Thank you for your question I've always been curious about physics simulation.

Have never integrated a physics engine myself, but it seems to require some pretty solid understanding of the specific math behind it an many floating point precision issues.

From what I have gathered over the years from various discussions is that ODE is a bit easier to integrate initially, but bullet works better once you have it running.

If you just want ragdolls, a full physics simulation is overkill by the way. The Sauerbraten game includes a simplified ragdoll simulation code that works great and is very fast.

Hi Julius,
Thanks for your reply, I'll take a look at the Sauerbraten code, I hadn't realised that there were any open-source games with rag-dolls yet.

I'll explore ODE a bit more too, I am interested in the full physics.
Or I might write my own code from scratch, I found a good book
"Game Physics Engine Development How to Build a Robust Commercial-grade Physics Engine for Your Game"

by

Ian Millington

that includes a bare source code to build upon.

I'll update if I make any serious progress!

Thanks again,

Nat