Collective animal behaviorCollective animal behaviour is a form of social behavior involving the coordinated behavior of large groups of similar animals as well as emergent properties of these groups. This can include the costs and benefits of group membership, the transfer of information, decision-making process, locomotion and synchronization of the group. Studying the principles of collective animal behavior has relevance to human engineering problems through the philosophy of biomimetics.
Physics engineA physics engine is computer software that provides an approximate simulation of certain physical systems, such as rigid body dynamics (including collision detection), soft body dynamics, and fluid dynamics, of use in the domains of computer graphics, video games and film (). Their main uses are in video games (typically as middleware), in which case the simulations are in real-time. The term is sometimes used more generally to describe any software system for simulating physical phenomena, such as high-performance scientific simulation.
Dynamical simulationDynamical simulation, in computational physics, is the simulation of systems of objects that are free to move, usually in three dimensions according to Newton's laws of dynamics, or approximations thereof. Dynamical simulation is used in computer animation to assist animators to produce realistic motion, in industrial design (for example to simulate crashes as an early step in crash testing), and in video games. Body movement is calculated using time integration methods.
Particle systemA particle system is a technique in game physics, motion graphics, and computer graphics that uses many minute sprites, 3D models, or other graphic objects to simulate certain kinds of "fuzzy" phenomena, which are otherwise very hard to reproduce with conventional rendering techniques – usually highly chaotic systems, natural phenomena, or processes caused by chemical reactions.
Havok (software)Havok is a middleware software suite developed by the Irish company Havok. Havok provides a physics engine component and related functions to video games. In September 2007, Intel announced it had signed a definitive agreement to acquire Havok Inc. In 2008, Havok was honored at the 59th Annual Technology & Engineering Emmy Awards for advancing the development of physics engines in electronic entertainment. In October 2015, Microsoft announced it had acquired Havok.
PhysXPhysX is an open-source realtime physics engine middleware SDK developed by Nvidia as a part of Nvidia GameWorks software suite. Initially, video games supporting PhysX were meant to be accelerated by PhysX PPU (expansion cards designed by Ageia). However, after Ageia's acquisition by Nvidia, dedicated PhysX cards have been discontinued in favor of the API being run on CUDA-enabled GeForce GPUs. In both cases, hardware acceleration allowed for the offloading of physics calculations from the CPU, allowing it to perform other tasks instead.
Godot (game engine)Godot (ˈɡɒdoʊ) is a cross-platform, free and open-source game engine released under the MIT license. It was initially developed by Argentine software developers Juan Linietsky and Ariel Manzur for several companies in Latin America prior to its public release. The development environment runs on many platforms, and can export to several more. It is designed to create both 2D and 3D games targeting PC, mobile, and web platforms and can also be used to develop non-game software, including editors.
Unity (game engine)Unity is a cross-platform game engine developed by Unity Technologies, first announced and released in June 2005 at Apple Worldwide Developers Conference as a Mac OS X game engine. The engine has since been gradually extended to support a variety of desktop, mobile, console and virtual reality platforms. It is particularly popular for iOS and Android mobile game development, is considered easy to use for beginner developers, and is popular for indie game development.
