Game Physics

Game Physics is an introduction to the ideas and techniques needed to create physically realistic 3D graphic environments. As a companion volume to Dave Eberly's industry standard 3D Game Engine Design, Game Physics shares a similar practical approach and format. Dave includes simulations to introduce the key problems involved and then gradually reveals the mathematical and physical concepts needed to solve them. He then describes all the algorithmic foundations and uses code examples and working source code to show how they are implemented, culminating in a large collection of physical simulations. This book tackles the complex, challenging issues that other books avoid, including Lagrangian dynamics, rigid body dynamics, impulse methods, resting contact, linear complementarity problems, deformable bodies, mass-spring systems, friction, numerical solution of differential equations, numerical stability and its relationship to physical stability, and Verlet integration methods. Dave even describes when real physics isn't necessary-and hacked physics will do.

Dave Eberly is the president of Geometric Tools, Inc. (www.geometrictools.com), a company that specializes in software development for computer graphics, image analysis, and numerical methods. Previously, he was the director of engineering at Numerical Design Ltd. (NDL), the company responsible for the real-time 3D game engine, NetImmerse. He also worked for NDL on Gamebryo, which was the next-generation engine after NetImmerse. His background includes a BA degree in mathematics from Bloomsburg University, MS and PhD degrees in mathematics from the University of Colorado at Boulder, and MS and PhD degrees in computer science from the University of North Carolina at ChapelHill. He is the author of 3D Game Engine Design, 2nd Edition (2006), 3D Game Engine Architecture (2005), Game Physics (2004), and coauthor with Philip Schneider of Geometric Tools for Computer Graphics (2003), all published by Morgan Kaufmann. As a mathematician, Dave did research in the mathematics of combustion, signal and image processing, and length-biased distributions in statistics. He was an associate professor at the University of Texas at San Antonio with an adjunct appointment in radiology at the U.T. Health Science Center at San Antonio. In 1991, he gave up his tenured position to re-train in computer science at the University of North Carolina. After graduating in 1994, he remained for one year as a research associate professor in computer science with a joint appointment in the Department of Neurosurgery, working in medical image analysis. His next stop was the SAS Institute, working for a year on SAS/Insight, a statistical graphics package. Finally, deciding that computer graphics and geometry were his real calling, Dave went to work for NDL (which is now Emergent Game Technologies), then to Magic Software, Inc., which later became Geometric Tools, Inc. Dave's participation in the newsgroup comp.graphics.algorit