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Box3D, an open source 3D physics engine

box2d.org

81–90 of 135 posts

Re: Box3D, an open source 3D physics engine

#81
post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There weren't many free and open source 3D physics engines to begin with. The ancient forefathers are ODE, Bullet and Newton Dynamics (all first released in the early 2000s), then nothing(?) for nearly two decades until Jolt in 2021 and now Box3D. Any addition to this small and exclusive list is very welcome :)

Full List Of Open Source Physics Engines: https://www.tapirgames.com/blog/open-source-physics-engines

fyi "Bevy XPBD" got renamed to Avian Physics (it is not xpbd based anymore) https://github.com/avianphysics/avian/issues/346

Re: Box3D, an open source 3D physics engine

#82
post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well there's this little pesky thing in the MIT license: The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software. That's what he was asking for, a mention in the credits.

He got his name in the credits. The question was if he is owed anything else. The contract he created says he was not. I’m simply suggesting he might need a different contract.

Only if he wants to force something different. Which it seems he does not.

Re: Box3D, an open source 3D physics engine

#83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find this whole conversation baffling. Licenses and contracts are not a replacement for being a decent person.

Sure, but contracts is the remedy society has developed to the problem that there are lots of indecent people around (not to mention that reasonable persons can disagree without being unreasonable).

Only if you can afford to sue

Re: Box3D, an open source 3D physics engine

#84
> Chaos spinning rifle physics

Well - simply see it as a feature. A horror game where poltergeists infiltrate objects. Stephen King even wrote some book about that, and that got a B movie too.

Also shame on the Unreal engine to have such huge bugs and nobody fixing it. Still, I like the idea of horror movies more. Finally poltergeist makes a come back - it was a really scary movie when I was young.

Re: Box3D, an open source 3D physics engine

#85

Oh I'm so ready for this.. I've had some success with Box2D in the past, it's well and truly one of the top bits of F/OSS out there. Box3D-based Spectre VR? It's so happening. (Shades of Tanarus ..) EDIT: holy smokes, the transition to recording and playback in the Legend of California demo (Unreal Engine-based) is quite a jarring leap. If you at first get the impression things are quite basic, be sure to get into at…

I think of Tanarus all the time, I rarely see anybody mention it.

Re: Box3D, an open source 3D physics engine

#86
post #26
post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you tried the latest Box2D (it started as the experimental Box2c)? It’s pretty good afaict. It may not be what you want specifically in your 2D game, as often people prefer more arcade-like mechanics than the physics it tries to deliver.

I have been using an in-house/handrolled physics engine for the last few years so not sure if something has changed, but being able to modify the physics engine for arcade or other non-realistic style games was a big let down over time as well. Basically optimizing your game for feel was quite hard with Box2D in general. For a long time there wasn't deformers in Box2D (not sure if it's in there now), I hacked by own…

ok, so you haven’t tried box2c, there are some posts about it in the blog

https://box2d.org/posts/2025/04/box2d-3.1/

It became the current box2d implementation, now after version 3.0, it was entirely rewritten in C, it works differently.

Re: Box3D, an open source 3D physics engine

#87
post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well there's this little pesky thing in the MIT license: The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software. That's what he was asking for, a mention in the credits.

He got his name in the credits. The question was if he is owed anything else. The contract he created says he was not. I’m simply suggesting he might need a different contract.

I bet if you caught a homerun ball in a baseball game, you wouldn't give it to the kid next to you because "I don't owe the kid anything".

Re: Box3D, an open source 3D physics engine

#88
post #86
post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have been using an in-house/handrolled physics engine for the last few years so not sure if something has changed, but being able to modify the physics engine for arcade or other non-realistic style games was a big let down over time as well. Basically optimizing your game for feel was quite hard with Box2D in general. For a long time there wasn't deformers in Box2D (not sure if it's in there now), I hacked by own…

ok, so you haven’t tried box2c, there are some posts about it in the blog https://box2d.org/posts/2025/04/box2d-3.1/ It became the current box2d implementation, now after version 3.0, it was entirely rewritten in C, it works differently.

I just fired it up, couldn't find anything related to soft body or deformers, neither does there seem to be anything regarding common issues around 2d platformer features character mover is sort of moving in that direction does seem to provide better controls over how I would setup slide/jump and stuff, but still seems like not a great choice for a 2d game that I would like to build.

The biggest issue with overly generalized 2d physics systems is ideally they should be built as patch works and provide escape hatches as the default, since in most 2d games you don't want real world physics.

Angry birds and early 2010 games were an exception when real world esque physics was the well interesting thing. Example Angry Birds, and Cut The Rope.

The above blog even seems to suggest that soft constraints were added recently which is well surprising.

I just feel like Box2D is very lacking albeit less now.

Let me give you an example imagine you want box2d to allow applying weird forces to player most of the time, but you also don't want to allow the player to clip through at certain movements and speeds to avoid weird cases where your character hits a wall and loses all momentum because that's how the physics should work, or it forces some rotational momentum which you have disabled...

Again in a lot of these character controllers you always end up with custom physics setups either way, and this is where I feel like box2d was especially lacking they seem to have worked on it with character mover, but it seems just very late.

Again I have used a lot of it in the past for making shitty flash style games, and it has been great but I honestly don't think there is a great use for it as it stands today in the projects I like to work on.

Ofc it's also largely because I find writing my own physics engine to be easier than picking up a library, and I would probably copy some of the code verbatim if needed for collision optimizations and stuff, but Box2D just feels a tad behind the times.

Again I am not a big time dev, and I am certain since Godot ships Box2D there must be a lot of users of it, but I just don't care enough at this point.

Re: Box3D, an open source 3D physics engine

#89
post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He got his name in the credits. The question was if he is owed anything else. The contract he created says he was not. I’m simply suggesting he might need a different contract.

I bet if you caught a homerun ball in a baseball game, you wouldn't give it to the kid next to you because "I don't owe the kid anything".

[deleted]

Re: Box3D, an open source 3D physics engine

#90
post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well there's this little pesky thing in the MIT license: The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software. That's what he was asking for, a mention in the credits.

He got his name in the credits. The question was if he is owed anything else. The contract he created says he was not. I’m simply suggesting he might need a different contract.

If the comment above is correct, he was only added to the credits after he had to ask for it after the fact.

So the ONLY thing the license asked for is to be named and that was supposedly violated. So a multi million dollar company can just violate a generous license and then after a fact cling to this exact license while arguing to not pay a single cent more than the license asked for. Alright...

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