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Amazon.co.uk Review
It's the clear, mathematical presentation here that makes this title a winner. Starting with the basics of Newtonian mechanics, the author covers all the equations needed to understand velocity, acceleration, kinematics and kinetics, among other concepts. A knowledge of college maths (including calculus) is assumed. (Appendices review the basics of matrix and quaternion mathematics for those needing a refresher.)
Central to this book is its presentation of modelling projectiles, airplanes, ships and cars. The author first presents essential mathematical concepts for each kind of object. (For instance, pitch, yaw and roll, and lift for airplanes, modelling fluid drag for ships and braking behaviour for cars.) For many chapters, Bourg then presents Windows-based DirectX programs in C++ to illustrate key concepts. For example, you can experiment with different parameters to view a cannonball's path. (On their own, these programs make this book a great companion text to any advanced high-school or college physics course since students can see the effect of each variable on the behaviour of each body in motion for a variety of equations.)
Modelling collisions is a central concern here (a necessity, of course, for action games). To this end, the author provides collision detection and the mathematics of 3-D rigid bodies for simulating when bodies collide. As the sample programs get more involved, the author discusses techniques of tuning parameters for performance. A standout chapter here models a fluttering flag using particle systems.
In all, this text proves that physics and computers are a perfect match. The author's patient and clear mathematical investigations of common formulas and concepts can add realistic motion to any computer game, as well as help teach essential concepts to any student or hobbyist who's interested in physics and doesn't mind a little college-level maths. --Richard Dragan
Computer Shopper, April 2002
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Customer Reviews
It is aimed at occassional hobbyists, I feel, and gives some easily implementable algorithms for a homebrew engine.
Unfortunately the algorithms that the author espouses are not useful for real game development, outside simple particle systems. He makes no serious attempt to solve the real problems in simulated physics, and his included code is plain unstable.
For example: one of his demos (the car crashing into crates - you can download it from the book's website) resets every 4 seconds. If you change his code so it doesn't reset you see the instability. After about 6-10 seconds the car sinks into the ground before leaping into the air and off to infinity. He has obviously created the demo to last just long enough not to show the shortcomings in his approach - I was shocked and disgusted when I saw this.
I've worked with professional physics middleware packages for four years. Getting physics right is tough, but there are a couple of open source physics packages on the web that get their approach right, and are far more useful for game development. This book gives you enough to put together simple particle systems (the chapter on cloth effects is a nice extension, but still misses some of the fundamental problems in cloth simulation). It gets you nowhere near a stable physics solution for a complete game.
Anyone who wants to write simulations, I would recommend this as a good starting point.
Many things about simulation became a lot clearer to me when reading this, and this is after some time reading and writing simulators as a hobby.
- The text is confusingly written, being inconsistent in how terms are used.
- It uses imperial units and a left handed coordinate system, which make it hard to relate to other technical literature.
- The example code is a mess, and unnecessarily platform (windows) specific.
- The 3D dynamics demo is particularly appalling - it is hard coded to reset itself, and without that reset it goes unstable.
The first point means the book isn't much good as an introduction that will help game developers use a 3rd party physics engine. The last point means that the book is pretty well useless at helping people write even the basics of their own physics engines (which, I guess, is what most people would hope to be able to do after buying/reading this book).
This book is so bad I don't even want to give it away, and I find it quite shocking that it's still being sold in the first edition (this review is actually based on my memories of it soon after it was published). There are much better books available, so steer clear of this one.
The discussion of the benefits of different integrators is kept to one chapter. Read more
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