right. PhysX is supported by Nvidia by their hardware, so the gpu can calculate part of the physics?

How about Havoc, is it supported by any hardware?

If not, I'd say PhysX is the better choice because it is supported by about have of all graphic cards and about the same as Havoc for all the others.
It's better to have some supported hardware then none as long as it runs good enough without the hardware support.

physx supported by nvidia doenst mean it doesnt work on ati.

it is just not hardware accelerated.. e.g. newton 2 is not hardware accelarated by both nvidea and ati.

in my opinion havoc is better than physX