Action movie directors have a huge advantage over game designers on creating realistic wham, pow, boom, and splatter. That’s because Mother Nature pumps out free supplies of real physics all over the planet. You want earth’s gravity, blood’s viscosity, or Newton’s three laws? In the real world, you’ve got them!
But in a game world, no force pulls objects down toward the bottom of the screen unless somebody has programmed fake gravity in.
Even if you’re not a game designer there’s a lot of enjoyable physics in the free sample online chapter of
Physics for Game Programmers
- When two cars collide, what fraction of the collision is inelastic?
- How do you figure out a tire’s characteristics from the letters and numbers on its side?
- What’s the difference between tires rolling and skidding?
- How do you compute a car’s top speed from its “redline”?
Sadly, the top speed of the 2004 Porsche Boxster S is only 266 km/hr, almost 30 km/hr below its theoretical maximum, “because the car is also subject to the
decelerating forces of aerodynamic drag and rolling friction.” Ah well, real life is full of such disappointments.
If you have a physics maven on your gift list, Father’s Day is just around the corner….
I heard about this via Joey deVilla’s IndieGameDev. Mysteriously, this book is for sale online from its publisher at $44 and change but from Amazon for less than $30. I wonder what the heck the physics of that is?