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Electricity/Magnetism?

Posted: Tue Feb 18, 2014 4:21 am
by snoozbuster
Hey! Been a while since I've posted here, but no matter.
I was just wondering; have you ever thought about adding E&M support to BEPU? It is technically a part of physics, after all! Although I can envision parts being hard (magnetism in general, for example; flux and EM fields would probably be tricky to simulate), it seems like basic E&M (or just electricity) wouldn't be immensely hard. Have you ever thought about it?

Re: Electricity/Magnetism?

Posted: Tue Feb 18, 2014 10:44 pm
by Norbo
There's no significant overlap between the systems in place for rigid body dynamics and EM. It would basically end up being a fully separate module which boils down to impulses applied to rigid bodies. (If that- there are a lot of elements of EM simulation which would not serve rigid body dynamics, and so would be entirely separate.)

It is pretty easy to compute the forces relevant to rigid bodies from physically-based EM fields and so on, but the degree of fidelity and type of simulation required is extremely application specific. Because of that (and because my own projects don't really need it :)), it's one of those things I think is best left to users.

Re: Electricity/Magnetism?

Posted: Wed Feb 19, 2014 1:42 am
by snoozbuster
Fair enough! E&M was the part of physics I enjoyed the most when I took the calc-based physics series at my community college; I wish my professor would have done a better job, but you take what you can get I suppose.