looking for a place to start...

[wahness]

i'm comfy in opengl, have a bs in cs, (dang that sounds funny to me), and have found out that even though i thought i knew physics well enough for games and simulation, i really, most assuredly, don't. that said, i'm currently looking for a solution i can use for:

#1: a trebuchet game to be finished within the month
#2: hard core, engineering quality simulation for automotive engineering software plug-ins for various products (relatively distant future)
#3: fast, efficient complex game physics in the near future (racing sims, flight sims, fluid dynamics, etc)

i've been looking around, and i can't seem to find a decent comparison of physics libraries. well, there might have been some, but i couldn't read them. i know asking for advice on a forum like this is usually about as reliable as shooting craps, but i'm getting desperate.

i've downloaded the bullet source, and it surprisingly compiled very easily. i've never had an open source library work right away. i've always had to fight with them for untold hours. this has impressed me significantly, but i'm still not sure this is the library i should be using.

i guess what i'm looking for is some advice on how good bullet would be for what i'm looking to do, if there are any other libraries i should be looking at, and how hard would it be for someone like me to use bullet or any of the other options.

after reading the FAQ about bullet, it leads me to believe it's intended for someone with a physics or mechanical engineering degree, not a programmer looking for a drop-in physics solution. am i understanding this correctly?

any help would be greatly appreciated.

[krux]

I started deveoping with bullet a few days ago. I don't think you need any degree of physics to understand the library, and how to use it. You would need one, if you don't use the library, and want to acieve the same results with your own code. But the library is not very easy to use, you need to work, until everything works as you want it to work.