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Physics Engines
A physics engine is computer software that provides an approximate simulation of certain physical systems, typically classical dynamics, including rigid body dynamics (including collision detection), soft body dynamics, and fluid dynamics. It is of use in the domains of computer graphics, video games and film ( CGI). Their main uses are in video games (typically as middleware), in which case the simulations are in real-time. The term is sometimes used more generally to describe any software system for simulating physical phenomena, such as high-performance scientific simulation. Description There are generally two classes of physics engines: real-time and high-precision. High-precision physics engines require more processing power to calculate very precise physics and are usually used by scientists and computer-animated movies. Real-time physics engines—as used in video games and other forms of interactive computing—use simplified calculations and decreased accuracy to c ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
Gravity
In physics, gravity (), also known as gravitation or a gravitational interaction, is a fundamental interaction, a mutual attraction between all massive particles. On Earth, gravity takes a slightly different meaning: the observed force between objects and the Earth. This force is dominated by the combined gravitational interactions of particles but also includes effect of the Earth's rotation. Gravity gives weight to physical objects and is essential to understanding the mechanisms responsible for surface water waves and lunar tides. Gravity also has many important biological functions, helping to guide the growth of plants through the process of gravitropism and influencing the circulation of fluids in multicellular organisms. The gravitational attraction between primordial hydrogen and clumps of dark matter in the early universe caused the hydrogen gas to coalesce, eventually condensing and fusing to form stars. At larger scales this results in galaxies and clust ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
Real-time Computer Graphics
Real-time computer graphics or real-time rendering is the sub-field of computer graphics focused on producing and analyzing images in real time. The term can refer to anything from rendering an application's graphical user interface ( GUI) to real-time image analysis, but is most often used in reference to interactive 3D computer graphics, typically using a graphics processing unit (GPU). One example of this concept is a video game that rapidly renders changing 3D environments to produce an illusion of motion. Computers have been capable of generating 2D images such as simple lines, images and polygons in real time since their invention. However, quickly rendering detailed 3D objects is a daunting task for traditional Von Neumann architecture-based systems. An early workaround to this problem was the use of sprites, 2D images that could imitate 3D graphics. Different techniques for rendering now exist, such as ray-tracing and rasterization. Using these techniques and a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
Physically Based Animation
Physically based animation is an area of interest within computer graphics concerned with the simulation of physically plausible behaviors at interactive rates. Advances in physically based animation are often motivated by the need to include complex, physically inspired behaviors in video games, interactive simulations, and movies. Although off-line simulation methods exist to solve most all of the problems studied in physically-based animation, these methods are intended for applications that necessitate physical accuracy and slow, detailed computations. In contrast to methods common in offline simulation, techniques in physically based animation are concerned with physical plausibility, numerical stability, and visual appeal over physical accuracy. Physically based animation is often limited to loose approximations of physical behaviors because of the strict time constraints imposed by interactive applications. The target frame rate for interactive applications such as games and s ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
Source (game Engine)
Source is a 3D game engine developed by Valve. It debuted as the successor to GoldSrc in 2004 with the releases of '' Half-Life: Source'', '' Counter-Strike: Source'', and '' Half-Life 2''. Valve used Source in many of their games in the following years, including '' Team Fortress 2'', '' Counter-Strike: Global Offensive'', ''Dota 2'', and the '' Portal'' and '' Left 4 Dead'' franchises. Other notable third-party games using Source include most games in the '' Titanfall'' franchise, '' Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines'', '' Dear Esther'', '' The Stanley Parable'' and '' Garry’s Mod''. Valve released incremental updates to Source before it was succeeded by Source 2 in 2015. History Source distantly originates from the GoldSrc engine, itself a heavily modified version of John Carmack's Quake engine with some code from the Quake II engine. Carmack commented on his blog in 2004 that "there are still bits of early ''Quake'' code in ''Half-Life 2''". Valve employee Er ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
Gameplay
Gameplay is the specific way in which players interact with a game. The term applies to both video games and Tabletop game, tabletop games. Gameplay is the connection between the player and the game, the player's overcoming of challenges, and the pattern of player behavior defined through the game's rules. History Arising alongside game development, video game development in the 1980s, the term ''gameplay'' was initially used solely within the context of video games, though now it is also used for tabletop games. Definition of term There is no consensus on the precise definition of gameplay. It has been differently defined by different authors, but all definitions refer to player interaction with a game. For example: * "The structures of player interaction with the game system and with other players in the game." * "Gameplay here is seen as the interactive gaming process of the player with the game." Theorists also agree that video game gameplay is distinct from graphics and ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
Tire Tread
