Section: New Software and Platforms

SOFA

Participants : François Faure, Armelle Bauer, Olivier Carré, Aurélie Dégletagne, Ali Hamadi Dicko, Matthieu Nesme, Romain Testylier.

Figure 2. SOFA is an open source simulator for physically based modeling.

SOFA is a is a real-time physically based simulation library developed for more 8 years with other Inria research groups (Shacra and Asclepios). It primarily targeted medical simulation research, but we are using it as well for many other applications, from the entertainment industry (films and games) to earth science projects. Based on an advanced software architecture, it allows to (1) create complex and evolving simulations by combining new algorithms with algorithms already included in SOFA; (2) modify most features of the simulation (deformable behavior, surface representation, solver, constraints, collision algorithm, etc.) by simply editing an XML file; (3) build complex models from simpler ones using a scenegraph description; (4) efficiently simulate the dynamics of interacting objects using abstract equation solvers; and (5) reuse and easily compare a variety of available methods.

SOFA is gaining momentum. A start-up based on SOFA, InSimo, has been created in Strasbourg by Inria people, and one of our former engineers, François Jourdes, has been hired.