Jolt Physics Integration
Jolt Physics is an open source physics engine. It computes the physical interactions between objects using rigid body dynamics.
Physics engines are a vital part in most 3D games, to make objects collide and interact with each other convincingly. An important feature are also raycasts and shape queries which are used to detect objects and analyze the state of the world.
Enable Jolt Support
Support for Jolt is enabled by default on all platforms. It can be disabled in the CMake config.
Working with Jolt
The most important Jolt functionality is exposed through components, as well as through TypeScript.
When you write custom C++ code, you can access the most important functionality, like raycasts and shape queries, through the abstract plPhysicsWorldModuleInterface, which is implementation independent. If you need to access Jolt features that are not exposed in Plasma, you can cast that interface to plJoltWorldModule and directly work with the JPH::PhysicsSystem. For Jolt details, refer to its documentation.
Feature Overview
You use components to tell Jolt which objects should be considered for its simulation, and how. In Jolt, objects participating in the simulation are called bodies but in Plasma they are usually referred to as actors.
How to set up actors is described here. Reading up on actors is the best starting point.
Actors are made up of shapes, such as spheres, boxes, capsules and meshes. Shapes are described here.
Actors can be physically linked, to constrain their movement. This is how you would set up a door hinge for example. Linking two actors is accomplished using constraints.
To make a player or NPC walk through a physically simulated scene, you need something that computes how the character collides with walls, climbs stairs, slides down slopes, and so on. This functionality is provided by a so called character controller.
Often games have invisible areas that either need to be reached as a goal, or that activate something. Such areas are called triggers.
Several non-Jolt components either use the available physics engine, or even expose new functionality. For example the raycast placement component does a raycast (using the abstract physics interface) and exposes the hit position to the user by moving a linked object there. The area damage component does a shape query and both damages and pushes the found physical objects.
See Also
Jolt Actors