LE3 Physics

[fumanshoo]

Hey, so last time I asked this, I think the reply was something along the lines of "we are not sure yet" but it seems that LE3 is only a few months away from it's official release. Do we know what physics engine we are using? If so, what does it support and on a scale of 1-awesome how good is it? Also, does it support soft body physics? ( I know I asked the soft body question before, but I really want to see how Leadwerks looks with it despite it's effect on performance ).

 

OH! Forgot to ask... how will we select specific verts to have soft body effects. Like lets say we have a skirt or something and it has to be held up by the waist. How would we keep the waist static and the rest cloth?

[Josh]

Hey, so last time I asked this, I think the reply was something along the lines of "we are not sure yet" but it seems that LE3 is only a few months away from it's official release.

Less than that.

 

Do we know what physics engine we are using? If so, what does it support and on a scale of 1-awesome how good is it? Also, does it support soft body physics? ( I know I asked the soft body question before, but I really want to see how Leadwerks looks with it despite it's effect on performance ).

Shortly after I started this project, Newton 3.0 went open-source. I decided we are only going to rely on open-source libraries so I don't have to pass on any licensing problems or limit where we can put the engine. So the only real choice was between Newton and Bullet. I already know Newton, and thought it was best to try to build and improve on that, instead of throwing everything out and starting again.

 

LE2 used Newton 2, Leadwerks 3 is using Newton 3. Both the library and my implementation are better now. Scaled bodies are supported. Soft bodies are supported by Newton 3, but I have not implemented them yet, because they are lower-priority.

 

It's a rather technical detail, but my implementation of Newton is really nice, the way it's threaded. The physics simulator is constantly one step ahead of the game, and runs in the background on a separate thread, which then splits into four or more threads, depending on the number of cores available. For some reason, more threads is actually faster, even when you exceed the number of CPU cores. The game loop and the physics simulator just meet to exchange data, and then it goes back into the background. So basically the physics update time has been completely removed from your game loop.

 

OH! Forgot to ask... how will we select specific verts to have soft body effects. Like lets say we have a skirt or something and it has to be held up by the waist. How would we keep the waist static and the rest cloth?

I won't really know until I write the implementation.

[fumanshoo]

Thank you very much for the response. That sounds very interesting, especially the threading part even though it is beyond my level of understanding. I also really like the scaled bodies part. I really hate going in and out of programs to scale objects. Unfortunately I won't be the first to purchase LE3 because I have to finish building my computer first, which by-the-way looks bad *** and I only need a few more parts. Thank god I took your advice a while back. I saved a good $200 and my computer is a chunk of godliness.

[BES]

The new physics and the new editor are what interest me most about LE3 ... really hope the updated OpenGL 4 version(high-end renderer) for it isn't too far behind..

[Josh]

What about the physics, in particular? Just the scaling?

[YouGroove]

I won't need incredible physic but basic ones and character capsule.

I put lot more hopes on workflow for LE3 !

[CGMan]

I totally forgot about soft bodies... but this is a good way to create deformable cars(!!) or similar things

Maybe I missed this, but will the mesh-to-primitives-technique work with animated objects?

[gamecreator]

I still have my fingers crossed for 2D platformer physics support but I've also been learning Box2D and its tweaks, just in case.

[DigitalHax]

A lot of modern games seem to be not too serious on physics . And unless you are making a heavily physics based game you really won't be relying on it too much. Take modern warfare for example. Most of that is just clever animations combined with simple physics used for props. And most props in that anyway are just objects that when interacted with will have physics until it becomes still again and then go back to being static objects that you don't collide with anyway.

[Canardia]

Those kind of games are also quite boring and you finish them in 8 hours and rarely play again, maybe once a year. A physics rich game would bring much more variety to the game, and let the game be played over and over again with different styles.

[Josh]

I still have my fingers crossed for 2D platformer physics support but I've also been learning Box2D and its tweaks, just in case.

I don't think that will be in immediately, because it requires something clever to constrain rotations, but I think it's a good idea and I want to implement it.