[croquet] "Tokamak Physics Engine is now Open Source"

> Tokamak Physics Engine is now Open Source
> http://www.gamedev.net/community/forums/topic.asp?topic_id=448578
>
>
> The Tokamak Physics Engine is now Open Source. Tokamak is a full feature
> physics library designed for use in games.
>
> It can be use for creating ragdolls and large amount of stacking
> objects. It also contain collision detection functions. Tokamak is
> written by David Lam and it is now Open Source.

> I'm not sure...
>
> But if that's what you need, maybe we should look at
> AGEIA's PhysX  http://www.ageia.com/developers/api.html
> since it's "Designed from the ground up for massively parallel  
> hardware"
> It's not Open Source, but I think it's free to develop on if you sign
> up. The application can then leverage the hardware containing their
> accelerated physics processors.
>
> http://www.gamedev.net/community/forums/viewreply.asp?ID=2969362
> "I've never used Tokamak myself, but I imagine it going open-source is
> probably because it couldn't compete with the PhysX SDK after it
> became free for commercial use on PC."

> ...I'm not in a position where I can install a PhysX accelerator  
> card.  Nor do I think that the person who made the quote is  
> anything other than a shill for AGEIA ("I don't know what I'm  
> talking about, but I've heard so much about PhysX that I forget  
> that there's still the requirement to have the hardware installed  
> before it can be used.").
>
> There's a lot of good reasons to have software-based physics  
> computations -- including "ability to reproduce calculations" in  
> the situations where you have 2 people in an island with PhysX and  
> 7 people without.  While I understand that Croquet is supposed to  
> be designed around the lack of boundaries that have existed in our  
> computer power over the past three decades, imposing an additional  
> (non-standard) hardware requirement is only going to reduce the  
> pool of developers and eventual adoptors.
>
> -Kyle H
>
> On Jun 1, 2007, at 10:52 AM, Darius Clarke wrote:
>
>> I'm not sure...
>>
>> But if that's what you need, maybe we should look at
>> AGEIA's PhysX  http://www.ageia.com/developers/api.html
>> since it's "Designed from the ground up for massively parallel  
>> hardware"
>> It's not Open Source, but I think it's free to develop on if you sign
>> up. The application can then leverage the hardware containing their
>> accelerated physics processors.
>>
>> http://www.gamedev.net/community/forums/viewreply.asp?ID=2969362
>> "I've never used Tokamak myself, but I imagine it going open-
>> source is
>> probably because it couldn't compete with the PhysX SDK after it
>> became free for commercial use on PC."
>

> *Barely* on topic now...
>
> Valve regularly conducts surveys of the hardware configurations of
> people playing their games (I don't know if the survey is manual, or
> if they automatically collect stats).  I found it interesting:
>
> http://www.steampowered.com/status/survey.html
>
> I had expected the average hardware to be a bit higher-end (these are
> gamers, after all).  There is no specific data collected for PhysX
> cards, but chances are that if your GPU is a $90 GeForce 6600 (the
> most popular card in the survey), you're not spending $150 for PhysX.  
> From my own experience, I would say that the average computer running
> Croquet is even more modest.
>
> This  branch of the topic started with the notion that PhysX might be
> a good match for Croquet due to the ability to replicate computations
> identically.  I agree with Kyle's point, and in addition, I am
> skeptical about PhysX's ability to produce the same results on
> multiple machines that are quite possible running different versions
> of the drivers (wow, back on topic after all!).  I am curious in
> seeing an analysis of how Tokamak compares with ODE with respect to
> determinism, both out-of-the-box, and in terms of how difficult it
> would be to modify one or the other to meet Croquet's requirements.
>
> Josh
>
>
> On Jun 3, 2007, at 7:19 PM, Kyle Hamilton wrote:
>
>> ...I'm not in a position where I can install a PhysX accelerator
>> card.  Nor do I think that the person who made the quote is anything
>> other than a shill for AGEIA ("I don't know what I'm talking about,
>> but I've heard so much about PhysX that I forget that there's still
>> the requirement to have the hardware installed before it can be used.").
>>
>> There's a lot of good reasons to have software-based physics
>> computations -- including "ability to reproduce calculations" in the
>> situations where you have 2 people in an island with PhysX and 7
>> people without.  While I understand that Croquet is supposed to be
>> designed around the lack of boundaries that have existed in our
>> computer power over the past three decades, imposing an additional
>> (non-standard) hardware requirement is only going to reduce the pool
>> of developers and eventual adoptors.
>>
>> -Kyle H
>>
>> On Jun 1, 2007, at 10:52 AM, Darius Clarke wrote:
>>
>>> I'm not sure...
>>>
>>> But if that's what you need, maybe we should look at
>>> AGEIA's PhysX  http://www.ageia.com/developers/api.html
>>> since it's "Designed from the ground up for massively parallel
>>> hardware"
>>> It's not Open Source, but I think it's free to develop on if you sign
>>> up. The application can then leverage the hardware containing their
>>> accelerated physics processors.
>>>
>>> http://www.gamedev.net/community/forums/viewreply.asp?ID=2969362
>>> "I've never used Tokamak myself, but I imagine it going open-source is
>>> probably because it couldn't compete with the PhysX SDK after it
>>> became free for commercial use on PC."
>>
>
>