Game Development Reference
In-Depth Information
•
Usability
: The API can be confusing at times and the autogenerated
documentation isn't of much help.
•
Overall
: If you are looking for a fully featured physics library, then
Ammo.js will get the job done. It takes some time to become familiar with
the parts of the library, but you can quickly develop complex scenes with
rich interactions.
Box2dweb
Box2dweb is a port of the famous 2D physics engine Box2D. Box2D is originally
written in C++. As the name suggests, you can only play with it in two dimensions.
It has the most powerful constraint system and exists as
joints
classes. It has
easy-to-configure options for complete scenes and individual objects.
The overview of Box2dweb is as follows:
•
Performance
: Box2dweb is very fast unless it is configured incorrectly or
the graphics is heavy. The computations involved in a 2D engine are less
compared to a 3D engine.
•
Features
: Box2D was not meant to do 3D. If you only need two dimensions,
this library should have everything you need.
•
Browser support
: Chrome, FireFox, IE9, Safari, and Opera.
JigLibJS
JigLibJS is a port of the powerful physics library, JigLib (
https://github.com/
supereggbert/JigLibJS
), and it was written originally in C++. The port is
completely handwritten in JavaScript and is very well optimized to run in a browser.
However, JigLibJS is not as feature-rich as Ammo.js or Box2Dweb. It offers three
types of basic constraints:
•
Point
: This constraint helps in joining two objects.
•
WordPoint
: This constraint explains that an object is fixed to a position in
the world.
•
MaxDistance
: This constraint limits the distance between two rigid bodies.
The other libraries offer very powerful constraint systems.
