Physics you'd like to see?

Physics, a major component in games such as Half-Life 2. Developers are finally getting a good hold on physics of large, solid objects, but there are still some other types of physics I would like to see in games, including:

- Water physics

In certain games, a large body of water, such as a stream or pond, does react to the player when he/she jumps into it, but I'd like to see some water physics in locations other than ponds and streams. For example, water that can be poured out of a container.

- Paper physics

This is a strange one, but I just thought of it today. You never see paper shredding up and floating down to the ground after a gun fight in a game.

Those are the only two I can think of off the top of my head, feel free to post some ideas.

I would like to see more destructable environments. I know it's not really physics (though it's related), but when I shoot a bazooka at a wall...I want the wall to come down :)

And where the physics would come in is like this. Say I use my tank and shoot at an enemy in a building. Lets say I hit a load bearing wall or something...I would LOVE if not only the wall fell, but the building also collapsed realistically due to structual damage.

And I don't mean just after the building takes X amount of damage, for it to collapse. I want realistic structual deformity and building to partial/total collapse in realistic ways.

As far as what you suggested, water and paper physics, not so much for me. Ya, it would be neat, but it pretty much is just a gimmic. Those things really don't don't add much to gameplay. But again, if they added them, it would still be nice.

Water(liquid) physics are a near impossibility for the forseeable future. Given the dynamic nature of liquid and how it is determined by objects around it, the CPU would be required to calculate hundreds if not thousands of permeantations to achieve a lifelike effect. Something which is beyond the processing power of todays CPUs.

Remember, liquid in the real world of physics is so beautiful because it is so simple yet so complex. Whilst gravity is relatively simple in games, forces which are directly influenced by gravity and other objects around it, are not. :)

Have a look at this however, as it's a pretty good attempt with rendering pure particle-based fluid.

The destructable environmet idea gets my vote :)

Methinks Crysis will display some amazing physics and then we'll see what happens from there.. :D

would THIS be just a gimmic? :)

http://www.gametrailers.com/player/usermovies/75425.html

http://www.gametrailers.com/player/usermovies/72747.html

Water(liquid) physics are a near impossibility for the forseeable future. Given the dynamic nature of liquid and how it is determined by objects around it, the CPU would be required to calculate hundreds if not thousands of permeantations to achieve a lifelike effect. Something which is beyond the processing power of todays CPUs.

Remember, liquid in the real world of physics is so beautiful because it is so simple yet so complex. Whilst gravity is relatively simple in games, forces which are directly influenced by gravity and other objects around it, are not. :)

Have a look at this however, as it's a pretty good attempt with rendering pure particle-based fluid.

kweeky

I agree, water physics will not happen any time soon, but I'm guessing we'll see something similar within the next 10 years, with how fast technology seems to be moving.

would THIS be just a gimmic? :)

http://www.gametrailers.com/player/usermovies/75425.html

http://www.gametrailers.com/player/usermovies/72747.html

kyrieee

Ya...kinda of. While I whole heartily agree it looks nothing short of spectacular, it really offers nothing in terms of gameplay. So you step into a puddle of water and it reacts realistic...cool...deffinetly cool. But other then a cool effect...what did it bring to the game?

On the other hand...completely destructable and deforming environments and buildings could add a whole nother level to gameplay.

Well it could certainly raise the immersion level a notch or two. After a game like Crysis, you're not really going to get that much more realistic models, and environments. I mean, more polys or shaders won't do it, they're good enough already. If you want more immersion, stuff like water physics will provide it. I'm sure it could be used for awesome set pieces. Blowing houses up wouldn't really matter that much gameplay wise either imo. You can blow up cover in some games today, and is it more than a gimick?

See dude in house - blow the house up. It'd get old fast I think. I mean, Red Faction wasn't any better because of it.

Fully destructible environments offer huge problems anyway, if you want it glitch free. I mean, if someone has infinite ammo, they're pretty much gonna run into glitches destroying the entire world. And you can't confine the player without making it obvious(taking away weapons) or breaking the immersion.

computer generated water dynamics will remain solely in prerendered applications and you wont see anything close to this until we reach dual digit multicore CPUs.

