Physics engine list, books, PhD thesis, on-line resources

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Erwin Coumans
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Physics engine list, books, PhD thesis, on-line resources

Post by Erwin Coumans »

Alfabetical list of available collision detection and physics engines, categorized on license type. Send a message to this forum to add a link here. See also this physics simulation package collection by Adrian Boeing or the list of physics engines at Digital Rune

ZLib license, Open Source, free for commercial use on game consoles BSD license, Open Source, free for commercial use on game consoles Proprietary license, Closed source GPL/LGPL or "not free for commercial use on game consoles" licenses, Open Source Unknown license Best online docs for beginners:
Physics and Collision Detection books:
  • "Physics Based Animation" written by Kenny Erleben/Sporring, published by Charlers River Media.
    "Real-time collision detection" by Christer Ericson, published by Morgan Kaufmann.
    "Collision Detection in 3D environments", by Gino van den Bergen, published by Elsevier.
On-line MsC/PhD thesis: Other on-line resources: Books with in-depth information about LCP and Featherstone constraints:
  • "The Linear Complementarity Problem", Cottle, Pang Stone.
    "Robot Dynamics Algorithms" by Roy Featherstone, published by Kluwer Academic Publishers.
ngbinh
Posts: 117
Joined: Fri Aug 12, 2005 3:47 pm
Location: Newyork, USA

Re: Physics books, PhD thesis, on-line resources

Post by ngbinh »

A PhD thesis from Leo Rust: "The P-Matrix Linear Complementarity Problem: Generalizations and Specializations"

http://people.inf.ethz.ch/ruestle/papers/diss.pdf

I think it will be helpful for someone who is interested in LCP solver.
KenB
Posts: 49
Joined: Sun Dec 03, 2006 12:40 am

Re: Physics engine list, books, PhD thesis, on-line resources

Post by KenB »

You might want to add "AgX Multiphysics" from Algoryx to the list of engines (and remove
this post). It is proprietary/commercial but licensed with source code to customers.
Since it is rather modular, and is likely to become even more modular, we
consider making several modules open source in the future, but right
now we have hands full of customer related projects.

Most likely, academic discounts will be substantial and might also include
a source license. We're still discussing the details...

AgX is not a game physics engine (there are almost too many of those, including some really
good ones under open source licenses e.g. *Bullet*!), but intended almost entirely for the professional
market (simulators, CAD, engineering, science, automation/robotics, medical sim, etc).
However, it can be tweaked to behave pretty much like a game engine too, by choosing e.g. a
simple friction model, a gauss-seidel solver, few iterations, time coherence, freezing, damping etc.

http://www.algoryx.se/
Hanz
Posts: 14
Joined: Fri Jun 01, 2007 5:36 am

Re: Physics engine list, books, PhD thesis, on-line resources

Post by Hanz »

Just add some resources to this great list. :)

1 OpenHRP 3 : An integrated simulation platform for robot dynamics

URL: http://www.openrtp.jp/openhrp3/en/index.html
License: Eclipse Public License

Brief introduction:

* Dynamics: Featherstone algorithms
* Collision detection: Opcode
* Constraint solver: Projected Gauss Seidel

* COBRA based server-client architecture.

2 WildMagic : Library for graphics, physics, image analysis, numerical computation

URL: http://www.geometrictools.com/
License: GNU Lesser General Public License (LGPL)

Brief introduction:

* Foundation.Distance : Distance calculators.
* Foundation.Intersection: Intersection of objects
* Foundation.Mesh : Mesh data structures

* Physics.Intersection: Test for overlap of intervals (1D), axis-aligned rectangles (2D), and axis-aligned boxes (3D)
* Physics.LCPSolver: Numerical solver for Linear Complementarity Problems (LCP)
* Physics.RigidBody: Rigid body classes.

