Project 2

CS 493, Dr. Lawlor

The idea for the projects is for you to write a complete end-to-end simulator of something you're interested in: similar to the homeworks, but in more depth, and on a topic of your choice.

Be ready to talk about what you want to build in-class on Thursday, April 18. This session is designed as an opportunity for N-way advice, discussion, and collaboration.

Describe exactly what physics you're planning to simulate: what phenomena make it interesting, what it might be useful for, and generally how it works.
Describe exactly how you want to simulate it: what equations you'll use, how you'll discretize them, how you'll ensure stability, how fast you expect it to run, etc.
Describe your user interface for it. A good UI is really important!

Give me some rough draft code (working, but not complete) on Thursday, April 25.
Present your progress in-class on Thursday, May 2. Be ready to talk for about 10 minutes.
Turn in a final draft after the final exam on Tuesday, May 7. This version should (1) work completely, (2) look good, and (3) have some attempt at a dimensional analysis--in the code, you should explain what equations and units your simulation uses.

Possible Topics (or pick your own!)

Choose any one of these topics, or pick your own topic. Remember you have about a month to finish everything, so keep it simple! If these seem too big, feel free to simplify them in your "topic" discussion.

Extend any of your homeworks, from this class or another class.
Extend your project 1 topic (if you liked it!).
Pick a technical paper you're interested in, and implement something related.
Do something interesting with 2D fluid dynamics: simulate the combustion of gasses or solids, let solar heat and humidity form clouds, switch the rectangular 2D grid to hexogonal by adjusting the coordinate lookup, etc!
Reaction-diffusion textures (of any type), on the graphics card or off.
Many independent agents, like people fleeing a fire or a freeway traffic jam.
Simulate plant growth, such as via a pheremone signaling equation, or something discrete like L systems.
Simulate waves, such as using the wave equation, or something different like wave particles or FFT ocean synthesis.
Rigid bodies rotating and colliding in space. There are lots of good libraries for this, including Newton and ODE.
Non-rigid bodies, such as cloth, clay, or rubber.
Hair simulation, like mass-spring models.
Simple cellular automata (e.g., Conway's Game of Life). These are especially fun to write on the graphics card using a pixel shader!
Or pick some other simulation you're interested in, and can find useful data on!

Note that the above links are chosen purely on the basis of visual coolness; better links explaining the above techniques undoubtably exist!