Having a re-look

[Allan]

Being a keen user of 3DRad, and having had a 5 year break from 3Impact, I thought I'd take a re-look at the driving force behind  3DRad (i.e. 3Impact5). So far, I like very much what I see!

The main gripe I have with 3Impact (and 3DRad) is the use of ODE as the physics engine. It is outdated and buggy.

I will be concentrating on a project to integrate PhysX with 3Impact, and, judging from what I've accomplished so far, it is entirely possible.

I will keep posting progress as my project procedes.

[Developer - Fernando]

Very interesting, thanx Allan

[JRowe]

It is outdated and buggy

How so? One of the most popular games in the world uses it to great effect (World of Goo.)

I think this might be a case of using different tools for different purposes... for soft body dynamics, ODE isn't the tool for the job. You can handle hundreds of discrete rigid bodies with ODE, however, which works just fine for many games. Is there a particular downside to using ODE, or using the ODE integrated with 3Impact? Or is it just not as full featured as PhysX/Bullet/Havok, etc?

That being said, PhysX integration would be awesome. I love the cloth and soft body dynamics, and the particle behaviors are jaw dropping. Kudos on the job so far

[Allan]

This is only my personal opinion.........my only experience with ODE has been via 3Impact and 3DRad, where I have had to do a number of workarounds to get things working as I want. I have also seen a number of popularity polls where ODE features near the bottom.

Perhaps I was a bit harsh in my negative comment..........not having based it on firsthand experience as an ODE application developer.

Thanks for the kudos.

[Joyful Dreamer]

I used to have small issues also regarding more direct access to certain features (like if using my own networking, being able to sync the physics on objects by directly accessing the velocity values and using some kind of interpolation). I'm sure so much has changed, so I can't speak for the current version.

[George Birbilis]

Is there a particular downside to using ODE, or using the ODE integrated with 3Impact? Or is it just not as full featured as PhysX/Bullet/Havok, etc?

Ageia PhysX is now NVIDIA PhysX and runs on special processor on the higher-end NVIDIA cards. Also they might have some implementation running on classic GPUs too, not sure (if they don't already it should be feasible probably, but they might want to push their own hardware instead of making the API more standard)

[JRowe]

I've been under the impression that none of these newer physics engines are very different mathematically from ODE, just that they have all the workarounds and tweaks built in. So obviously, the newer ones will save you a lot of work, even though ODE could be brought up to speed with a lot of fiddling around.

Physics engines in general are pretty neat, I've been reading for the last several days on the history and communities surrounding them.