Who Created and Maintains Ammo.js

This article provides a concise overview of the origins and ongoing maintenance of ammo.js, a widely used 3D physics library for web development. It details the original creator of the project, how the library was developed, and who is responsible for its upkeep today.

Ammo.js (which stands for “Avoid Making My Own physics engine”) was originally created by Alon Zakai. Zakai is a prominent computer scientist best known as the creator of Emscripten, a powerful toolchain that compiles C and C++ code into JavaScript and WebAssembly.

To create ammo.js, Zakai used Emscripten to port the Bullet physics engine—a highly respected, open-source C++ physics library used widely in the gaming industry—directly into JavaScript. This allowed web developers to run complex, high-performance 3D physics simulations directly within web browsers without needing to write a physics engine from scratch.

Today, the ammo.js project is hosted as an open-source repository on GitHub under Zakai’s profile (kripken/ammo.js). While Alon Zakai remains the original creator and repository owner, the project is maintained by the global open-source developer community. Developers from major WebGL and 3D web frameworks, such as Three.js and Babylon.js, actively contribute to its maintenance, bug fixes, and optimizations to ensure it remains compatible with modern web standards.