Position Based Rigid Body Simulation: A comparison of physics simulators for games

Interactive real-time rigid body simulation is a crucial tool in any modern game engine or 3D authoring tool. The quest for fast, robust and accurate simulations is ever evolving. PBRBD (Position Based Rigid Body Dynamics), a recent expansion of PBD (Position Based Dynamics), is a novel approach for this issue. This work aims at providing a comprehensible state-of-the art comparison between Position Based methods and other real-time simulation methods used for rigid body dynamics using a custom 3D physics engine for benchmarking and comparing PBRBD (Position Based Rigid Body Dynamics), and some variants, with state-of-the-art simulators commonly used in the gaming industry, PhysX and Havok. Showing that PBRBD can produce simulations that are accurate and stable, excelling at maintaining consistent energy levels, and allowing for a variety of constraints, but is limited in its handling of stable stacks of rigid bodies due to the propagation of rotational error.