3 ColDet : 3D Collision Detection Library

URL: http://photoneffect.com/coldet/
License: Library GNU Public License (LGPL)

Brief introduction:

Small, fast, accurate detection (default first-contact, but can be patched to report all contacts)

* Works on any model, even polygon soups.
* Fully Portable. Compiles on windows compilers (VC, BCB) and recent versions of g++ on any platform.
* Uses bounding box hierarchies for fast detection.
* Uses additional triangle intersection tests for 100% accuracy.
* Provides (upon request) exact point of collision, plus the pair of triangles that collided.
* Supports timeout setting, to limit detection time.
* Model-Model collision test.
* Ray-Model collision test.
* Segment-Model collision test.
* Sphere-Model collision test.
* Ray-Sphere and Sphere-Sphere primitive collision tests.

HTH
LeonidAdams
Posts: 1
Joined: Sat Sep 12, 2009 11:08 pm

Re: Physics engine list, books, PhD thesis, on-line resources

Post by LeonidAdams »

many thanks for the compilation of the literature. :)
greatly facilitated the work.
ExponentialP
Posts: 2
Joined: Thu Mar 10, 2011 4:36 pm

Re: Physics engine list, books, PhD thesis, on-line resource

Post by ExponentialP »

Hi new guy here,

could anyone suggest which engine would be good for projectile motion, and collision detection, I am currently hoping to develop a indie PC game that uses a projectile motion to launch objects (arrows) at a target. I'm just doing a bit of research to find out which direction I should head in.

Thanks
rahilbaber
Posts: 1
Joined: Sun May 08, 2011 11:17 am

Re: Physics engine list, books, PhD thesis, on-line resource

Post by rahilbaber »

Brian Mirtich's thesis has a small mistake in it. I wrote a corrected version of his collision response algorithm here:
http://www.euclideanspace.com/physics/d ... irtich.pdf
There's also some code demonstrating the (quick) 2d version of the algorithm:
http://www.euclideanspace.com/physics/d ... Friction.c
The 3d version of the algorithm is slower as it involves numeric integration but if you're clever about how you discretize the space you can make it into a constant time algorithm.
kc297
Posts: 4
Joined: Wed Jul 13, 2011 6:26 pm

Re: Physics engine list, books, PhD thesis, on-line resource

Post by kc297 »

Also of interest
MBDyn : http://www.aero.polimi.it/mbdyn/
Not really a game engine but has a lot of interesting features.
murilo101
Posts: 1
Joined: Tue Nov 06, 2012 11:10 pm

Re: Physics engine list, books, PhD thesis, on-line resource

Post by murilo101 »

Hi All,

I've recently published a textbook with Springer-Verlag entitled "Guide to Dynamic Simulations of Rigid Bodies and Particle Systems" (ISBN 978-1-4471-4416-8). This book is a significant re-write of the one I published about 11 years ago also with Springer, namely "Dynamic Simulations of Multibody Systems" (ISBN 0-387-95192-X).

Topics and features of this new book include:
- Examines the problem of computing an hierarchical representation of the geometric description of each simulated object, as well as the simulated world
- Discusses the use of discrete and continuous collision detection to handle thin or fast-moving objects, including a derivation of the conservative time advancement algorithm
- Describes the computational techniques needed for determining all impulsive and contact forces between bodies with multiple simultaneous collisions and contacts
- Covers articulated rigid bodies and the derivation of the dynamics equations for spherical, universal, revolute, cylindrical, prismatic and rigid joint systems
- Concludes each chapter with exercises, ranging from issues of algorithm enhancements to alternative approaches that complement the algorithms discussed in the book

The complete table of contents can be accessed through Amazon.

Best wishes,
Murilo
danduk82
Posts: 1
Joined: Tue Nov 18, 2014 4:04 pm

Re: Physics engine list, books, PhD thesis, on-line resource

Post by danduk82 »

Hello everybody,
Please forgive me if this information is stated somewhere else, but I can't find a "correct" way to cite Bullet Physics in an academic paper. Many citations I have found only tells E. Coumans <year> , where <year> may vary, but they only refer to the URL of the project.

Is there an "official" citation of Bullet Physics? Or is the URL the only way to cite it?

Bests
aaronhansome
Posts: 2
Joined: Wed Mar 16, 2016 3:12 pm

Re: Physics engine list, books, PhD thesis, on-line resource

Post by aaronhansome »

Thank you so much for all of this.
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