[vos-d] Physics Braindump

[Peter Amstutz]

On Tue, Feb 27, 2007 at 09:03:44AM -0500, Reed Hedges wrote:

> Each object should be internally responsible for deciding how it
> responds to physical forces (messages requesting movement), I think.
> This would be ideal, at least.  It allows you to distribute physics
> computation load by just distributing objects on different sites
> (servers).    Will this work?   Will it work when an object a on Site A
> is moved, detects its collision with object b on site B, sends it a
> force message, etc.?

There's two problems with that: the first is lag, the second is basic 
Newtonian physics, that for each action there is an opposite reaction, 
so if I push on a box, the box also "pushes back" which means to get a 
realistic result the physics simulator really needs to be able to 
control both colliding entities.
 
I should mention that Croquet does do distributed "physics" but their 
system is (I believe) very tightly clocked and depends on identical, 
deterministic code running on each client in their Smalltalk VM --- and 
I'm still not sure if they do any actual rigid body simulation.

-- 
[   Peter Amstutz  ][ tetron at interreality.org ][ peter.amstutz at gdit.com ]
[Lead Programmer][Interreality Project][Virtual Reality for the Internet]
[ VOS: Next Generation Internet Communication][ http://interreality.org ]
[ http://interreality.org/~tetron ][ pgpkey:  pgpkeys.mit.edu  18C21DF7 ]

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