CarX - new Car Physics Engine. FREE TEST-DRIVE!

I could find no mention of wether this was 2d, or 3d, or both. And some videos would be nice. It's probably a great product, it's just poorly advertised. The feature list looked pretty nice.

If you really want to be noticed, try making a demo with Havok (TryHavok is free for less than $10 games, so it would be easy to make a demo). A demo showing where Havok's vehicle code fails and yours succeeds would go a long way here. Havok is a great engine but they don't really have a good vehicle implementation. The general recommendation from the support people I've talked to for serious games is to "roll your own" if it's vehicle-centric.

Since you say it should be easy to integrate with other engines, a working example of that would be good :)

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Original post by bzroom I could find no mention of wether this was 2d, or 3d, or both. And some videos would be nice. It's probably a great product, it's just poorly advertised. The feature list looked pretty nice.

There are videos on the site here, though it's not the most obvious place to find them. Looks pretty nice.

Very, very nice.

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Original post by Numsgil (TryHavok is free for less than $10 games, so it would be easy to make a demo).

I'm being a bit pedantic here, but this is a commonly misunderstood part about the tryhavok licensing.

http://www.havok.com/index.php?page=pro

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If you plan to sell your commercial PC Game above a retail value of $10 USD, (or equivalent amount in other currencies based on prevailing exchange rates at the time of launch), you must first request a no-charge PC Game distribution license from Havok at www.havok.com/PCgamedistribution, prior to retail release of your game. This PC Game distribution agreement is required to ensure you have complied with Havok logo, copyright, and attribution requirements, and that your application is a PC game (commercial non-game application distribution is not allowed). There will be no fee associated with this because the license fee has been covered by Intel under a commercial agreement with Havok.

Not to derail your thread, if your physics really work like that right out of the box, configurable with the parameters you mention and some kind of base line that runs like any of those cars in that demo.. then you blow havok out of the water.

I like the part of the demo where the vehicle is doing short starts and stops. Showing the wheel rotation close up. It looked very solid. Also, the part of the demo where you're slowly rolling up and down the hill onto the flat, another very good test. I would have liked to seen the vehicle 'parked' on the slope though. But i'm willing to bet you've taken care of that common issue.

Nice work. Get your dev in here and have him chime in on vehicle threads please. :)

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Original post by bzroom Quote: Original post by Numsgil (TryHavok is free for less than $10 games, so it would be easy to make a demo). I'm being a bit pedantic here, but this is a commonly misunderstood part about the tryhavok licensing. http://www.havok.com/index.php?page=pro Quote: If you plan to sell your commercial PC Game above a retail value of $10 USD, (or equivalent amount in other currencies based on prevailing exchange rates at the time of launch), you must first request a no-charge PC Game distribution license from Havok at www.havok.com/PCgamedistribution, prior to retail release of your game. This PC Game distribution agreement is required to ensure you have complied with Havok logo, copyright, and attribution requirements, and that your application is a PC game (commercial non-game application distribution is not allowed). There will be no fee associated with this because the license fee has been covered by Intel under a commercial agreement with Havok. Not to derail your thread, if your physics really work like that right out of the box, configurable with the parameters you mention and some kind of base line that runs like any of those cars in that demo.. then you blow havok out of the water.

Not wanting to derail the thread either, but are you saying he wouldn't be able to hook into Havok because of licensing problems? While the license might not cover demos (not sure if it does or not), he wouldn't need to distribute a binary. He could download Havok, build some demos against it, and release just the source he wrote that links against the Havok library. Others could then use his demos against their own Havok installs.

I suggested Havok specifically because it's arguably the most popular professional physics engine and its vehicle code is somewhat lacking. A good vehicle solution for Havok would definitely catapult said vehicle solution from indie-only to maybe being considered by some AAA titles, where there's mucho $$$ to be made ;)

My point was simply that there is no sale price limit for PC games that use the free distro of Havok.

Most people mention "as long as it's less than $10" when they suggest Havok. Which is just not true. You could sell a game for $100 a copy and still use Havok for free.

That being said, i agree with all your points.

Ah, okay :) Wasn't sure what sort of point you were making.

Thank you very much for nice-looking feedback.

You can test CarX in FREE DEMO.

Just fill the form here .

