What Does Physics Have to do With
Computer Games?
Well, to answer that, you have to have a basic understanding
of physics. Physics is the study of matter and energy, and how the two
interact with each other. Things such as gravity, sound and light -
all involve physics. As you might have noticed, gravity, sound and light
are things we encounter quite frequently in our day to day routines.
Game developers, in their goal to create a believable, realistic world
for the gamer to immerse themselves in, know that in order to do so
their game needs to incorporate the laws of physics. After all, their
games wouldn't be very realistic if players kept floating away every
time they tried to make their character jump or dodge around.
Gravity is only a small part of the realism experience.
Developers have to incorporate as many laws of physics as they can in
order to make their game truly realistic. Collisions play a big part
in any game - it wouldn't be very believeable to allow players to move
through walls or objects. Some games take the collision and elasticity
elements further, and create extremely elaborate physics engines that
can handle, say, two cars colliding, and produce a believeable outcome
to the collision. Games like F1 Championship Racing and GTA3
have excellent physics engines that feature
some really impressive automobile simulations. Many old games simply
use gravity and collision detection in their games, but more recent
games involve much more complicated physics applications.
Image courtesy of Electronic Arts-----------------------------------------------Image
courtesy of Rockstar Games