The videos of water simulation you linked to are never live, the computer has to sit there and calculate 1 frame every 30minutes or so, 1 frame out of 30 in one second, of course render time depends on the hardware, but you will never see this amount of physics being calculated live in an office/home computer. Anyway, games still have a problem getting to render realistic light, so hold off of the water at the moment... Games (including Crysis, UT3, GOW) all employ very fake means of rendering an image to look 'real'. Alot of trickery goes into creating an image that LOOKS like it has light diffusion, occlusion, etc.

Intel not long ago did a test on an 80core CPU rendering out quake4 with FULL radiosity (realistic 3d light with bounce and propagation properties per sample/light ray ). They also showed fluid simulation live (not prerendered), but then again, the details is nowhere close to those gametrailers links.

I think the video is somewhere on cnet.

Well it could certainly raise the immersion level a notch or two. After a game like Crysis, you're not really going to get that much more realistic models, and environments. I mean, more polys or shaders won't do it, they're good enough already. If you want more immersion, stuff like water physics will provide it. I'm sure it could be used for awesome set pieces. Blowing houses up wouldn't really matter that much gameplay wise either imo. You can blow up cover in some games today, and is it more than a gimick?

See dude in house - blow the house up. It'd get old fast I think. I mean, Red Faction wasn't any better because of it.

Fully destructible environments offer huge problems anyway, if you want it glitch free. I mean, if someone has infinite ammo, they're pretty much gonna run into glitches destroying the entire world. And you can't confine the player without making it obvious(taking away weapons) or breaking the immersion.

kyrieee

REd Faction used destructable environment to merely make an alternate door and ur right in saying it didn make it any better but i think what the other guys are getting at is much more complicated than what red faction did with physics, like knocking things over and blowing walls up to ur advantage , or maybe ur on the second floor of a house and complletely surrounded and ucan shoot the ground to fall to the 1st floor and makea getaway (ala undwerworld :D).

Water physics.
http://www.gamespot.com/video/0/6125124/videoplayerpop?

Fast forward to 54:00.Einhanderkiller

As I outlined earlier, that is not true "formless" water. That little water simulation is no more sophisticated than the 1mb applet I linked above, apart from - you don't need no stinkin' Cell to run it ;)

FEAR had torn paperacsguitar

Fully destructable environment is totally possible, you've all played Worms right? ;)

You just need to get away from the conventions of level design that dominate the FPS market (I'll assume we're talking FPS as that's the most popular genre at the moment).

For a fully destructable environment to work, an engine such as Unreal is ideal simply because you need an infinite box that has holes carved out of it (how the Unreal engine works) as opposed to an infinite space with boxes inside it (Source for example.

If you look back at games such as Dungeon Keeper and Evil Genius, they both utilised players digging their own rooms in rock. How the room is generated when the rock is removed could perhaps be the way forward.

A fully destructable environment + physics is where it gets complex... However, given the advances and optimisation of physics, it's becoming more feasible. You could also argue AI would be yet another drawback, but with games such as Half Life and FEAR sporting sensory aware behavior, it is certainly possible.

[QUOTE="acsguitar"]FEAR had torn paperfirefly026

Aye, that was just a triggered emitter. Paper gets hit. Random paper particles launch. Firefly026 was after the paper breaking into tiny gibs (based on locational damage I imagine), similiar to the crates in Half Life 2, but bits at a time.

This is the engine of the futer imo

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-2471726854498380829&q=starwars+physics&total=56&start=0&num=10&so=0&type=search&plindex=0

i cant wait to play it

This is the engine of the futer imo

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-2471726854498380829&q=starwars+physics&total=56&start=0&num=10&so=0&type=search&plindex=0

i cant wait to play it

ferret837

Aye, it's about time we saw a leap in physics again, Source has been with us for three years already ;)kweeky

I must admit, I'm still impressed by the physics in Source. It's unfortunate UE3 has objects running at a lower fps than the rest of the world, it really takes away from the immersion. This is especially noticeable in BioShock.

really really realistic body physics :)Lonelynight

that's exactly what i was going to say- although, we may be thinking different body physics. while it's not possible to do it with today's hardware, sometime in the future i would like to see every major artery, vein, nerve, and organ mapped internally so that when a bullet hits you, the computer can determine at what angle you were hit and whether it got anything major and determine whether you die, are wounded, or crippled. if the bullet hits a major artery or organ there can be a set amount of time that you have before you die where a medic can come by and patch you up.

for example, if you are shot and it hits your femoral artery, most people would think this is only a minor wound by todaysgame standards since it's in the leg. in real life, if this is cut, you can die extremely fast. so in the game, the medic would only have so long to get to you to patch you up or you would die.

you could come up with all kinds of instances that pertain to the type of injury one sustains and come up with appropriate consequences for each.

