Essence Of Physics in Gaming

Hi there,
Lets speak about the use of physics in gaming today. Most of the games that are developed today are having the promenent part of physics involued inorder to have good gameplay feel. Physics brings the realism to the virtual game world (computer graphics world). The games which are made out of no physics were always bounded to specific borders so that to avoid complexity in game play. But now a days all games meet the basic physics rules so that player is given the joy of real game play.

In either the case like 2D games or 3D games physcis have its importance. The very essential part comes at collisions between the object's that are created inside the game. Simple box physics to complex physics calculations are used to bring the realism in games.

So one should have basic knowledge in physics so that he/she can start working on required physics in games. Basic physics concepts such as mass, gravity, force, damping, elasticity, torque etc... calculations should be learned throughly.

In the later stages during the project development as per required one can learn the deeper physics concepts to bring out the quality output.

Areas Of Use:

• Realistic Simulation development
• Realistic 3d Games
• Realistic 2d Games
• Realistic Virtual Walks

The most popular physics engines that run in today market are ODE and Ageia Physx. ODE is breifly called Open Dynamics Engine and is completly an open source engine. While Ageia Physx is developed by nVidia company. Ageia Physx is more capable of calculating higher physics values keeping higher cpu clock rates while ODE can support proper basic physics and can support complex physics at lower cpu clock rates.

As a starter one should start with ODE so that it will be convenient in learning complex physics calculations at later stage.

for more info please do visit the following link. 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Game_physics

note:
Almost all Game engines provide either ODE physics or Ageia Physx.

For any queries please post to schoolofgaming@gmail.com

regards,
Editor