ODE x Tokamak for a racing game

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T1k0
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ODE x Tokamak for a racing game

Post by T1k0 »

Hello, I'm developing a battle racing game with my team, but we don't know what physics engine to use yet.

I know both are very good, but I'd like some opinios about the better one for this type of game.

Thanks,
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sevensevens
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Post by sevensevens »

Monster did a race car demo for OgreODE (http://www.ogre3d.org/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=7846). Take a look at that and see what you think.

(BTW, next time use the search feature in the forum)
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Post by walaber »

just my 2 cents, but you can't go wrong with Newton in my opinion :P

obviously you can see a demo of newton car physics in my Stunt Playground game (thread in the Showcase forum)
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Post by monster »

The TrueAxis (http://www.trueaxis.com/) demos come with a pretty cool multi-vehicle racing demo.

IMHO? In no particular order; ODE, TrueAxis or Newton will all work perfectly fine. Never used Tokamak though so I can't really comment on that. If you're not planning on selling your game then take a look at Novodex too.

Download them all, take a look at the demos and APIs and see which one you prefer.
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Post by Jovani »

The consensus in the community is that ODE is the superior engine followed by TrueAxis and lagging far behind Newton.
The truth is that no one has ever listed the features of these engines side by side. Only speed test has been made. No stability, no reliability, no features set, etc.
There is a great resentment in the community toward anything that is not ODE or Novadex, in particular toward Newton. IMHO Newton is a superb engine far superior to ODE, Tokamak, TrueAxis feature wise.
Believe me simulations are much more realistic than you can get on any of the very expensive commercial engines, and I am not talking game engines only.
My company licensed CMLab and I introduce Newton which I used in my own stuff, and we had been making comparison. I can tell you Newton is far superior.
My bosses can not use it because it does not have open source license, but with Newton things just works the way they are suppose to in a simulation. Not so with the others.
The major complain about Newton is its speed, but as Walaber: http://walaber.com/ has proven:
If you are using a physics engine to accomplish something not just to stack boxes and be wow by the speed, I recommend you do more than just a speed test, because down the road instability is something that will cost you al lot more than speed.
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Post by monster »

The consensus in the community is that ODE is the superior engine followed by TrueAxis and lagging far behind Newton.
That's not the impression I get and I've certainly never seen anyone claim that TrueAxis is "better" than Newton, or that Newton is lagging far behind anything.

Depending on what you want to do I think that currently the only two sensible (completely free) choices are Newton or ODE. There are pros and cons to each of these and depending on exactly what you want to do will determine which one you choose.

As I said to the OP; look at the demos available for each engine and make your choice based on what exactly you want to do.

Do not let this descend into a "physics engine A" is better than "physics engine B" argument or I'll start abusing my MVP rights and deleting posts!
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Post by T1k0 »

I think I'm going to use ODE. Becouse I need it to be cross-platform.

I know Newton is walking on this, but ODE is more stable in Linux, so it's the best choice for me.

Thanks for all the answers.

T1k0.
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Post by Jovani »

Tiko:
Fair enough you have a good reason to make your choice, portability is alway good reason, but let me rebottle Monster reply for a moment, because he is thinking I got that from my own imagination, but I did not I got it from the Instruction on the Assembling ToolSet. This is what it says:
If anyone knows enough about these engines to compare them, please do so!
• Ode (http://ode.org/): Windows, Mac, *nix ; Free under LGPL. The Open Dynamics Engine (ODE) is by far the most popular tool for programming physics with Ogre. ODE can be used via the OgreODE addon. Some screenshots and AVI's involving OgreODE can be seen in this thread (http://www.ogre3d.org/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=7846).
• NovodeX (http://www.novodex.com): Windows, Mac, *nix; Windows version free for non-commercial use. This SDK has been widely used, including in the Unreal Engine. It has been used in at least one Ogre project (http://www.primedgames.com).
• Newton Game Dynamics (http://www.newtondynamics.com): Windows; Free with minimal restrictions. This has been used in at least one Ogre project.
• True Axis Physics SDK (http://www.trueaxis.com/): The True Axis Physics SDK is a fast and solid real world physics simulation system designed for demanding games and virtual interactive environments. The SDK is designed from a games developer's perspective. It aims to avoid common issues present in most physics and collision implementations. It aims to give developers the control they need over the way objects behave. Fast physics for games - free for non-commercial use.
First of all, the first line calls for anyone to make comparison. Secondly anybody reading theses descriptions when they come to Ogre3d, they will arrive to the same conclusion I did.

The statement about Newton is totally bias and inaccurate.
While the accomplishments of the other engines are highlighted nothing is said about Newton. Furthermore it is portrayed as a limited platform engine by just mention the windows platform while the other are listed in full.

I am sorry if I offended you but have I had not prior experience with a least two of those engines, this is the impression I would have gotten. And I think this is the impression most new comers get from the descriptions.

BTW Tokamak which another free engine and the subject of the question is not even listed. And yet is is part of the OgreeTools
Last edited by Jovani on Mon May 16, 2005 7:24 pm, edited 4 times in total.
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Post by jacmoe »

Tokamak died some time ago.
It only recently rose from the grave.

If you think the descriptions should be remedied, then feel free to do so! :)

That's what the wiki is for. :wink:
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Post by Trogdor »

Actually, Newton has already been ported to Linux, but it's still not on the website. You can download it from this link. TrueAxis is also working on a linux port, but it will take them a while: the author is in the process of choosing a Linux distro to install.

I haven't actually tried to compile anything with the Newton library yet, so I don't know if it works or not :o
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Post by jacmoe »

Did you update the wiki yet? :)
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geometry loader

Post by darkdave »

which of the physics engines have a loader for graphics file such as 3ds so that the collision detection geometries are worked out automatically based on the 3ds file geometry of the graphics?

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Post by monster »

None of them AFAIK.

Primarily because the "automatic" geometry you want created is highly dependent on your application. Do you just want a AA bounding box? An OBB? a capsule? A ragdoll? A triangle mesh? Etc, etc, etc.

The OgreOde wrapper contains utility functionality to help you do various things like that based on Entities, but it won't do anything with a 3ds file directly.
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Post by Falagard »

There are pros and cons to each of these and depending on exactly what you want to do will determine which one you choose.
It's information about the pros and cons that I'm interested in actually. Just reading over the features of each physics engine are interesting, but they're just marketing spiel. I'd like to hear from someone who has used both and knows the actual pros and cons. Has this been discussed on another thread? I'm sure it has, but not a decisive list of pros and cons?
Do not let this descend into a "physics engine A" is better than "physics engine B" argument or I'll start abusing my MVP rights and deleting posts!
A flame war about the various engines obviously isn't what I want.

My experience with ODE is that I had a hard time getting the physics to feel realistic, it was always very "floaty". It is probably something I'd doing wrong, but that's my experience.

On the other hand, someone showed me a demo of a first person implementation in Newton and it just felt right. My own attempt at first person in ODE was okay, but again "floaty" and even tweaking stuff couldn't fix it to how I wanted it.

Thoughts?
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