New Course offering: DATASCI 3VG3

DATASCI 3VG3 – Physics for Video Games is new course offerred in Winter 2023/2024 by Physics and Astronomy at McMaster. A physics engine is computer code that determines how things move, collide and bounce off each other inside a game. Physics engines are based on first year physics concepts like mechanics and rotation. However, they must perform in an intense, high-performance environment, moving hundreds of objects at 60 frames per second and pumping all that information to the 3d graphics card to show the player. This requires clever algorithms and fast code that takes best advantage of the hardware like graphics cards as well as the CPU. The results look cool but are not always accurate and sometime fail spectacularly. In the course students will code up their own simple physics engine in Python and see it in action on their laptop. They will gain an understanding of the physics of collisions, rigid bodies and connected objects. They will learn how to create and use game engine software and visualize their results in real time using the Panda3d game engine.

The instructor will be James Wadsley who also currently teaches DATASCI 2G03. Physics for Video Games will be open to science students and engineers.

Dr. James Wadsley:  wadsley@mcmaster.ca