Alas, even the most notable human biologist could not map you out a perfect simulated human body - it simply is just too complex. Sure we could emulate a happy middleground of "this section is more important than this section", but to fully map out and accurately simuluate the entirity of the human body is beyond even science at this time. ;)kweeky

computer generated water dynamics will remain solely in prerendered applications and you wont see anything close to this until we reach dual digit multicore CPUs.

The videos of water simulation you linked to are never live, the computer has to sit there and calculate 1 frame every 30minutes or so, 1 frame out of 30 in one second, of course render time depends on the hardware, but you will never see this amount of physics being calculated live in an office/home computer. Anyway, games still have a problem getting to render realistic light, so hold off of the water at the moment... Games (including Crysis, UT3, GOW) all employ very fake means of rendering an image to look 'real'. Alot of trickery goes into creating an image that LOOKS like it has light diffusion, occlusion, etc.

Intel not long ago did a test on an 80core CPU rendering out quake4 with FULL radiosity (realistic 3d light with bounce and propagation properties per sample/light ray ). They also showed fluid simulation live (not prerendered), but then again, the details is nowhere close to those gametrailers links.

I think the video is somewhere on cnet.

WARxSnake

First of all, never say never

Secondly, I'm aware that's prerendered, I'm not stupid. Nevertheless, it's a computer simulation, and if processing power keeps growing exponentially, then you'll see it someday. Those were movie quality renders btw, you can do really good fluid simulations with A LOT LESS calculating that still look pretty good.

I would like to see more destructable environments. I know it's not really physics (though it's related), but when I shoot a bazooka at a wall...I want the wall to come down :)

And where the physics would come in is like this. Say I use my tank and shoot at an enemy in a building. Lets say I hit a load bearing wall or something...I would LOVE if not only the wall fell, but the building also collapsed realistically due to structual damage.

And I don't mean just after the building takes X amount of damage, for it to collapse. I want realistic structual deformity and building to partial/total collapse in realistic ways.

As far as what you suggested, water and paper physics, not so much for me. Ya, it would be neat, but it pretty much is just a gimmic. Those things really don't don't add much to gameplay. But again, if they added them, it would still be nice.

dnuggs40

We will soon have destructable environments. Battlefield bad company is coming out soon. Whatever you destroy will stay destroyed. Plus we you kill someone there body won't disappear. Its a start.

http://www.gametrailers.com/player/usermovies/89839.htmlLeAcK

what a nice video. can't wait for this to come out

edit: oh noes... it's gonna need AGEiA PhysX card. well it certainly looks like it too.

good luck with that crap

would like to see all your parents beat your ass when its time for bed....lol

Alas, even the most notable human biologist could not map you out a perfect simulated human body - it simply is just too complex. Sure we could emulate a happy middleground of "this section is more important than this section", but to fully map out and accurately simuluate the entirity of the human body is beyond even science at this time. ;)kweeky

I can still dream :)

Water(liquid) physics are a near impossibility for the forseeable future. Given the dynamic nature of liquid and how it is determined by objects around it, the CPU would be required to calculate hundreds if not thousands of permeantations to achieve a lifelike effect. Something which is beyond the processing power of todays CPUs.

Remember, liquid in the real world of physics is so beautiful because it is so simple yet so complex. Whilst gravity is relatively simple in games, forces which are directly influenced by gravity and other objects around it, are not. :)

Have a look at this however, as it's a pretty good attempt with rendering pure particle-based fluid.

kweeky

Yeah I read something similar to this once in Popsci about video games.

