Worksheet 4 with Comments

CS1004a Honours Project Worksheet 4

Introduction:
Fluid flows are everywhere from rising smoke, clouds and mist to the flows of rivers and oceans. Because one of the major goals of games is to immerse players into plausible virtual worlds, it is desirable to include fluid flows into games engines (Stam 2003). Therefore there are a lot of techniques which have been developed over years that have varying effects.
With the improvements in graphics and processors over the years what is the best technique to use for the current generation of hardware?
The aim of this project is to find out through research and experimentation what is the best technique to use to produce real-time fluid simulations which has good visuals and performs fast?

I think it sounds like a good topic to approach, since many games have been lacking a realistic looking fluid system and only focusing on speed. Bioshock was the last game I remember seeing where the developers spent a lot of time on the realistic visuals for that water.

Issues:
There are a lot of dedicated applications out there which use algorithms which strive for accuracy and are fairly complex and time consuming but these applications need to be physically accurate. However in computer graphics and in games what matters most is that the simulations both look convincing and are fast (Stam 2003). So the main issue I want to address is what is the best technique to use for fluid simulation in games? This technique must look visually good and doesn’t slow the frame rate greatly

Sounds like good way of going around it, but I was wondering if the time scale allows you to look over the wide range of fluid systems. Would modelling the dynamics of a river allow you enough time look over cloud systems?

Research Question:
“Can fluid reactions with objects be accurately simulated in a real-time environment using numerical techniques?”

Addressing the Question:
Research into existing work on fluid simulation is one of the first steps that must be carried in order to find the best techniques or techniques for implementing an application demo. Also possible improvements will be looked into for these techniques.
An application demo will be created in either Direct X or OpenGL in order to answer the question. An application demo will first be designed to show a 2D version of a fluid where the technique decided during the research will be used to show how fluid reacts when it comes into contact with stationary objects. Then the 2D version will be expanded into a 3D application and will show how the fluid reacts when objects are dropped into the fluid.

Would a varying scene including different object and landscapes be feasible for the different types of fluids?

Progress:
So far I have done a lot of research into the techniques that are out there. I have read a lot into the techniques in both Jos Stam and Nick Fosters papers on fluid dynamics. These techniques have given me some ideas on what equations are good to use to represent certain physical properties of fluid. They have also talked a lot on Navier-Stoke equations which have influenced what I need to research as it has come apparent that these are helpful to simulate the properties of fluid.

Although it may be lacking in technical details I believe high end graphics development programs such as 3ds Max might show examples and features that could be used for a template in your application.

References:

Stam, J. 2003. Real-Time Fluid Dynamics for Games. [online] Available from: http://www.dgp.toronto.edu/people/stam/reality/Research/pdf/GDC03.pdf [Accessed 05 November 2008]