On Oct 13, 2005, at 8:05 AM, Cecilia Di Chio wrote:

> I'm new to this list, and fairly new to the "magic world" of
> simulation...
> I have to write a simulation with not-so-many agents interacting in an
> environment which obeys physic laws. I'd like to write my simulation
> in java.
> What simulation toolkit can you suggest me? Which one is better among
> Swarm,
> Mason and Repast, keeping in mind that the population size won't be
> huge. I
> also would like to have the opportunity to add to the model (in the
> future)
> some geographical details, therefore GIS support would be a nice bonus.

There isn't a toolkit which provides all of these things.  In pieces:

        - If you're looking for physical laws (by which I presume you mean
solid model interaction), your best choice is Breve.  But it's not in
Java.

        - MASON has some basic 2D physics modeling -- which needs polishing
ease-of-use-wise -- and we may soon go after some 3D physics modeling.

        - If you need GIS, there's really one toolkit at the moment which does
that: RePast.  MASON may in the future but we need to see additional
interest and/or funding :-) to justify it.

        - SWARM has Java support but if you want to code in Java proper,
RePast and MASON make more sense.

        - MASON (IMHO) is the most industrial-grade of this collection: but it
doesn't sound like you need that.  I'd poke around with Breve first.

Sean