A curated list of game physics engines, simulation frameworks, collision detection libraries, educational resources, research papers, and tools for physics-based game development.
Game physics powers realistic and interactive virtual worlds by simulating motion, collisions, forces, fluids, soft bodies, destruction, and other physical phenomena. Whether building arcade-style games or highly realistic simulations, game physics is a fundamental discipline in modern game development.
This list is intended for game developers, simulation engineers, graphics programmers, researchers, students, technical artists, and anyone interested in real-time physics simulation.
Support ongoing maintenance and curation via GitHub Sponsors.
- Physics Engines
- Collision Detection
- Rigid Body Simulation
- Soft Body & Cloth Simulation
- Fluid & Particle Simulation
- Game Engine Physics Systems
- Physics Programming Libraries
- Research & Academic Resources
- Learning Resources
- Communities
- Related Awesome Lists
General-purpose physics engines for games and simulations.
- Bullet Physics — Open-source real-time collision detection and physics simulation library.
- PhysX — NVIDIA's real-time physics simulation engine.
- Jolt Physics — Modern open-source rigid body physics engine.
- ODE (Open Dynamics Engine) — Open-source rigid body dynamics engine.
- Newton Dynamics — Real-time physics simulation engine.
- ReactPhysics3D — Lightweight open-source 3D physics engine.
- Project Chrono — Multi-physics simulation engine for advanced applications.
Libraries and frameworks focused on collision detection and spatial queries.
- Box2D — Widely used 2D physics and collision detection engine.
- FCL — Flexible Collision Library for proximity queries.
- libccd — Library for continuous collision detection.
- Opcode — Optimized collision detection library.
- Embree — High-performance ray tracing kernels useful for physics and collision systems.
- NanoRT — Lightweight ray tracing acceleration library.
Libraries and systems specializing in rigid body dynamics.
- Bullet Rigid Body System — Rigid body simulation and constraints.
- PhysX Rigid Bodies — High-performance rigid body physics.
- Jolt Physics — Modern rigid body simulation framework.
- MuJoCo — Physics engine designed for robotics and control simulation.
- DART — Dynamic Animation and Robotics Toolkit.
- RaiSim — Physics engine focused on robotics and simulation.
Tools and frameworks for deformable objects and cloth simulation.
- NVIDIA Flex — Unified particle-based simulation framework.
- SOFA Framework — Open-source framework for physical simulation.
- Bullet Soft Body — Soft body simulation module.
- Position Based Dynamics — Library implementing position-based simulation methods.
- ArcSim — Cloth simulation system.
- C-IPC — Collision-aware deformable simulation framework.
Frameworks and tools for fluids, particles, smoke, and related effects.
- NVIDIA Flow — Real-time fluid simulation technology.
- Mantaflow — Fluid simulation framework used in Blender.
- Taichi — High-performance simulation programming language.
- SPHinXsys — Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics simulation framework.
- DualSPHysics — Open-source particle-based fluid simulation.
- OpenFOAM — Computational fluid dynamics platform.
Physics systems built into major game engines.
- Unity Physics — Physics system integrated into Unity.
- Unity DOTS Physics — Data-oriented physics system for Unity.
- Unreal Engine Physics — Integrated physics framework for Unreal Engine.
- Chaos Physics — Unreal Engine's advanced physics system.
- Godot Physics — Integrated 2D and 3D physics engine.
- CryEngine Physics — Physics system integrated into CryEngine.
Libraries and tools useful for implementing custom physics systems.
- GLM — Mathematics library for graphics and physics programming.
- Eigen — High-performance linear algebra library.
- CGAL — Computational geometry algorithms library.
- Boost.Geometry — Geometry algorithms library.
- MathFu — Math library for games and simulations.
- TinyXML2 — Lightweight XML parser often used in simulation projects.
Research institutions, papers, and academic resources related to physics simulation.
- SIGGRAPH — Leading conference for computer graphics and simulation.
- Eurographics — European computer graphics association.
- ACM Digital Library — Research papers covering simulation and game physics.
- arXiv Computer Graphics — Open-access research papers.
- Physics-Based Animation Course Notes — Foundational simulation references.
- Interactive Computer Graphics Group — Research in simulation and animation.
Books, tutorials, courses, and educational resources.
- Game Physics Engine Development — Comprehensive book on building physics engines.
- Physics for Game Developers — Practical introduction to game physics.
- Real-Time Collision Detection — Foundational collision detection reference.
- Game Programming Patterns — Design patterns relevant to simulation systems.
- Catlike Coding Physics Tutorials — Unity-focused physics tutorials.
- LearnOpenGL — Graphics programming tutorials useful for simulation developers.
Communities and organizations supporting game physics development.
- GameDev.net — Community for game developers.
- r/gamedev — Game development community.
- Game Developer — Articles and resources for game development.
- SIGGRAPH Community — Graphics and simulation professionals.
- Godot Community — Open-source game development community.
- Unity Community — Community for Unity developers.
- Awesome Game Engines — Game engines, frameworks, tools, and resources for game development.
- Awesome Mathematics — Resources for pure, applied, and computational mathematics.
- Awesome Computational Mathematics — Tools, frameworks, and educational resources for computational mathematics.
- Awesome Robotics — Tools, frameworks, libraries, and resources for robotics.
- Awesome Computer Vision — Resources for computer vision and visual computing.
- Awesome AI — Resources, libraries, and tools for artificial intelligence.
- Awesome Game Development — Tools, frameworks, and resources for game development.
- Awesome Aerospace Engineering — Resources and tools for aerospace engineering and simulation.
- Awesome Mechanical Engineering — Resources and tools for mechanics and simulation.
- Awesome Physics — Resources for physics research and education.
Contributions are welcome. Please ensure your submission fully follows the requirements outlined in CONTRIBUTING.md, including formatting, scope alignment, and category placement.
Pull requests that do not adhere to the contribution guidelines may be closed.
