The major goal of most video games is to somehow mimic life, and bring it out of the computer. Most examples of children games are examples of games that have used simple physics problems and incorporated them into a environment that is not a perfect model of real physics. But for adult gamers reality is something that is popular. First Person Shooters are a genre of game that has become the largest selling genre of any game, and these games draw on the power of physics engines to do this.
           

    But the power needed for these engines to work is enormous, and to create something that feels lifelike the computer has to be able to computer every calculation of every physics problem going on at one time. This could be a lot depending on the situation; the bomb exploding behind a player, the player shooting through a wall, a player jumping over an obstacle. All of these draw on the power of the computer and if it is not able to make all these calculations the dreaded essence of lag is brought into existence. In order to beat lag computer scientists recognize that they have to cheat physics a little in order to make certain equations easier in order to produce an experience that looks life like. To do this a video game industry standard of sixty frames a second has to be met, meaning the computer must be able to run each equations and find what is going on for every one sixtieth of a second. If the engine was only able to run in 10 frames a second the user would notice lag, or screen tear, and the image would like very jumpy(Lawlor). The more frames a second that the engine can produce the better quality image is produced. .

    I in order to reduce the resources the computer needs to make its image fluid computer programs have developed techniques that allow them to easily do work on specific point particles of any object easily and accurately. To do this computer scientist used floating point notation that was developed from the fundamental object in program, int. To do this computers use 32 bit integer known as a 'long' (Lawlor). Each point particle of an object, or how many are deemed necessary for the object, is represented by a 'long'. By creating point particles inside the computer in this way it becomes quick for the computer to run manipulations on the point particles to find what the object should be doing. This is how we can determine how much accuracy the engine might have. The more point particles that can be represented by the object the better, so as computers processing power grows and becomes faster eventually even more physics engines will be able to be created.

    Another very good point to be made about physics engines is that they can only do as much as we know to do and as the world learns more about physics the more life like video games and physics engines will be. This means that eventually, and even know, physics engines will have be more important. The ability a physics engine has to run test or find the theoretical value of an imaginary object or an object we want to create is very powerful. Many architects have began using physics engines and 3D worlds instead of blue prints to reconstruct their building. I imagine that as we learn more about physics and the workings of the world we will be able to do more with the technology we have today. I imagine that some day games will be able to make perfect 3D worlds that we can interact with in daily life and I believe that when that day comes physics engines will be more than just tools for video games.