CarX Demo uses PhysX physics engine. No matter what physics engine you use for simulating rigid bodies dynamics.
Our engine accumulates car forces every frame and you can add them into your physics engine every time step.
Thus adding extern forces makes integration process very simple.
For example our first client has integrated CarX in a one day.

[Edited by - Anatol3D on September 30, 2009 6:12:55 PM]

Oh, that's interesting that it's using PhysX. How exactly are you supposed to roll this vehicle system into your physics engine, then? Do you create a clone of the vehicle? And how does the vehicle get contact information from my game's physics system? Does it need a clone of the landscape?

How are you handling the case where one of your vehicles drives over, say, a large pile of ragdolls being simulated with whatever physics engine my game engine uses? Or what about if I'm throwing boxes at your vehicles? Will it cause it to realistically spin out? What about if I want to use my physics engine to have breakable parts on the vehicles? Is there any problem adding breakable constraints between debris (side view mirrors, for example) and the main vehicle chassis?

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Original post by Numsgil Oh, that's interesting that it's using PhysX. How exactly are you supposed to roll your vehicle system into the other physics engine, then? Do you create a clone of the vehicle? And how does the vehicle get contact information from my physics system? Does it need a clone of the landscape?

Hi Jay! CarX requires only Ray Tracing interface from your physics. CarX uses Ray Tracing callbacks and it is enough. Ray Tracing interface needs only start and end point of ray and gets material ID of surface ray hits. Every time step you update CarX cars rigid bodies states(matrices, velocities,angular velocities). After you call CarX Update method, it returns external forces and torques to your cars and matrices for all wheels. Cars are modelled as usual rigid bodies.
If your physics is capable of rigid bodies simulation and ray tracing, CarX can be integrated in one day.

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Original post by Numsgil How are you handling the case where one of your vehicles drives over, say, a large pile of ragdolls being simulated with whatever physics engine my game engine uses? Or what about if I'm throwing boxes at your vehicles? What about if I want to use my physics engine to have breakable parts on the vehicles? Is there any problem adding breakable constraints between debris (side view mirrors, for example) and the main vehicle chassis?

There is no problem. You can have destruction modelled in your engine. But CarX only computes additional tyre and aerodynamic forces. Any physics engine is capable of setting external forces for rigid bodies.
CarX vehicles could have even demages on suspension. Wheel could be torn off. Axles could be curved.

CarX library makes only addition computing of high precision tyre forces.
And makes any game capable to become very realistic driving sim.
It saves for game developer some hundreds thousand dollars for R&D on accurate car physics and finely tuned car handling from different input devices.

CarX was started from a problem. One programmer have tried to implement car physics as a hobby. But the major problem was so hard due to 2 parts. The first was computing tyres and suspension forces accurately. The second one - how to provide filtered input from player to handle real car physics without hacks in physics code. Many years of developing tyre model and many other aspects resulted in small and simple to integrate library for any engine and make it to be driving sim in one week or even in one day.

This is very suitable for AAA projects who look for ready car physics solutions.
We spent more than 8 years of R&D to bring CarX to life.

Thanks Anatoly. I figured that's how it would work, but your comment about using PhysX threw me. If you're leveraging the client's physics engine for dynamics and collision detection, what's left for PhysX to actually be doing?

I'm mostly just curious...

I think he's saying that CarX can leverage any physics engine, and the demo they made happens to leverage PhysX. Point being you can swap PhysX out with, say Havok, or whatever, as long as it has the prerequisites he mentioned. I don't gather PhysX is a dependency... it's just the physics engine the linked CarX with in this example.

That Video looks awesome!

I tried to implement vehicle physics in my game but it ended up anything but satisfying. I think you could make some serious $$$ with that library if youre able to reach the right audience.

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Original post by Numsgil your comment about using PhysX threw me. If you're leveraging the client's physics engine for dynamics and collision detection, what's left for PhysX to actually be doing?

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Original post by Anatol3D CarX Demo uses PhysX physics engine.

If i may butt in, i believe in his case the clients physics engine IS physX. In other words they're leveraging physx for dynamics and collision.

Oh, thanks guys. I just can't read :)

Sounds like a cool product all-in-all.

Thank you very much!

Looks good. I'm curious:

1) Does it handle curved surfaces?
2) Do you have any examples of branching roads?
3) Could it be extended to handle n-wheeled vehicles?

Thanks.