The tread of a tire or track refers to the rubber on its circumference that makes contact with the road or the ground. As tires are used, the tread is worn off, limiting its effectiveness in providing traction. A worn tire can often be retreaded. The word tread is often used casually to refer to the pattern of grooves molded into the rubber, but those grooves are correctly called the tread pattern, or simply the pattern. The grooves are not the tread, they are in the tread. This distinction is especially significant in the case of racing slicks, which have much tread but no grooves. Tires Street tires The grooves in the rubber are designed to allow water to be expelled from beneath the tire and prevent hydroplaning. The proportion of rubber to air space on the road surface directly affects its traction. Design of tire tread has an effect upon noise generated, especially at freeway speeds. Generally there is a tradeoff of tread friction capability; deeper pattern ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
Butterfly Effect
In chaos theory, the butterfly effect is the sensitive dependence on initial conditions in which a small change in one state of a deterministic nonlinear system can result in large differences in a later state. The term is closely associated with the work of the mathematician and meteorologist Edward Norton Lorenz. He noted that the butterfly effect is derived from the example of the details of a tornado (the exact time of formation, the exact path taken) being influenced by minor perturbations such as a distant butterfly flapping its wings several weeks earlier. Lorenz originally used a seagull causing a storm but was persuaded to make it more poetic with the use of a butterfly and tornado by 1972. He discovered the effect when he observed runs of his weather model with initial condition data that were rounded in a seemingly inconsequential manner. He noted that the weather model would fail to reproduce the results of runs with the unrounded initial condition data. A very sma ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
Heat Sink
A heat sink (also commonly spelled heatsink) is a passive heat exchanger that transfers the heat generated by an electronic or a mechanical device to a fluid medium, often air or a liquid coolant, where it is thermal management (electronics), dissipated away from the device, thereby allowing regulation of the device's temperature. In computers, heat sinks computer cooling, are used to cool central processing unit, CPUs, graphics processing unit, GPUs, and some chipsets and RAM modules. Heat sinks are used with other high-power semiconductor devices such as Transistor#Other transistor types, power transistors and optoelectronics such as lasers and light-emitting diodes (LEDs), where the heat dissipation ability of the component itself is insufficient to moderate its temperature. A heat sink is designed to maximize its surface area in contact with the cooling medium surrounding it, such as the air. Air velocity, choice of material, protrusion design and surface treatment are fact ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
Weather Forecasting
Weather forecasting or weather prediction is the application of science and technology forecasting, to predict the conditions of the Earth's atmosphere, atmosphere for a given location and time. People have attempted to predict the weather informally for thousands of years and formally since the 19th century. Weather forecasts are made by collecting quantitative data about the current state of the atmosphere, land, and ocean and using meteorology to project how the atmosphere will change at a given place. Once calculated manually based mainly upon changes in atmospheric pressure, barometric pressure, current weather conditions, and sky conditions or cloud cover, weather forecasting now relies on numerical weather prediction, computer-based models that take many atmospheric factors into account. Human input is still required to pick the best possible model to base the forecast upon, which involves pattern recognition skills, teleconnections, knowledge of model performance, and kn ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
Vector Processor
In computing, a vector processor or array processor is a central processing unit (CPU) that implements an instruction set where its instructions are designed to operate efficiently and effectively on large one-dimensional arrays of data called ''vectors''. This is in contrast to scalar processors, whose instructions operate on single data items only, and in contrast to some of those same scalar processors having additional single instruction, multiple data (SIMD) or SIMD within a register (SWAR) Arithmetic Units. Vector processors can greatly improve performance on certain workloads, notably numerical simulation, compression and similar tasks. Vector processing techniques also operate in video-game console hardware and in graphics accelerators. Vector machines appeared in the early 1970s and dominated supercomputer design through the 1970s into the 1990s, notably the various Cray platforms. The rapid fall in the price-to-performance ratio of conventional microprocessor de ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
Force Vector
In physics, a force is an influence that can cause an object to change its velocity unless counterbalanced by other forces. In mechanics, force makes ideas like 'pushing' or 'pulling' mathematically precise. Because the magnitude and direction of a force are both important, force is a vector quantity. The SI unit of force is the newton (N), and force is often represented by the symbol . Force plays an important role in classical mechanics. The concept of force is central to all three of Newton's laws of motion. Types of forces often encountered in classical mechanics include elastic, frictional, contact or "normal" forces, and gravitational. The rotational version of force is torque, which produces changes in the rotational speed of an object. In an extended body, each part applies forces on the adjacent parts; the distribution of such forces through the body is the internal mechanical stress. In the case of multiple forces, if the net force on an extended body is zero the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
Computational Fluid Dynamics
Computational fluid dynamics (CFD) is a branch of fluid mechanics that uses numerical analysis and data structures to analyze and solve problems that involve fluid dynamics, fluid flows. Computers are used to perform the calculations required to simulate the free-stream flow of the fluid, and the interaction of the fluid (liquids and gases) with surfaces defined by Boundary value problem#Boundary value conditions, boundary conditions. With high-speed supercomputers, better solutions can be achieved, and are often required to solve the largest and most complex problems. Ongoing research yields software that improves the accuracy and speed of complex simulation scenarios such as transonic or turbulence, turbulent flows. Initial validation of such software is typically performed using experimental apparatus such as wind tunnels. In addition, previously performed Closed-form solution, analytical or Empirical research, empirical analysis of a particular problem can be used for compa ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
