Physics for Game Developers, 2nd Edition

Preface

Who Is This Book For?

Simply put, this book is targeted at computer game developers who do not have a strong mechanics or physics background, charged with the task of incorporating real physics in their games.

As a game developer, and very likely as a gamer yourself, you’ve seen products being advertised as “ultra-realistic,” or as using “real-world physics.” At the same time you, or perhaps your company’s marketing department, are wondering how you can spice up your own games with such realism. Or perhaps you want to try something completely new that requires you to explore real physics. The only problem is that you threw your college physics text in the lake after final exams and haven’t touched the subject since. Maybe you licensed a really cool physics engine, but you have no idea how the underlying principles work and how they will affect what you’re trying to model. Or, perhaps you are charged with the task of tuning someone else’s physics code but you really don’t understand how it works. Well then, this book is for you.

Sure you could scour the Internet, trade journals, and magazines for information and how-to’s on adding physics-based realism to your games. You could even fish out that old physics text and start from scratch. However, you’re likely to find that either the material is too general to be applied directly, or too advanced requiring you to search for other sources to get up to speed on the basics. This book will pull together the information you need ...