Physics engine or DIY?

Math and Physics Programming

Started by RobM October 15, 2013 07:53 PM

11 comments, last by Hodgman 10 years, 6 months ago

1,161

Author

October 15, 2013 07:53 PM

With physics engines like bullet, can you apply your own calculations to the resulting positions of rigid bodies, etc? My game is loosely based around snowboarding and whilst I'm sure I could easily model a board to slide down a slope, it might get a lot more complex when you consider the fact that being on an edge will have different physics properties to being flat on the snow.

For a few days I've been weighing up the pros and cons of doing my own physics or using something like bullet. If I do my own, obviously it'll get pretty complex but if I can't model different parts of the snowboard in a middleware physics engine I might have to consider my own cut down version.

Any thoughts?

Madhed

4,095

October 15, 2013 08:16 PM

I'd say use an existing one. You can always add special physics handling! The big engines out there are far more optimized than you would be able to in a sensible timeframe.

Shane C

1,369

October 15, 2013 08:24 PM

I'd say use an existing one. You can always add special physics handling! The big engines out there are far more optimized than you would be able to in a sensible timeframe.

If it matters, I completely agree with him. The existing ones seem to be quite good.

Or maybe I just agree with him because I'm rather technology focused and can't see a custom made beating some of the other ones.

RobM

1,161

Author

October 15, 2013 08:41 PM

Thanks guys - I'm all for using existing middleware, as long it can be tailored to how I want my objects to act/react.

Bullet looks pretty good to me, although I've read that documentation isn't as good as it could be - the PDF manual did seem to be "look at the example and work it out for yourself" - which is ok I guess...

Buster2000

4,310

October 16, 2013 07:39 AM

If you have a game idea (your snowboarding game) then use an engine. You can achieve the affect you want by applying different forces on the board.

I'd only recommend writing a Physics engine from scratch if you wanted to do it as a learning excercise.

RobM

1,161

Author

October 16, 2013 10:38 AM

Just tried to build the latest version of Bullet in Visual Studio 2005 (v8) and I've got lots of errors where it's trying to include 'pmmintrin.h'. According to some research, this is a file from a more recent version of Visual Studio. I was wondering if anyone had built Bullet on VS2005? Or should I upgrade to VS2012?

I'm sticking with DX9 at the moment as I don't want to concentrate a lot of time upgrading, so it would be good if I can get Bullet working with VS2005 if possible. Probably need to post on the bullet forum but thought I'd check here first..

xexuxjy

1,481

October 16, 2013 11:26 AM

Did you use the vs2005.bat build file to generate your project? haven't tried that one for a while, but it should be valid.

Waterlimon

4,401

October 16, 2013 01:18 PM

You should upgrade to a more recent version, VS2005 is old and lacks a lot of stuff (improved optimization, C++11 features...)

o3o

Hodgman

52,717

October 16, 2013 01:28 PM

Thanks guys - I'm all for using existing middleware, as long it can be tailored to how I want my objects to act/react.

I'm working on a racing game with realistic racing car physics that's all custom written, however I still use off the shelf physics engines for everything except for the tyres/sprints/aerodynamics

The rigid body simulation and collision detection frameworks from existing engines are still extremely handy, meaning I just have to add some extra forces into the sim and it all works out of the box.