Very easy to build, and quite small. A release build of the library is 916K (on macos at least). I have a game engine that compiles to WASM for web, and having 3D physics has been a challenge. 3D physics libraries tend to be large and hard to compile. I didn't try yet, but compiling this into a WASM library with emscripten should be easy, and it's likely small enough to be justifiable for a simple web game.
Yes! This is exciting to see. Erin Catto is such a cool hacker. Thank you, Erin, for sharing your code with the open source community.
There wasn't anything about determinism in the announcement, but I'd really love to see some more about that, too. Trying to use Unity's built-in physics to make a networked billiards game is quite troubling, when none of the clients can happily agree on what happened.
I was looking for the same thing. There is a replay mechanism, so it seems to be deterministic. But with floating point physics, not across platforms. Though -ffast-math is unsupported according to the documentation, so maybe it is intended to be deterministic across platforms? https://box2d.org/documentation3d/recording.html
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 :)
Box2D is still pretty darn good! Definitely recommended for 2D physics game projects. The C APIs for Box2D and now Box3D are just so nice to work with.
Physics simulation is a dangerous rabbit hole. Even if you focus just on rigid bodies and just physical plausibility there are plenty of open problems related to collision detection and collision resolution. Convex approximations and/or decompositions for geometry and hand tuning of solvers are the norm, balancing robustness and precision against speed.
> On the Valve side, Rubikon continues to evolve and Dirk has developed optimizations (similar to those in Box3D) in a new engine called Ragnarok. Look for that in future Valve games.
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 least 18:00 into the demo video, it gets pretty wild .. recording and playback is awesome.
Funny to see this just a few days after I’ve started building a Tron-like 3D game for the browser using Jolt[1]. So far Jolt is working pretty well but I’ll certainly be taking a look at this.
I'm a bit familiar with Rapier (and before that Cannon and Ammo) so how does it compare?
PS: FWIW made my own physics engine in 3D space just few weeks ago (and shared it here). OK ok ... it's just a 1-liner that brings an object down at regular interval but it's surprising how well it works already! I recommend you give it a go as from a learning perspective it's really fun.
I went ahead and wishlisted his legend of California game. Probably won’t use Box3D, I’m not a fan of low level programming. I will look forward to the abstraction layers above it
Some years ago, I used Box2D from Python to get a couple of bodies moving naturally in a 2D plane, lightly disturbed by random impulses (like water lilies in a pond when it's raining). It was a fun project and working with Box2D was pleasant. Looking forward to using Box3D!
I feel like Box2D, was pretty good for the time, I didn't feel like it aged quite as well, mostly because where the solutions built internally went, but hoping box3d is great for it's time as well, would love lots of fun physics engines.
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.
Glad to see the release, Box2D has some of the best code I've ever read.
It's interesting to see that Box3D was originally a fork of a physics engine made by Dirk. Dirk is one of the best presenters in GDC, and so influential in Physics Engine space, nice to see how he's continuing to push the latest and greatest forward.
I first heard of Box3D when s&box loudly ripped out the Source 2 physics engine in favor of it (along with ripping out all cross-platform rendering code, etc). Nice to see it really is open-source now.
Oh, nice! What a wonderful surprise!
Very easy to build, and quite small. A release build of the library is 916K (on macos at least). I have a game engine that compiles to WASM for web, and having 3D physics has been a challenge. 3D physics libraries tend to be large and hard to compile. I didn't try yet, but compiling this into a WASM library with emscripten should be easy, and it's likely small enough to be justifiable for a simple web game.
Yes! This is exciting to see. Erin Catto is such a cool hacker. Thank you, Erin, for sharing your code with the open source community.
There wasn't anything about determinism in the announcement, but I'd really love to see some more about that, too. Trying to use Unity's built-in physics to make a networked billiards game is quite troubling, when none of the clients can happily agree on what happened.
