User:Al Da Best
Personal Information[edit]
Name: Alex Taylor
Email: alex.taylor42@live.co.uk
IRC Name: Al_Da_Best
Brief Background: I am 18 years old, in my first year studying Aeronautical Engineering at Loughborough University (UK). I left College with high grades in maths, physics and computing, with maths being my strongest point academically.
Google Summer of Code 2012[edit]
The current simulation available in BRL-CAD has not been developed in depth, and is quite limited in its implementation. It can currently only simulate very basic situations in vacuums. For this project I aim to vastly improve this area by adding additional features such as variable fluid for the object to fall through, a variable ground surface which would allow simulating reactions from it through use of the coefficient of restitution and other such formulae. Another feature would be to allow for variable gravity, since gravity is weaker at greater distances from the Earth, and indeed other large masses. After some thought and looking at the available physics engines I have opted to go with the Bullet engine. The reasons for this include its superior capability to constantly check for collisions, combined with its relatively fast simulations compared to, say, ODE and it is already integrated to some extent into BRL-CAD.
