A study on physics engines - the indispensable component in current computer games

Abstract

Physics engine adds physics concepts and systems into video games and movies to enhance their realism. Most of video games and movies nowadays make use of physics engine to provide consumers with greater experience. Up till now, there exist a lot of physics engines. Each of them has their own unique features, advantages, and disadvantages. Therefore, there is a need to study and analyze those features, advantages and disadvantages of the physics engines. In this project, experiments are conducted to serve that purpose.Tokamak Physics is one of the existing physics engines. The experiments for this project make use of Tokamak Physics. Three test scenes are created. The first scene is simulating 500 objects consisting of cubes, spheres, and cylinders which are falling towards a flat floor. The second scene is simulating 500 objects consisting of cubes, spheres, and cylinders which are falling towards a box without a ceiling. The third scene is simulating 4 objects which are connected by joints. The computational time to simulate those test scenes is measured, and the quality of the simulation is analyzed.