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Virtual Physics for Virtual Reality |
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We are investigating ways of giving every object in virtual environments
a full range of physical properties.
Such environments include those used for gaming and training, especially
large scale ones those shared across networks.
This way, every
object will behave the way you expect and every object can potentially be
combined with other objects with the correct resulting behaviour.
Most virtual environment games offer you a world which is mainly 3D wallpaper: you can
look at it but you cannot manipulate it. Some objects are treated in a special
way, by having code attached which permits you to interact with them. These
objects are chosen by the designer of the world and so your options are limited
by the designer's intentions and imagination.
Our approach is to give
every
object its own mix of physical properties which, in conjunction with a library
of simulation packages, ensures that it shows its own
have physically-plausible behaviour, even when combined with other objects.
Mechanisms can be built and electrical circuits constructed, often in ways not
envisaged by the VR designer; yet the correct behaviours will emerge.
The benefits include greater ease of use (because the VR will behave in
familiar ways), more efficient construction of large-scale environments
(because there is no need to attach special code to every "live" object),
and the option of dynamically changing the physical rules (for example,
turning off gravity while examining a componet but putting it back on when
training to fit it into place.)
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Researchers |
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| Ali Abdur-Rahman |
Florian Schanda |
Phil Willis |
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Research Results |
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Virtual Physics Examples
Here are the results of our current work, including some movies captured from
interactive demonstrations.
Current results
Here are some earlier results, partly from undergraduate and masters
projects. In each case there is a complete interactive demonstration, with the
user having full control over how the scene is set up. The correct behaviour
then emerges from this.
Early results
Virtual Physics Papers
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"Virtual Physics for Virtual Reality", P J Willis, Conference "Theory and
Practice of Computer Science", 3-5 June 2004, IEEE.
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Funding Agency |
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The work is funded by the Department of Computer Science, University of Bath.
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