Week 42: collision avoidance
Added 2023-08-19 17:11:43 +0000 UTCThis week I did quite a bit of writing. I wrote one article to explain how rigid bodies do not entirely live in the present, but have parts of their future trajectory determined by the rigidity constraint. The article also captures my thoughts on how physically correct collisions involving rigid bodies may be put together and what the implications are. I published it here.
I am more and more convinced that the best approach to dealing with collisions is to avoid them completely. So I spent another good part of the week trying to put together an algorithm that would do this. Once again I found it useful to write down what I had in my mind. It was crucial to obtain a clear and simple algorithm that can be implemented easily for Classical Mechanics and also for Special Relativity. The article can be found here.
I also coded an implementation of the algorithm as a Shadertoy demo. You can play with it here. To be honest, it may have been easier for me to use my engine, but I think Shadertoy is a cool way to allow people to play with the concept and build on top of it. I am currently trying to implement this approach in the game. I am optimistic this approach can work well and I hope this will turn out alright. I am looking forward to moving to other things! The next thing to implement is the ability of grabbing objects. That is another key ingredient of the first playable demo I’d like to release.
That’s all for now. The next couple of weeks will be quieter as I’ll be mostly on holiday.
