A game engine is a software framework primarily designed for the development of video games, and generally includes relevant libraries and support programs. The "engine" terminology is similar to the term "software engine" used in the software industry.
Irrlicht is an open-source game engine written in C++. It is cross-platform, officially running on Windows, macOS, Linux and Windows CE and due to its open nature ports to other systems are available, including FreeBSD, Xbox, PlayStation Portable, Symbian, iPhone, AmigaOS 4, Sailfish OS via a QT/Qml wrapper, and Google Native Client.
Havok is a middleware software suite developed by the Irish company Havok. Havok provides a physics engine component and related functions to video games.
A physics engine is computer software that provides an approximate simulation of certain physical systems, such as rigid body dynamics, soft body dynamics, and fluid dynamics, of use in the domains of computer graphics, video games and film (CGI). Their main uses are in video games, in which case the simulations are in real-time. The term is sometimes used more generally to describe any software system for simulating physical phenomena, such as high-performance scientific simulation.
COLLADA is an interchange file format for interactive 3D applications. It is managed by the nonprofit technology consortium, the Khronos Group, and has been adopted by ISO as a publicly available specification, ISO/PAS 17506.
A physics processing unit (PPU) is a dedicated microprocessor designed to handle the calculations of physics, especially in the physics engine of video games. It is an example of hardware acceleration.
The Open Dynamics Engine (ODE) is a physics engine written in C/C++. Its two main components are a rigid body dynamics simulation engine and a collision detection engine. It is free software licensed both under the BSD license and the LGPL.
PhysX is an open-source realtime physics engine middleware SDK developed by Nvidia as a part of Nvidia GameWorks software suite.
The Blender Game Engine is a discontinued component of Blender, a free and open-source 3D production suite, used for making real-time interactive content. The game engine was written from scratch in C++ as a mostly independent component, and includes support for features such as Python scripting and OpenAL 3D sound.
Computer animation physics or game physics involves the introduction of the laws of physics into a simulation or game engine, particularly in 3D computer graphics, for the purpose of making the effects appear more realistic to the observer. Typically, simulation physics is only a close approximation to actual physics, and computation is performed using discrete values. Additionally, games may intentionally deviate from actual physics for gameplay purposes; a common example is allowing the player to double jump when there is nothing to jump from, or changing the values of certain physical parameters, such as the amount of gravity present.
Bullet is a physics engine which simulates collision detection as well as soft and rigid body dynamics. It has been used in video games and for visual effects in movies. Erwin Coumans, its main author, won a Scientific and Technical Academy Award for his work on Bullet. He worked for Sony Computer Entertainment US R&D from 2003 until 2010, for AMD until 2014, and he now works for Google.
Soft-body dynamics is a field of computer graphics that focuses on visually realistic physical simulations of the motion and properties of deformable objects. The applications are mostly in video games and films. Unlike in simulation of rigid bodies, the shape of soft bodies can change, meaning that the relative distance of two points on the object is not fixed. While the relative distances of points are not fixed, the body is expected to retain its shape to some degree. The scope of soft body dynamics is quite broad, including simulation of soft organic materials such as muscle, fat, hair and vegetation, as well as other deformable materials such as clothing and fabric. Generally, these methods only provide visually plausible emulations rather than accurate scientific/engineering simulations, though there is some crossover with scientific methods, particularly in the case of finite element simulations. Several physics engines currently provide software for soft-body simulation.
The Physics Abstraction Layer (PAL) is an open-source cross-platform physical simulation API abstraction system. It is similar to a physics engine wrapper, however it is far more flexible providing extended abilities. PAL is free software, released under the BSD license.
Panda3D is a game engine that includes graphics, audio, I/O, collision detection, and other abilities relevant to the creation of 3D games. Panda3D is free software under the revised BSD license.
Box2D is a free open source 2-dimensional physics simulator engine written in C++ by Erin Catto and published under the MIT license. It has been used in Crayon Physics Deluxe, Limbo, Rolando, Incredibots, Angry Birds, Tiny Wings, Shovel Knight, Transformice, Happy Wheels, and many online Flash games, as well as iPhone, iPad and Android games using the Cocos2d or Moscrif game engine and Corona framework.
Phyz is a public domain, 2.5D physics engine with built-in editor and DirectX graphics and sound. In contrast to most other real-time physics engines, it is vertex based and stochastic. Its integrator is based on a SIMD-enabled assembly version of the Mersenne Twister random number generator, instead of traditional LCP or iterative methods, allowing simulation of large numbers of micro objects with Brownian motion and macro effects such as object resonance and deformation.
Chipmunk2D is a 2-dimensional real-time rigid body physics engine written by Scott Lembcke that is designed to be portable, lightweight, fast, and easy to use. Prior to version 7, two main versions of the library existed. Chipmunk2D Free was written purely in C99, and freely available under the terms of the MIT License. Chipmunk2D Pro was a proprietary upgrade designed for development on mobile devices. It included several high-level subroutines in Objective-C, and floating-point optimizations for the ARM processor. However, after version 7 the project was fully open-sourced.
Vortex Studio is a complete simulation software platform. It features a high-fidelity, realtime physics engine developed by CM Labs Simulations that simulates rigid body dynamics, collision detection, contact determination, and dynamic reactions. It also contains model import and preparation tools, an image generator, and networking tools for distributed simulation, accessed through a desktop editor via a GUI. Vortex adds accurate physical motion and interactions to objects in visual-simulation applications for operator training, mission planning, product concept validation, heavy machinery and robotics design and testing, haptics devices, immersive and virtual reality (VR) environments.
Away3D is an open-source platform for developing interactive 3D graphics for video games and applications, in Adobe Flash or HTML5. The platform consists of a 3D world editor, a 3D graphics engine, a 3D physics engine and a compressed 3D model file format (AWD).
CopperLicht is an open-source JavaScript library for creating games and interactive 3D applications using WebGL, developed by Ambiera. The aim of the library is to provide an API for making it easier developing 3D content for the web. It is supposed to be used together with its commercial 3D world editor CopperCube, but it can also be used without.