I was looking for the same thing. There is a replay mechanism, so it seems to be deterministic. But with floating point physics, not across platforms. Though -ffast-math is unsupported according to the documentation, so maybe it is intended to be deterministic across platforms? https://box2d.org/documentation3d/recording.html
EDIT: Clarified meaning about ffast-math
Box2D was a foundation for a lot of interesting physics oriented indie games in my day.
I wonder if the landscape is empty enough for a resurgence.
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 :)
Box2D is still pretty darn good! Definitely recommended for 2D physics game projects. The C APIs for Box2D and now Box3D are just so nice to work with.
i remember being hooked on Incredibots back when that was still a thing! that was how I heard about Box2D way back.
I used Chipmunk2D a little back in the day, found it easier to use for whatever arcane thing I was doing.
Physics simulation is a dangerous rabbit hole. Even if you focus just on rigid bodies and just physical plausibility there are plenty of open problems related to collision detection and collision resolution. Convex approximations and/or decompositions for geometry and hand tuning of solvers are the norm, balancing robustness and precision against speed.
I remember reading about it in S&Box's (Source-2-based game engine) blog a while back - glad to see it released out to the public!
> On the Valve side, Rubikon continues to evolve and Dirk has developed optimizations (similar to those in Box3D) in a new engine called Ragnarok. Look for that in future Valve games.
wait....
Don't get your hopes up, it'll be used in deadlock's volleyball game mode
Valve is working on a game codenamed HLX that apparently uses a ton of physics features. No idea what "HLX" means though.
Day of Defeat Source 2.1 just a week away!
Halflife 2D confirmed?
Valve
Box3D
3D
3
Hope!
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 least 18:00 into the demo video, it gets pretty wild .. recording and playback is awesome.
I do wonder how it compares against Jolt. Both seem to have a good pedigree, one from Valve and Eric Catto, and another used in Horizon games.
Funny to see this just a few days after I’ve started building a Tron-like 3D game for the browser using Jolt[1]. So far Jolt is working pretty well but I’ll certainly be taking a look at this.
1 - I’ve been sitting on this domain for years: https://lightcycles.io
About Jolt, do you mean https://github.com/jrouwe/JoltPhysics ?
I'm a bit familiar with Rapier (and before that Cannon and Ammo) so how does it compare?
PS: FWIW made my own physics engine in 3D space just few weeks ago (and shared it here). OK ok ... it's just a 1-liner that brings an object down at regular interval but it's surprising how well it works already! I recommend you give it a go as from a learning perspective it's really fun.
I went ahead and wishlisted his legend of California game. Probably won’t use Box3D, I’m not a fan of low level programming. I will look forward to the abstraction layers above it
Some years ago, I used Box2D from Python to get a couple of bodies moving naturally in a 2D plane, lightly disturbed by random impulses (like water lilies in a pond when it's raining). It was a fun project and working with Box2D was pleasant. Looking forward to using Box3D!
I feel like Box2D, was pretty good for the time, I didn't feel like it aged quite as well, mostly because where the solutions built internally went, but hoping box3d is great for it's time as well, would love lots of fun physics engines.
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.
The dev got scooped up by Blizzard right? Maybe thats part of why it feels like it didn't age as well, more attention to Domino and less to Box2D.
Made look up some of my game stuff from back in the day, but the apps are not in the store (after 15 years, to be expected) oh well...
i love that we went from bullet being the only real option for open source 3D physics to jolt, rapier, avian, nvidia physx and now box3d.
Glad to see the release, Box2D has some of the best code I've ever read.
It's interesting to see that Box3D was originally a fork of a physics engine made by Dirk. Dirk is one of the best presenters in GDC, and so influential in Physics Engine space, nice to see how he's continuing to push the latest and greatest forward.
> ...native physics engine (called Chaos)...
I have to say, based on those videos, that is one accurately-named engine.
Yeah this library is great. Use it!!!
Who the fuck is so petty to downvote this. Shame on you. This is a great library and Erin deserves your support. https://github.com/erincatto/box3d
I first heard of Box3D when s&box loudly ripped out the Source 2 physics engine in favor of it (along with ripping out all cross-platform rendering code, etc). Nice to see it really is open-source now.
Box>:3Drawr