Customer Reviews

Physics for Game Programmers

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

The book is divided roughly into two parts. The first part deals with general physical concepts, such as object collision, the equations governing projectiles, and a general review of Newtonian physics. One of the more interesting topics in this section of the book was the aerodynamic effect of spin on projectiles.
The second part of the book is about applied game physics. There are chapters on things like how to model cars, boats, airplanes and projectiles, using the principles outlined in the first part of the book, which is pretty much the same approach taken in David Bourg's book on the same subject, "Physics for Game Developers". There is extra material here though, that is not mentioned in Bourg's book such as the presentation of damage models for armored vehicles, an entire chapter dedicated to the physics of lasers, plus a chapter on sports simulation that includes such things as modeling a golf game.
The style of the book is thorough yet not verbose. Thus the book is only 400 pages versus the hefty size of David Eberly's weighty tome on the subject. There are a couple of places where I might have liked to see a bit more treatment of a particular subject. For instance, the author punts on the topic of 3D collisions of rotating objects. Still, there's enough related material included that I could likely work it out from what was presented.
Like Bourg's game physics book, this is more a book about physics and simulation than about game programming. The examples shown are simple demo programs, because the purpose is to give you the idea of how to code this material, not present a full-blown application. The source code presented in the book is in Java, and can be downloaded from the book website at Apress.
I would say overall this book is on par with David Bourg's book on the subject, and chances are if you are really planning to get into game physics it wouldn't hurt to own both books. I liked this book better than Bourg's because the author covered more topics and his code is Java based as opposed to Bourg's more Windows-centric solutions. However, Bourg's book is better at staying on topic, is better organized, and does not have the extraneous information on such things as the history of the devices being modeled as this book has. The table of contents is as follows:
1. Adding Realism to Your Games
2. Some Basic Concepts
3. Basic Newtonian Mechanics
4. Basic Kinematics
5. Projectiles
6. Collisions
7. Sports Simulations
8. Cars and Motorcycles
9. Boats and Things That Float
10. Airplanes
11. Rockets and Missiles
12. The Physics of Solids
13. Explosions
14. Lasers
15. Probabilistic and Monte Carlo Simulations

The level of physics here is around a typical first year undergraduate physics course. Concentrating on kinematics. Unsurprisingly, because most videogames depict things in motion. Hence, if you've already had that amount of physics, you are in good shape for the book. You can now focus on the coding aspects.

The entire book is about simulations. The code isn't that difficult to grasp. Perhaps the hardest aspect to some readers will be reconciling the two mindsets. How do you map from a set of physics equations to a computational representation?

The book also slides into object oriented programming. Useful if you are new to this idea. The simulations of various bodies lends to a very natural projection of a code object (a "class") onto a physical object that it simulates. Good pedagogy.

I used the equations in the "Cars" chapter of this book to write a sweet street racing game for my senior project. I'm not real good at math or physics but I could easily follow the explanations. It was the only game physics book I could find that gave the equations for acceleration based on engine torque. Great book.

I love this book. Not only is it easy to read, but it gives you a level of detail that other game physics books don't. For example in the sports chapter not only does the book go over the equations that govern the collision of a golf ball and club but it also provides the coefficient of restitution between the golf ball and club. I get really frustrated by other books that don't give you all the information and then you have to search around for the missing pieces. This book gives you all the information you need to write realistic game programs. It's also packed full of interesting historical trivia.

This book gently introduces the reader to physics useful for game programming. It doesn't try to be a PhD thesis (thank you, Grant!), which makes it easily approachable by someone with a solid grasp on Algebra (Trigonometry knowledge helps, but lacking it won't hurt much).

Although the base material can be found in any good physics textbooks, the value here is in weeding out the unwanted fluff present in most textbooks, and presenting the material in plain language along with the equations. You would likely have to spend many times this book's cover price, and spend many time the hours weeding out the nonsense. Grant strikes an excellent balance between mathematical correctness and easy reading.

Do yourself a favor, and save a spot on your bookshelf for this title. It's easily worth twice its asking price, and I'm ecstatic at this book's great bang for the buck.

This title is also suitable for people with weak knowledge about math and gives easy to understand examples from everyday life. The physics models themselves didn't go very deep under the topic but rather handled more common approaches to the problems which is often the case on game related physics.

Chapter covering collisions were a bit too superficial to my taste but it's understandable since subject in all of it's complexity would form a book on it's own. Also all the examples were written in common Java rather than in pseudo code but works well for the purpose.

In overall this book is good starting point for game related physics but lacks profound optimization for large scale physic environment.

This book is a bible of game physics. The writing has a good mixture of contextual information along with the physics to go along with it. Knowing some about the history, theory, and specifications of lasers, for instance, makes reading about the physics more enjoyable.

The author takes the time to cover sports, aircraft, collisions, explosions, cars, motorcycles, and more (FYI, the treatment on motorcycles is very light - just a few pages). There are also chapters on general physical principles such as force, acceleration, mass, power, work, torque, and moment.

The beginning of the book is a great overview with a gentle learning curve of general mechanics. On page 56, that curve is sharply severed in a discrete jump into writing an abstract class and concrete class for a higher order ODE solver (Runge-Kutta 4th order to be specific). Differential equations is a complex topic. Coverage is poor and illustrations are lacking. I was hoping to see good coverage and illustrations on ordinary differential equations and their applicability to games in this book but the content and illustrations are lacking.

While I have written plenty of Java (and from a design perspective I'd argue it's better put together than C++), it is not the language of game programmers. It's an easy enough read to translate to C, C#, C++, or Objective-C but why have to ? Makes no sense to write a book like this and include Java examples in the text. This appears to be author bias and not based in reality. No big game titles on any platform that I know of are written in Java. If there are, they are extremely outnumbered by C based games.

Will write more when I've read more.

I found this book very enjoyable and easy to read. The author very clearly explains the physics behind many common everyday siutations, and make the programming understandable and easy to follow. The downloadable examples are good feature. I recommend it for both beginners and experienced programmers.

This book was purchased specifically for the chapter on boat/water physics -- it provided the information we required and it proved very useful/easy to read. That said, we re-engineered some of the functions governing acceleration, etc, so you may not be entirely happy with the specifics that book has, but it will certainly point you in the right direction.

I expect to use the book in a 'survey' format -- as in to explore a new area of game physics without expending a lot of effort upfront.

This is a very nice book, with a simple language, easy to understand, if you aren't a physic or math professional.
The formules are clean and light to put in your game source without down your hardware performance.