erincatto/box2d

Health v2 · maintenance only

Adoption not part of the score

10303 stars · 1804 forks observed · 2026-08-28

What it is AI-extracted, prompt v1, taxonomy v1, 2026-08-29, confidence not recorded

Box2D is a widely used open-source 2D rigid body physics engine for games, written in portable C17 with a data-oriented design, multithreading, and SIMD support. It provides collision detection, joints, motors, springs, ray casts, and spatial queries for making game objects move realistically.

Use cases

• simulate 2d rigid body physics in a game
• add realistic collision detection to a 2d game
• implement joints motors and springs between game objects
• perform ray casts and overlap queries in a 2d world
• build a physics sandbox or physics puzzle game
• add procedural animation driven by physics to a game engine

When to choose

• you need a battle-tested 2D physics engine with continuous collision detection
• you want a portable C library with multithreading and SIMD performance
• you are building a 2D game with many dynamic bodies and need island-based sleeping
• you need collision queries and a dynamic tree for spatial sorting

When to avoid

• you need 3D physics simulation (use Box3D or another 3D engine)
• you want a high-level engine-integrated physics solution with visual editors
• you are not comfortable compiling and linking C code yourself

Facets

library · maturity stable

simulation graphics game-engine math simulation graphics cross-platform cpp c cross-platform windows game-engine physics-engine rigid-body-simulation collision-detection 2d-games c17 multithreading simd game-development linux macos

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