You know in some games where the dead bodies of your enemies fall into walls? I would like that to be fixed. Also when bodies go into each other. Would like that fixed too. I really don't like bodies sticking out of walls or out of antoher body. Looks highly unrealistic. :(PcGamer2020

Make RTS unit run for cover automatically after being fired. Sure this already is implemented in many game most notably CoH. The only thing is I want it to be more realistic. Especially in World in Conflict.The infantry units don't take cover.....lol. Oh yeah I forgot I saw my units go through walls they should have jumped over it. Is that hard to put in a graphically impressive game?Iron_will

Yeah well there has to be something for the player to do too. WiC isn't a simulator, it's just a game with a real life setting. Games are rule based, you wouldn't get a good game if you just created reality

This is a strange one, but I just thought of it today. You never see paper shredding up and floating down to the ground after a gun fight in a game.

firefly026

Actually, fear had that. In rooms there was paper, cardboard boxes, that would get shredded and would fly into the air and float down.

Fully destructible environments is my dream.

[QUOTE="WARxSnake"]

computer generated water dynamics will remain solely in prerendered applications and you wont see anything close to this until we reach dual digit multicore CPUs.

The videos of water simulation you linked to are never live, the computer has to sit there and calculate 1 frame every 30minutes or so, 1 frame out of 30 in one second, of course render time depends on the hardware, but you will never see this amount of physics being calculated live in an office/home computer. Anyway, games still have a problem getting to render realistic light, so hold off of the water at the moment... Games (including Crysis, UT3, GOW) all employ very fake means of rendering an image to look 'real'. Alot of trickery goes into creating an image that LOOKS like it has light diffusion, occlusion, etc.

Intel not long ago did a test on an 80core CPU rendering out quake4 with FULL radiosity (realistic 3d light with bounce and propagation properties per sample/light ray ). They also showed fluid simulation live (not prerendered), but then again, the details is nowhere close to those gametrailers links.

I think the video is somewhere on cnet.

kyrieee

First of all, never say never

Secondly, I'm aware that's prerendered, I'm not stupid. Nevertheless, it's a computer simulation, and if processing power keeps growing exponentially, then you'll see it someday. Those were movie quality renders btw, you can do really good fluid simulations with A LOT LESS calculating that still look pretty good.

My point being that since its prerendred, every frame takes half a day to render on your e6600. i know its movie quality renders BTW, that was the backing of my point, i use programs such as these (Fume FX, Dreamscape) and yes, you will never see this anytime soon. Water is not a priority for game developers (unless it is central to the gameplay mechanic) so they wont focus on that, rather they will focus on more and more realistic lighting, cloth and solid physics.

And no need to feel defensive, i wasn't trying to make you look stupid, that is just my opinion

100% destructible environmental physics. By that I mean when your playing the game, anything you see can be destroyed into pieces.

I would like to see more destructable environments. I know it's not really physics (though it's related), but when I shoot a bazooka at a wall...I want the wall to come down :)

And where the physics would come in is like this. Say I use my tank and shoot at an enemy in a building. Lets say I hit a load bearing wall or something...I would LOVE if not only the wall fell, but the building also collapsed realistically due to structual damage.

And I don't mean just after the building takes X amount of damage, for it to collapse. I want realistic structual deformity and building to partial/total collapse in realistic ways.

As far as what you suggested, water and paper physics, not so much for me. Ya, it would be neat, but it pretty much is just a gimmic. Those things really don't don't add much to gameplay. But again, if they added them, it would still be nice.

dnuggs40

Play Age of Empires 3 :p

cloths and no rigided bodies and liquid

But all those things are possible under Physics engines so its not much to ask its just the matter of impementing them

really really realistic body physics :)Lonelynight

i'd love to see that too. How cool would it be if people's bones broke, like you shoot someone off a cliff and when they hit the bottom, ther leg is bent like a flamingo's or their back is bent so the head is touching the guy's feet. That'd be cool, or someone just jumps down a ledge the wrong way and twists an ankle, or someone get's hit by a car and gets messed up.

Also, it'd be cool if the force of grenades and explosives determined if and where a body part would fly off. Instead of just having a leg fly off at the knee because the person was within 4 feet of the explosive, the outcome would be determined by calculations and results would be much more varied.

Anyway, those are my two ideas. Not necessary and a little over the top, but it would still be cool to see i think.