Many of you are no stranger to Newton Game Dynamics. For those that are however, it is an integrated, real time physics engine. The API provides scene management, collision detection, dynamic behavior and is said to be small, fast, stable and easy to use.


Lastest Changes in 1.31:
<ul>[*]Added full support for custom joints. These joints allow the application to have more control over joint functionality than the fixed set provided by the engine.[*]A complete library of user defined joints. You can use this library as templates to implement different flavors of joints.[*]Enhancement of the Coulomb kinetic friction. Now the Coulomb kinetic friction is isometric by default.[*]Supports for two different friction models: the exact in which friction calculations are performed in every time step (this is the default,) and the adaptive which provides up to a 10% speed up in contact calculation depending on the number of contacts. This last model is good for simulations where the number of resting contacts is sustained a lot longer than one simulation frame, but it behaves as a frictionless engine in simulations dominated by impulsive collisions.[*]Accuracy vs. speed solver configuration. Now the solver can be configured by the application using three different modes: exact, adaptive and linear. The exact mode is good for application where precision is more important than speed (this is the default.) In the adaptive mode the solver is not as precise but the simulation will still maintain a high degree of accuracy. This mode is good for applications were a good degree of stability is important but not as important as speed. In linear mode the application tells Newton the maximum number of passes to execute and it will terminate regardless of the constraint row acceleration error at the end of these passes.[/list]

The following things were mentioned to look forward to in future releases:
<ul>[*]Porting to other platforms[*]Animation system with motion adaptation[*]Reduced coordinate system joint container[/list]

The Newton Game Dynamics site is located at www.physicsengine.com