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

[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

• Box2D, http://box2d.org
  Bullet Physics Engine, http://www.bulletphysics.com
  IBDS , http://www.impulse-based.de
  Open Tissue, http://www.opentissue.org

BSD license, Open Source, free for commercial use on game consoles

• Open Dynamics Engine, http://www.ode.org Russel Smith' physics library and Pierre Terdiman's OPCODE collision library
  Tokamak, http://sourceforge.net/projects/tokamakp

Proprietary license, Closed source

• Ageia, http://www.ageia.com
  AgX, http://www.algoryx.se
  Chrono::Engine physics library, http://www.deltaknowledge.com/chronoengine
  Fastcar, http://www.oxforddynamics.co.uk
  Havok, http://www.havok.com
  Newton, http://www.newtondynamics.com

GPL/LGPL or "not free for commercial use on game consoles" licenses, Open Source

• Dynamechs: http://dynamechs.sourceforge.net
  Dynamo, http://home.iae.nl/users/starcat/dynamo
  Fast CCD collision detection library, http://graphics.ewha.ac.kr/fast
  physsim: http://physsim.sourceforge.net
  SOLID 3.5 collision detection library, http://www.dtecta.com
  Springhead, http://springhead.info/index.en.php

Unknown license

• Jiglib, http://www.rowlhouse.co.uk/jiglib
  Aero, http://www.aero-simulation.de
  nV Physics Engine, http://www.thephysicsengine.com/
  OpenMASK, http://www.irisa.fr/siames/OpenMASK
  Pulsk: http://www.ngaloppo.org/courses/comp259/pulsk
  SOFA: http://www.sofa-framework.org

• Physics Abstraction Layer (PAL), http://sourceforge.net/projects/pal

Best online docs for beginners:

• http://allenchou.net/game-physics-series
  http://www.digitalrune.com/Support/Blog ... amics.aspx

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:

• Helmut Garstenauer, A Unified Framework for Rigid Body Dynamics
  Kenny Erleben, "Stable, Robust, and Versatile Multibody Dynamics Animation", ftp://ftp.diku.dk/diku/image/publicatio ... 050401.pdf
  Lacoursière, Claude (2007). Regularized variational methods for interactive simulations of multibodies with dry frictional contacts.
  Bart Barenbrug,"Designing a class library for interactive simulation and rigid body dynamics", http://www.win.tue.nl/dynamo/publicatio ... thesis.pdf
  Gino van den Bergen PhD, Collision Detection in interactive 3D Computer Animation
  Brian Mirtich, Impulse-based Dynamic Simulation of Rigid Body Systems
  Game Physics Pearls, a collection of physics gems by industry experts.

Other on-line resources:

• CATCH, Continuous Collision Detection, Zhang, http://graphics.ewha.ac.kr/CATCH/
  Game Physics Performance on the Larrabee Architecture, Intel, http://download.intel.com/technology/ar ... _paper.pdf
  GPhysics, Erin Catto, http://gphysics.com
  Bullet Physics Wiki, http://www.continuousphysics.com/mediawiki-1.5.8
  Continuous Collision Detection, Erwin Coumans, http://www.continuousphysics.com/Bullet ... ection.pdf

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]

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]

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]

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]

many thanks for the compilation of the literature.
greatly facilitated the work.

[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]

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]

Also of interest
MBDyn : http://www.aero.polimi.it/mbdyn/
Not really a game engine but has a lot of interesting features.

[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]

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]

Thank you so much for all of this.

[kiash]

Here is more helpful books link

Pediatric Physical Therapy by Jan Stephen Tecklin MS PT
A Collection of Problems on Mathematical Physics
Problems in Physics by A. A. Pinsky
Introduction to SAT II Physics