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David Bolton

Bullet - 3D Open Source C++ Physics Library

By , About.com GuideNovember 17, 2007

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Bullet Physics Library

A physics library lets you develop applications with objects that interact according to the laws of physics. Things bounce off each other and behave just as they would in real life. If for instance you wanted to model a game of pool, the balls have to slow down gradually because of friction and transfer kinetic energy when they collide.

Bullet is an open source 3D physics library written in C++ and having seen some of the videos of software written using it, have no hesitation about including it in the C++ code library. The image shows a house that is disintegrating into it's component parts.

Bullet is so good that it's being used by several games companies and enthusiasts on the latest consoles (Playstation 3, Xbox 360 and Wii) and on Windows, Linux and Mac computers. There's an excellent Wiki, forum and plenty of downloads so if you're looking to experiment with 3D physics programming and maybe break into the games industry this is one way to do it.

Comments
November 7, 2009 at 3:48 am
(1) Sam :

sir,
will u tell me which is better and simple
bullet or nvidia physx or havok…………??i am in a great confusion………

November 7, 2009 at 6:15 am
(2) cplus :

That depends on what you want to do. More details are needed.

February 23, 2010 at 11:42 am
(3) srdready :

Is there any joints plug-in for Bullet, like ODE have? (DANCE for example)
I’m making a game, and I want to animate my characters. I start with ODE but to simplify I tried to install DANCE plug-in, but it doesn’t work, I can’t make the configure. So I’m looking for other dynamics open source software. And I found here Bullet. Now I’m looking for some plug-in that helps me to do the animation of my 3d characters.

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