Well, I'm not sure how feasible it is... but, when replaying my Myst V game, I noticed one of the credits referenced the ODE, the open Dynamics Engine, a physics engine, which is under the LGPL.
Now, the way I see it, we can kill two birds with one stone: if we ask Cyan to consider working on releasing their information regarding the ODE implementation in Plasma (NOT, mind you, releasing Myst V or even more of their engine. Just the libraries and calls to ODE), we might have more feasibility, legally speaking.
In addition, by getting off of PhysX, we would be able to take a far more open approach (If we get some REALLY good devs to work on the ODE library, we might be able to rival the Havok engine in performance!) and modify a greater portion of the code... without having to use a different physics engine.
But, I'm no programmer, so I'm not sure to what extent the ODE is released. Surely more than PhysX, though.
Perhaps this would also increase our own ability to implement cross-platform support, as well as add in a 64-bit client for those running the advanced OSes.
Then again... I saw the latest PhysX have a Linux client... hmm... who knows. Just a rambling thought.
|