Palmer G. Physics for Game Programmers

Apress, 2005. — 472 p. — ISBN10: 159059472X ISBN13: 978-1590594728Welcome to the wonderful world of physics. You may be thinking that wonderful and physics don’t belong in the same sentence. Once you start to learn a little physics, however, you will find that it is a really interesting and rewarding subject because you will begin to gain an understanding of how things work. You will learn, for example, why a golf ball hooks or slices. You will also learn that physics really isn’t as hard as you might have thought it was. Just a few basic concepts are pretty much all you need to start adding realistic physics into your game programs.
I’ve been a computer programmer and aerospace engineer working for NASA for the past 20 years. I really like my job, but one of the things I don’t like is when I have to research the physical model for one of the programs I’m writing. Inevitably the references I find are incomplete. Either they don’t fully explain things or they forget to include key elements of the model. Then I have to try to find another resource to fill in the missing pieces. This process can be very frustrating and time consuming.
What I have tried to do with this book is to spare you as a game programmer from this torturous process. This book is intended to give you all the information you need to install realistic physics into your game programs. This book will be the resource that you will turn to for all of your physics needs. For example, if you want to create a car race game, this book will give you not only the basic acceleration equations for a car, but also the drag coefficient for a sportscar and the equations that govern skidding and turning. You won’t have to endlessly search the Internet or dig up another book to fill in the missing pieces.