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Developer => Technical => Topic started by: BrandonQ on March 24, 2012, 04:13:04 AM



Title: Learning Physics for Games.
Post by: BrandonQ on March 24, 2012, 04:13:04 AM
I am HIGHLY interested in game programming yet I don'y know much about physics. I don't do physics at school and this leaves me with a big disadvantage. I was wondering if there are any great resources out there for learning physics for games. Free resources would be awesome but I won't get too picky. Thank you in advance!  ;D


Title: Re: Learning Physics for Games.
Post by: st33d on March 25, 2012, 03:59:38 AM
http://realtimecollisiondetection.net/


Title: Re: Learning Physics for Games.
Post by: randomnine on March 25, 2012, 05:51:44 AM
That might be a bit high level if you never did physics at school.

This set of lecture notes looks useful as a (quite thorough) introduction to classical mechanics. If you can make it through this you'll have a fairly good understanding of movement, inertia, acceleration, vectors, rotation and so on and how to tackle it all mathematically.

http://farside.ph.utexas.edu/teaching/301/301.html (http://farside.ph.utexas.edu/teaching/301/301.html)

If you find that heavy going, I'd recommend seeking out an introductory calculus text and working through that first (or at the same time). Just for differentiation and integration, you don't need to worry about differential equations and so on at this point.

After you have a solid understanding of mechanics, you should be capable of doing the physics for most 2D games and be fairly comfortable working with physics engines. Real-Time Collision Detection is a great place to go from there, to learn how to tackle the messy problems (or write your own physics engine).


Title: Re: Learning Physics for Games.
Post by: BrandonQ on March 26, 2012, 09:50:39 PM
Thanks for the responses, I probably should have mention I am studying advanced mathematics at school so the maths side of things should not become too difficult. Its just the physics stuff.


Title: Re: Learning Physics for Games.
Post by: C.D Buckmaster on March 26, 2012, 10:02:54 PM
If you're not already, study a lot about calculus and linear equations for the maths side, it will be very useful for understanding and implementing physics equations.


Title: Re: Learning Physics for Games.
Post by: FK in the Coffee on March 27, 2012, 08:39:12 PM
http://www.khanacademy.org/#physics

Immensely, immensely useful.  Even if you're a complete beginning to physics, those videos should have to understanding the concepts in good time.


Title: Re: Learning Physics for Games.
Post by: BrandonQ on March 27, 2012, 10:27:44 PM
That's a lot of helpful videos, thanks so much.