Physics Modeling for Game Programmers Review

Average Reviews:

(More customer reviews)I've bought this book because I wanted to learn how to programm physics in my video games. Unfortunately the book boils down to presenting only basic mechanics to you. First, you need to skip about 150 pages of the book introducing Direct3D and the chapter dealing with DirectInput and game loops. If I start programming physics I'm most likely ready to do 3D graphics. Next, skip the appendix that contains an introduction to C++ and Windows programming.
Okay, now there are still 350 pages left that really deal with physics in this book. The good news is that the layout of the content for the physics chapters are a good selection. Even without any knowledge of mechanics the author guides you carefully from simple physical movement of point masses to the more complex behavior of rigid bodies. I really enjoyed how the whole topic is divided into single chapters to take them on one by one.
But then there are the drawbacks of this book. The biggest problem is that collision detection is nearly ignored at all. Okay, you have nice rigid bodies with realistic looking physics effects. But you cannot really use them in your programs because you need to read another book about collision detection first. Don't underestimate the need for a decent and *stable* collision detection system. Without that even the best physics implementation is lost. How do you want to let your body respond to a collision if you can't tell that there had been a collision? The author just uses static bounding spheres. That's a real pity because you would at least need collision detection for dynamic bounding boxes. You would also need this to calculate the points of collision needed for the physical collision response.
I'm stressing this point so much because with the what you learn from this book you are not able to have something as simple as a bunch of cubes falling down from the ceiling, colliding with platforms hovering in the air, and then resting on the floor. Obviously, you also can't have something more complex such as building a stack of two or more boxes piled on top of each other.
One thing that really annoyed me was the chapter about aircraft and spacecraft physics. Sounds like an interesting topic if you want to program your own flight sim, right? But you need to know that the demo of this chapter does not involve physics at all. Just a camera moving foward which can be rolled along the Z axis. But at least the author mentions the equations you can use to calculate lift and drag and strongly recommends that you do more research on aerodynamics if you want to implement a flight sim.
To conclude: Add 2 stars for a very good layout of the introduction from point masses to rigid bodies. But cut off three stars due to the lack of everything that would let you implement a simple but stable physics system you could use even in a simple 3D video game. In order to be able to do physics programming with this book you need to study another book about (dynamic) collision detection such as Ericson as well as a lot of papers you can find throughout the internet that discuss intermediate and advanced physics programming such as stacking and resting contact problems.

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Programmers who want to include 3D math and physics in a game have to wade through physics textbooks and dreary tomes on linear algebra and group theory, only to find that the material is too abstract to be used directly in their games. This book gives readers the skills they want and need to incorporate real physics into their games. As they work through the book, they will constantly develop tools, demos, and working games. The highly graphical demos ensure that instead of just reading about how to calculate the trajectory of a projectile, the reader will actually see a canon firing rounds toward the front lines. From the successful Game Development series, this book thoroughly addresses the specific needs of game developers.

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