Godot Jolt

Godot Jolt is a native extension for the Godot game engine that allows you to use the Jolt
physics engine to power Godot's 3D physics.

It functions as a drop-in replacement for Godot Physics, by implementing the same nodes that you
would use normally, like RigidBody3D or CharacterBody3D.

Table of Contents

• What features are there?
• What about determinism?
• What's not supported?
• What else is different?
• What versions of Godot are supported?
• What platforms are supported?
• How do I get started?
• What settings are there?
• How do I build from source?
• What's the license?

What features are there?

Better performance, mainly, but also generally having a more stable simulation compared to Godot
Physics.

There are also (completely optional) substitute nodes available for all the joints, which line up
better with the interface that Jolt offers than what the default joints do. This allows for things
like breakable joints, soft limits and the ability to override solver iterations per-joint.

What about determinism?

While Jolt itself offers deterministic simulations, Godot Jolt is not able to make such guarantees.
Simulations in Godot Jolt may look deterministic, and may even happen to be deterministic, but this
should not be relied upon if determinism is a hard requirement.

What's not supported?

• The physics server is not thread-safe
• Memory usage is not reflected in Godot's performance monitors
• SoftBody3D does not support any interactions with Area3D

What else is different?

• Scale is actually used for all bodies, shapes and shape queries, except for SoftBody3D
• Area3D detecting static bodies is opt-in, at a potentially heavy performance/memory cost
• Joints only support soft limits through their substitutes (JoltHingeJoint3D, etc.)
• Springs and linear motors are actually implemented in Generic6DOFJoint3D
• Single-body joints will make node_a be the "world node" rather than node_b
• Ray-casts returning face_index is opt-in, at a potentially heavy memory cost
• Shape-casts should be more accurate, but their cost also scale with the cast distance
• Shape margins are used, but are treated as an upper bound and scale with the shape's extents
• Manipulating a body's shape(s) after it has entered a scene tree can be costly
• Contact impulses are estimations and won't be accurate when colliding with multiple bodies
• Contact reporting for kinematic bodies is partially opt-in, at a potentially heavy
  performance/memory cost
• ConvexPolygonShape3D uses a more accurate center-of-mass and inertia

Also consider this note from Jolt's documentation:

In order for the simulation to be accurate, dynamic objects should be in the order of 0.1 to 10 m
long, have speeds in the order of 0 to 500 m/s and have gravity in the order of 0 to 10 m/s^2.
Static object should be in the order of 0.1 to 2000 m long.

What versions of Godot are supported?

Currently the only supported versions of Godot are 4.3 and 4.4.

What platforms are supported?

• Windows (x86-64, x86)
• Linux (x86-64, x86)
• macOS (x86-64 + Apple Silicon)
• iOS
• Android (ARM64, ARM32, x86-64, x86)

Note that Linux support is limited to glibc 2.35 or newer, which for Ubuntu means 22.04 (Jammy
Jellyfish) or newer.

How do I get started?

1. Download it from GitHub or from Godot Asset Library
2. Extract the files to your project directory
3. Start (or restart) Godot
4. Open your project settings
5. Make sure "Advanced Settings" is enabled
6. Go to "Physics" and then "3D"
7. Change "Physics Engine" to "Jolt Physics (Extension)"
8. Restart Godot

What settings are there?

See docs/settings.md for information about the project settings available in Godot Jolt.

How do I build from source?

See docs/building.md for information about how to build Godot Jolt from source.

What's the license?

Godot Jolt is distributed under the MIT license. See LICENSE.txt for more details and
THIRDPARTY.txt for third-party licenses.