Bullet integration

[saindd]

Is Bullet the default physics engine? Or is it PhysX? Do the vehicles use the Bullet code for vehicles or a custom one? How can we compile the engine with Bullet support?

[Timmy]

By default no physics plugin is compiled in. The vehicles don't use any physics plugins nor will they interact with any physics objects. You can enable bullet physics (or PhysX) in the project generator (there are other ways but that is the easiest ). If you look here i enabled kinematic bodies with vehicles https://github.com/rextimmy/Torque3D. Not perfect but better than nothing and will work with all physics plugins

[saindd]

So where the engine applies Bullet? Character controllers only? Is Bullet or PhysX even supported in networking?

Regarding vehicles... they use some kind of custom physics code? Is it possible to replace the vehicles with bullet vehicles? How hard would that be? Is the code highly coupled?

[saindd]

Bumping. :D

[Kyrah Abattoir]

So where the engine applies Bullet? Character controllers only? Is Bullet or PhysX even supported in networking?

Regarding vehicles... they use some kind of custom physics code? Is it possible to replace the vehicles with bullet vehicles? How hard would that be? Is the code highly coupled?

 

To my experience, Player and objects "physiscShape" by default.

Cheetah still uses a custom "ground repeller" code which you could most likely port to Bullet if you wanted.

For something more detailed you will probably need physical constraints, which are not currently implemented. (but it's really a matter of hooking them from Bullet really)

Can anyone correct me? This is what i concluded a couple months ago when i was bashing my head on it (before giving up).

[rlranft]

Physx - check this thread - http://www.garagegames.com/community/forums/viewthread/135448

GMK - has other physics-related enhancements - http://www.garagegames.com/community/forums/viewthread/136157

[8bitprodigy]

Why isn't Bullet the stock physics engine anyway? It has most if not all the modern features you'd want in a physics engine, and it's open source, so unlike PhysX, it's source could be distributed with the engine.

[chriscalef]

I'm still focusing on physx because (absent any rigorous testing, mind you) I'm still under the impression that it has a lot more features and better performance than bullet. I'd be more than willing to stand corrected though - maybe somebody with some time on their hands should do some heavy benchmarking in Torque and see if there's a clear winner, performance-wise.

Re: features, I know very little about where bullet is at these days, but I'd sure love to see a comprehensive comparison.

[Johxz]

FYI

Benchmark: Bullet - PhysX2 - PhysX3

https://www.garagegames.com/community/forums/viewthread/136369

[chriscalef]

Ah, I missed that, thank you Johxz.

Does that answers your question, 8bitprodigy?

It is awfully nice having the fully open source option out there though.

[8bitprodigy]

But how does that compare to stock torque physics?

[chriscalef]

Stock Torque physics is a whole different animal, which I would barely even classify as a physics engine, personally - it does implement gravity, in the sense of making things fall down, but it doesn't really model friction and collisions and inertia in a realistic way at all compared to either of the actual physics engines, and it doesn't have any way to do joints at all, as far as I know.

On the flip side, it networks automatically with client side prediction, etc, which can be a big headache with bullet or physx. I'm not sure how big of a headache at this point because I haven't really messed with multiplayer physics objects, I'm always doing clientside physics.