Farseer and 2D Action sidescroller game

Question

I'm thinking about using Farseer inside my game (I'm not good in physics), which isn't a bad idea. However something happened while I was thinking about that, I found this tutorial:

http://www.sgtconker.com/2010/09/article-xna-farseer-platform-physics-tutorial/

which talks about how to use Farseer, expecially the first part shows how to create a good collision method with a static object (like ground!!!), which, partially answer to my old question:

2D Side Scrolling game and "walk over ground" collision detection

So, is a good idea to use a physics engine to create a "walkable" terrain in a game? (obviusly I will use it for jumps and other things too) Is it a bit exaggerated, I mean, does it creates performance issues if I use it for something like ground collision which happens all time (except when jumping) in a game?

If it's ok I've solved 2 questions with 1!

Thanks for suggestions.

Answer 1

No it will not create performance issues as long as the quantity of checks per frame are not too much for the engine to handle.

For a physics engine on a modern computer I don't think there would be any problems with anything less than 1000 collision tests a frame, depending on your physics engine you can have many more tests per frame.