Open Dynamics Engine

Open Dynamics Engine

Developer(s)	Russell Smith
Initial release	May 8, 2001 (2001-05-08)
Stable release	0.14 / December 18, 2015 (2015-12-18)
Written in	C/C++
Operating system	Platform independent
Type	Physics engine
License	BSD
Website	http://www.ode.org/

File:ODE buggy.png

A simple vehicle driving over a ramp. This demo is distributed with the ODE source code (demo_buggy).

File:ODE crash.png

A collision with many objects. This demo is distributed with the ODE source code (demo_crash).

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.

ODE was started in 2001 and has already been used in many applications and games, such as BloodRayne 2, Call of Juarez, S.T.A.L.K.E.R, Titan Quest, World of Goo, X-Moto and OpenSimulator.

Overview

The Open Dynamics Engine is used for simulating the dynamic interactions between bodies in space. It is not tied to any particular graphics package although it includes a basic one called drawstuff. It supports several geometries: box, sphere, capsule (cylinder capped with hemispheres), triangle mesh, cylinder and heightmap.

Simulation

Higher level environments that allow non-programmers access to ODE include Player Project, Webots, Opensimulator, anyKode Marilou and V-REP.

ODE is a popular choice for robotics simulation applications, with scenarios such as mobile robot locomotion and simple grasping. ODE has some drawbacks in this field, for example the method of approximating friction and poor support for joint-damping.

See also

• OPAL – the Open Physics Abstraction Layer, originally built on top of ODE
• Physics Abstraction Layer – The original Physics Abstraction Layer
• Newton Game Dynamics
• Bullet – another open source physics engine used in commercial games and movies
• Chipmunk – a similar physics engine intended for 2D applications
• Vortex (software)

External links

• Bitbucket: ODE project page
• Open Dynamics Engine (ODE) Community Wiki
• (Old) Official ODE Homepage
• (Obsolete) Python-ODE Bindings (pyode)
• The ode4j project, a Java port of ODE