[sci.virtual-worlds] Virtual Dynamics

fobuz@wiliki.eng.hawaii.edu (Forrest Buzan) (08/21/90)

Can someone direct me to literature concerning modelling of dynamic
interactions for virtual realities.  It seems that real-time
simulation of collisions, etc. is an important topic that is largely
ignored in this group.  Also, the related topic of force feedback to
the operator is, I feel, essential to creating a realistic, virtual
world.

Thanks, Forrest

murray@vs2.scri.fsu.edu (John Murray) (08/22/90)

In article <9008202145.AA15503@milton.u.washington.edu> fobuz@wiliki.eng.hawaii.edu (Forrest Buzan) writes:
>
>Can someone direct me to literature concerning modelling of dynamic
>interactions for virtual realities.  It seems that real-time
>simulation of collisions, etc. is an important topic that is largely
>ignored in this group.  Also, the related topic of force feedback to
>the operator is, I feel, essential to creating a realistic, virtual
>world.

If you can get hold of a copy of the SIGGRAPH '90 proceedings, there are
a couple of papers in there on force feedback devices. Granted, not
DataGlove(tm) force feedback, but Hiroo Iwata had an interesting "desktop
virtual space" setup with a 9 degree of freedom manipulator (xyz + rotation +
1 each for thumb, forefinger and rest-of-fingers) that provided force feed-
back to the operator.

Collision detection is a general Computational Geometry problem. (polygon-
polygon intersection, or point-polygon intersection, or worse - see below)
Try ACM Transactions on Graphics, SIGGRAPH proceedings, the IEEE computer
graphics mag., etc.  Also, I saw something recently about the (fourth? fifth?)
annual conference on Computational Geometry (IEEE sponsored, I think.) You
might want to check the proceedings from those conferences.

Modeling the dynamics of collisions often gets covered in SIGGRAPH proceedings.
This year general "Dynamics" (pun? what pun?) had its own session, which
included one collisions paper, "Geometric Collisions for Time-Dependent
Parametric Surfaces" (which indicates to me that the field has advanced a
little bit beyond polygon-polygon collision dynamics... :-) )

Doing any of this stuff in real time in an arbitrarily complex simulated
environment will be a problem for a long time - given Murphy's laws regarding
resource capacities vs. demand...

>Thanks, Forrest

Shore Thing.

John R. Murray          | "They call me Mr. Know-it-all, I am so eloquent.
murray@vs2.scri.fsu.edu |  Perfection is my middle name!
                        |   ...and whatever rhymes with 'eloquent'." - Primus