Physics Coming Soon

The Mycosm development team is in the final stages of preparing our physics system for official release. The prototype is currently in final test. The feature set will include:
- Built over 'PhysX', the nVidia physics engine (although you won't need an nVida card to run the physics system).
- Turn your existing models (including terrain) into physical objects that can have all the usual physical properties, e.g. mass, friction, inertia, collision volumes etc.
- Create new physics bodies from primitive shapes, e.g. spheres, boxes, capsules etc.
- Use physics volumes independently of models, e.g. to construct invisible collision surfaces.
- Access the physics system from Python script to control and monitor physical behavior in real-time.
- Callbacks into your Python scripts to capture notifications of physics events, e.g. collisions between objects.

If anyone has an interest in physics, we'd be interested in hearing from you with any thoughts or questions you might have on the topic. And it's not too late to influence the design of the physics system that we release, or to request new features, particularly for the Python implementation.

You might also be interested in testing a private beta version of the physics implementation before it's released. If so, let us know.

MindTaffy

I am very interested. Will the physics introduced with PhysX interact with your Sky Physics (i.e. Wind, etc.)?! ;)

jeff_cotter

At first, not directly. The first physics release will contain physical objects and forces which you'll be able to manipulate from your Python scripts. So, even though there'll be no direct physical relationship with the sky, you can set an appropriate force to represent wind.

However, we are planning to provide a "physically aware" air mass in a later release of the physics system. What this means is that the "air" will then be a physical object which will interact with other physical objects in the environment. As physical objects move through the "air", the correct physical forces will be applied automatically (according to the standard airfoil and flat plate lift/drag equations). You'll get realistic behavior as an object moves through the air (or equivalently, if the object is stationary and "wind" is blowing). Because we'll be building in some of the standard airfoil equations, you'd be able to make a simple flight simulator out of all this.