Why I have to use a commercial physics library?

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mipmap
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Joined: Wed Jul 26, 2006 8:57 pm

Why I have to use a commercial physics library?

Post by mipmap »

I have experimented a little bit with ODE and I know the problems of the library:instability, tricky parametres to tweak, poor integrator and other related problems. Since I have not used so far any commercial physics library my question is simple and clear:
What are the advantages in using using a commercial library instead of ODE or BULLET?
Let's concentrate on havok for example.
What are the advantages? no tricky parameters? easy of use? performance? support?
Maybe support is the most important? or I'm wrong?
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Erwin Coumans
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Post by Erwin Coumans »

Havok and Ageia are optimized for several consoles and platforms, are very high quality (fixed or provide workarounds for all kind of problems that typically arise) and they have good toolchains, and professional support and customization.
Bullet has toolchain support through COLLADA, but support is limited. Still, its collision detection and other features are mote state-of-the-art then ODE, which has better constraint support at the moment.

Havok has a fat manual (with years of experience) with tips how to improve your simulation (both quality and performance) and great support. Havok is a great library if you can afford it, its GPU acceleration, quality and continuous collision detection is amazing.
Maybe support is the most important? or I'm wrong?
You are right, support is important, but ODE has good support through the mailing list. I'm optimizing Bullet for CELL architecture, but it will not be as fast as Havok.
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