Question

I just finished taking an independent study course for CS282 – Computer Physics Simulation. It was the first time it was offered at the college I’m attending. The textbook was “Game Physics Engine Development: How to Build a Robust Commercial-Grade Physics Engine for Your Game” by
Ian Millington. This book is full of grammatical errors and, while a useful reference, is difficult to code from. The source code that is provided with the book is much more complete than the book illustrates and there is a level of difficulty deciphering the code, especially for graphical purposes as there is not even a primer on how to do something on your own with the engine, which in fact is broken or unimplemented in places, or how to use GLUT, which is the graphic utility the book uses and IS NOT DEVELOPED ANYMORE! In fact, most of the references in this book were not from the last decade, which isn’t too bad for teaching code that’s 15 years old, I suppose. While this text is a great resource for the big picture of physics simulation in a beginner setting, it does not introduce a friendly sandbox for CS students to play in.

This was basically an experiment to find out what works and what doesn’t. My professor also included a textbook for using ActionScript with a physics engine, but the text required prior knowledge of how physics engines worked so we dropped it for practicality.

My question is this:

I’m in the process of writing a reflection paper and I’d like to be able to recommend an alternative to these texts that provides an easy way for CS students to jump in and write code and actually be able to see the fruits of their labors, possibly with python. Can anybody recommend a good resource and/or text that would be useful to this end? For those who have taken this course or similar, what have been your experiences?

Answer 1

which is the graphic utility the book uses and IS NOT DEVELOPED ANYMORE!

Wrong. Check FreeGLut project.

Can anybody recommend a good resource and/or text that would be useful to this end? For those who have taken this course or similar, what have been your experiences?

You might want to take a look at Chris Hecker’s physics articles. They’re old, but they’re useful.

it does not introduce a friendly sandbox for CS students to play in.

Friendly sandbox means “nothing to program”. TO “play” you could use ready-to-use physics engine (Bullet Physics (comes with source code), or PhysX), but I doubt it would teach how to write decent physics simulation from scratch – it is a big topic, and there’s a reason why existing engines were in development for a long time…