It is similar to a physics engine wrapper, however it is far more flexible providing extended abilities.

[1] PAL is a high-level interface for low-level physics engines used in games, simulation systems, and other 3D applications.

It also features COLLADA, Scythe Physics Editor, and XML-based file storage.

The Physics Abstraction Layer provides a number of benefits over directly using a physics engine: PAL is designed with a pluggable abstract factory allowing code to be written and compiled once and allowing runtime selection of different physics engines, as well as feature upgrades.

PAL supports multiple physics engines, including: PAL supports multiple file formats, including: [2] The PAL project provides a set of standard benchmarks allowing developers to directly compare the physics engines and select the engine that provides the best solution in terms of computational efficiency and physical accuracy.