12 January 2012, 10:53

Google ports Box2D physics engine to Dart

The DartBox2D Circle Stress demo in action Google has ported the Box2D physics engine to Dart, the company's BSD-licensed web programming language. Dominic Hamon, a member of Google's "Make the Web Faster team", says that DartBox2D is a direct port from the Java version, adding that it "opens the door to Dart becoming a language for games on the web, which, as we all know, is what the web is really for".

The open source Box2D C++ engine is used for simulating rigid bodies in two dimensions and has been used in a number of popular games, including the Fantastic Contraption physics game, Angry Birds and Tiny Wings. While the developers will continue to optimise the codebase, Hamon notes that almost all of the current online demos reach 60 frames per second (FPS); benchmark results are also provided.

Further details about DartBox2D can be found in the announcement post on the Open Source at Google blog. Source code for DartBox2D is hosted on Google Code and made available under version 2.0 of the Apache License. The developers welcome feedback via the dartbox2d-discuss Google Group or on the #dartbox2d IRC channel on FreeNode.

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