physx-js-webidl

Javascript/WASM bindings for Nvidia PhysX 5.3.1.

Looking for pre-built binaries / build instructions? See below

Library coverage

The bindings include most major parts of the PhysX SDK (excluding CUDA stuff, which is not possible with WASM):

• Basics
  • Static and dynamic actors
  • All geometry types (box, capsule, sphere, plane, convex mesh, triangle mesh and height field)
• All joint types (revolute, spherical, prismatic, fixed, distance and D6)
• Articulations
• Vehicles
• Character controllers
• Scene serialization

Getting started

There is a basic hello world example: 10 boxes falling on the ground (drawn as wireframe on a plain canvas).

Documentation

The API is very close to the original PhysX C++ API, so you can simply use the official PhysX API documentation

However, in order to make the bindings work with emscripten a few additional wrappers are needed here and there. So it might make sense to also take a look into the PhysXJs.idl interface definiton file.

Update as of v2.2.0: Thanks to Shannon Poole, PhysX enums can now be accessed by their qualified names (e.g. PhysX.PxIDENTITYEnum.PxIdentity, see also the hello world demo mentioned above).

Demos

I use this library in my engine kool and have a few demos in place:

• Vehicle: Basic vehicle demo with a few obstacles.
• Character: 3rd person character demo on an island.
• Ragdolls: A simple ragdoll demo.
• Joints: A chain running over two gears.
• Collision: The obligatory box (and other shapes) collision physics demo.

However, the demos are written in kotlin, not javascript.

Pre-built binaries

This library is published as a npm package:

npm i physx-js-webidl

Alternatively you can grab the pre-built binaries (.wasm + support .js) from the latest Release.

Building

In order to build the library you need a recent version of the emscripten SDK - I'm using version 3.1.51. Alternatively, you can use docker as described below. After successful build, the binaries (.wasm + support .js) will appear in the dist directory.

# Clone this repo
git clone https://github.com/fabmax/physx-js-webidl

# Enter that directory
cd physx-js-webidl

# Download submodule containing the PhysX code
git submodule update --init

# Generate build-scripts
./generate.sh

# Build
./make.sh

To add bindings to additional PhysX interfaces you only have to edit the PhysXJs.idl file located in PhysX/physx/source/webidlbindings/src/wasm/ and recompile the library.

Build with Docker

# Build the image
docker compose up

# Build Release
docker compose run --rm builder ./make.sh

# Build Profile
docker compose run --rm builder ./make-profile.sh

# Build Debug
docker compose run --rm builder ./make-debug.sh

Build Types

It is also possible to generate Typescript bindings out of the idl file (apparently broken on recent node version):

npx @milkshakeio/webidl2ts -e -d -n PhysX -i PhysX/physx/source/webidlbindings/src/wasm/PhysXWasm.idl -o dist/physx-js-webidl.wasm.d.ts