[ODE] Documentation about physics simulation libraries

[erwin@erwincoumans.com]

There is some physics engine list here:
http://www.diku.dk/hjemmesider/ansatte/kenny/other.html 

It would be interesting to have some feature and performance comparison, but 
that tends to be subjective. In other words, there are always ways to make 
one Physics SDK look better then another. 

Technically:
Constraint solving: most physics engines use iterative LCP solvers in some 
form, either using Successive Overrelaxation/Projected Gauss Seidel or using 
sequential impulses (almost identical approaches). 

Collision Detection: most physics engines use a broadphase like sweep and 
prune, or a hash grid.
Narrow phase pair-wise collision detection: they use generic approaches like 
Separating Axis Theorem (SAT) or GJK based approaches and/or optimized 
version for particular cases like sphere-sphere contact generation. 

Other aspects that matter in my opinion are friction model, contact point 
management (persistency?), platform/hardware specific optimizations (SIMD, 
GPU), API (C, C++), active development (new releases), support (a great 
community like ODE), available integrations with existing graphics engines 
(OGRE, Torque, C4, etc) , scripting languages (Java, XNA, python), 
non-rigidbody features like Cloth, deformable, fracture etc. etc. 

Hope this helps,
Erwin Coumans
http://bulletphysics.com 


Mauro G. Todeschini writes: 

> Hi,
> 	I'm looking for documentation about physic simulation libraries (like ode).
> Somthing about their history and comparisons between different libraries
> (features, performance). And something about the way they work.
> Any hints or links? 
> 
> Thanks and Bye. 
> 
> -- 
> Mauro G. Todeschini
> _______________________________________________
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> ODE at q12.org
> http://q12.org/mailman/listinfo/ode