VirtEnv

See eve Emergent Virtual Engine for work in progress.

Physics Engine

In C++ emergent we used ODE, but often encountered instability and likely there are better options. Then the question is how to interface with Go..

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physics_engine
Bullet is widely used: https://github.com/bulletphysics/bullet3 -- http://www.bulletphysics.org/
- has python bindings, main author works for google now, used in RL / google brain projects
- version 3.0 is vaporware and incremental updates are made in 2.8x branch
- uses "continuous" collision -- projects forward.
- one go wrapper here: https://github.com/fcvarela/gosg
- https://github.com/azul3d/engine discussion: https://github.com/azul3d/engine/issues/24
PhysX -- NVIDIA owned -- https://github.com/NVIDIAGameWorks/PhysX
- widely used, has GPU support
MuJoCo used in OpenAI Gym
- commercial, has trial and personal license, not open source...
- uses joint-based coordinates and a soft convex model so everything is smooth and differentiable, allowing for a Newton solver to converge very quickly, but produces "slip" artifiacts. Netwon method is very computationally intensive but converges in 5 iterations where others may take 1000's..
- specifically targeted at robotics where joints are the it.

test