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  • Newton Game Dynamics is Now Open Source

    Should you have ever wanted to learn more about the inner workings of a fully fledged 3D physics engine, then we have some great news for you. The source code of the latest version of the Newton Game Dynamics library are now available under the ZLib license. Do note that this is a beta version.

    Newton Game Dynamics is a solid and easy-to-use physics engine featuring advanced collision detection, physics simulations, ray-casting and more. It is used a lot for indie level projects. Pascal headers for version 2.x can be found here.

    Check out www.newtondynamics.com for more information or get the source code hosted at code.google.com.
    Comments 13 Comments
    1. paul_nicholls's Avatar
      paul_nicholls -
      OMG! That is great news - open source...wow!

      Thanks for sharing!

      cheers,
      Paul
    1. Murmandamus's Avatar
      Murmandamus -
      That really is good news. Looks like a basic Attribution license, but with one weird clause in it:

      1) The LICENSEE may not use the SOFTWARE to reverse engineer the computer algorithm used by the SOFTWARE.

      I wonder if that is a leftover from their previous non-FOSS license. I mean, you don't need to reverse-engineer something that is open-source, unless some parts of it aren't open. <.<

      Still, is cool that they opened it up. I wonder how it compares with Bullet and ODE, though.
    1. Murmandamus's Avatar
      Murmandamus -
      Also, the Pascal headers are for v2.24. Not sure if that is a problem, but the end of that thread there is more bickering about using source control systems than discussion about if there is a later version of them.

      The Newton source download is at v2.32.
    1. czar's Avatar
      czar -
      I would love to see how this can be used in a simple delphi program. Are there any simple examples?
    1. Sascha Willems's Avatar
      Sascha Willems -
      Quote Originally Posted by Murmandamus View Post
      Also, the Pascal headers are for v2.24. Not sure if that is a problem, but the end of that thread there is more bickering about using source control systems than discussion about if there is a later version of them.

      The Newton source download is at v2.32.
      Nope, my headers (which you can get here) are currently covering version 2.29, dunno about Stucuk's headers thoug. The current release of NGD (compiled by Julio) is 2.31. 2.30 didn't change anything except for returning to VS 2008, and as soon as I'll get the time I'll check to see what (or if at all) changed in 2.32 and update my headers. Sadly I got only very very little spare time right now, so I'm not able to update the headers as quickly as I wanted to.

      Quote Originally Posted by czar View Post
      I would love to see how this can be used in a simple delphi program. Are there any simple examples?
      I've created some very basic examples using Newton, OpenGL and SDL to get into it with Delphi/FP. You can grab them here.
    1. azrael11's Avatar
      azrael11 -
      Sascha this is great news for a great library like NGD...

      I look at your examples soon...
      I hope you have examples using DGLOpenGL.pas header...
    1. Murmandamus's Avatar
      Murmandamus -
      Cool. I saw a mention of a 2.29 header in the thread for 2.29 beta. Wasn't sure if it was the final, though.
    1. czar's Avatar
      czar -
      Thanks for link Sascha I will see if I can get the time to check out soon
    1. Sascha Willems's Avatar
      Sascha Willems -
      Just a quick note : I've updated my headers to the most recent release of NGD, 2.32. You can grab them here : http://www.saschawillems.de/?page_id=76

      Though not much has changed. Actually only one function was added.
    1. Dan's Avatar
      Dan -
      Newton Dynamics is now open source: http://code.google.com/p/newton-dynamics/
      will anyone dare to make a full conversion to pascal? just to see if it's any faster
    1. arthurprs's Avatar
      arthurprs -
      Quote Originally Posted by Dan View Post
      Newton Dynamics is now open source: http://code.google.com/p/newton-dynamics/
      will anyone dare to make a full conversion to pascal? just to see if it's any faster
      Not a good idea, overall delphi has a poor floating point performance (compared to modern C compilers), compiler is a little dummy for that. Not sure about freepascal.
    1. WILL's Avatar
      WILL -
      I believe that FPC is supposed to be better at floating point than Delphi not 100% sure though. Just something that I remember Florian telling me a while ago.
    1. Murmandamus's Avatar
      Murmandamus -
      Yeah, I don't think there would be a significant performance difference between Delphi/FP and C/C++ in terms of physics. The compilers all use pretty much the latest optimizations available.