ok this is not directly linked to a programming issue but i figured this would be the most appropriate forum to put it now, the physx engine from ageia/nvidia requires a 40mb heavy driver which you have to install in order to run it including a few mb of libraries here and there dont seem like a big deal but dont you think people would be scared off by having to install that driver? im talking small time free game development here, imagine someone is bored and browsing for some nice free game to play and he stumbles upon your creation which happens to be using physx; now the guy thinks "ye that looks nice" and decides to give it a go only to figure out he needs to download yet another piece of software which has 40mb and has to be installed separately if that guy was me i would just be like "nyaah, lets try something else" what are your thoughts on the matter, id be happy to learn from other peoples mistakes for once :P

It's just a driver, I don't see the big deal there.

I decided to switch to the Bullet physics library after I noticed NVIDIA is likely not going to give me any better support. I noticed that the PhysX developer forum at NVIDIA doesn't get much attention from the NVIDIA people. So it is mostly a user-to-user support forum.

And the positive thing about Bullet is that I have full source code to it. It's not that I am expecting to be modifying it much, but I like it as I can compile it statically into my application and I don't have to worry about the library being installed on the user's computer.

It's also great for cross-platform use, which I want to do.

I just figured out that what I want to do can very likely be accomplished with something like Bullet so the hassle and uncertainty with the PhysX is not worth it.

Quote:Original post by reptor
I decided to switch to the Bullet physics library after I noticed NVIDIA is likely not going to give me any better support. I noticed that the PhysX developer forum at NVIDIA doesn't get much attention from the NVIDIA people. So it is mostly a user-to-user support forum.

And the positive thing about Bullet is that I have full source code to it. It's not that I am expecting to be modifying it much, but I like it as I can compile it statically into my application and I don't have to worry about the library being installed on the user's computer.

It's also great for cross-platform use, which I want to do.

I just figured out that what I want to do can very likely be accomplished with something like Bullet so the hassle and uncertainty with the PhysX is not worth it.

The help forum to Bullet is usually pretty worthless too. The documenation has nothing on the PhysX stuff. Basically need to pick through source code to figure anything out. Then it doesn't always seem to work right. After all the stuff I've had to do I'm switching to PhysX after this project is done. But of course there are at least two Wii games using Bullet so it certainly does work. Just doesn't work well for my project it seems.

As for the PhysX driver, you can get a installer just for 2.8.1 which is just four megs. The system driver is so big because it has copies of all the .dlls way back to like 2.3. If you are using the newest version then you can only have your user install the stuff for that version and not all the rest. Post #15 has the link to the download.

And as MJP said its pretty easy to get the NSIS installer to connect to a website, download a file, and run it all in the installer. So there is no reason for the user to have to manually download the file themselves. When I was messing with replacing Bullet with PhysX I found some NSIS scripts on the internet to do this.

ah i wasn't aware of that stupid_programmer (what a name :P), thanks

I agree that the Bullet documentation is not so good.

But if I look at their forums, it's about the same quality as PhysX's forum. So, apart from the documentation, the support given is about the same as I see it. I would expect a lot more effort from NVIDIA at their forums, to support their products, even for hobby users - they could become commercial at some point, or tell their "commercial" friends about how good/bad PhysX is.

I think it depends quite a lot in what kind of a project you have - as I said, I figured out I can do what I want with Bullet so using PhysX is just going to complicate things more. And limiting me to platforms NVIDIA wishes to support.

Quote:Original post by Vevusio
ah i wasn't aware of that stupid_programmer (what a name :P), thanks

It seems to be an apt name for me sometimes.

Quote:Original post by reptor
I agree that the Bullet documentation is not so good.

But if I look at their forums, it's about the same quality as PhysX's forum. So, apart from the documentation, the support given is about the same as I see it. I would expect a lot more effort from NVIDIA at their forums, to support their products, even for hobby users - they could become commercial at some point, or tell their "commercial" friends about how good/bad PhysX is.

I think it depends quite a lot in what kind of a project you have - as I said, I figured out I can do what I want with Bullet so using PhysX is just going to complicate things more. And limiting me to platforms NVIDIA wishes to support.

As a general physics engine for things interacting with an enviroment or for vehicles it does seem really good. But something as simple as having a stack of blocks and removing the bottom and have the rest fall doesn't work most of the time. But it is cross platform and does support quite a few more primitives then PhysX.

well at least according to wikipedia physx is cross-platform as well (at least windows and linux, mac useres are lame anyway)

unless bullet has a way better api and usability then physx i dont really see a reason to use it especially now since it seems that according to some of you guys its a little buggy

i was thinking of newton game dynamics as an alternative or maybe ODE since its been mentioned here and there as i was looking around - also some commercial titles like STALKER and BloodRayne2 etc. used it

the problem is that i dont want to waste a lot of time checking out all these engines before deciding on one

and while what im intending to do doesnt need a lot of physics capabilities it would be nice to have learned a decent engine i could use for more advanced stuff in the future eventually