VorteGrid

Video games appeal to our desire to explore and interact with our environment, and adding real-world phenomena-such as fluid motion-allows game developers to create immersive and fun virtual worlds. Recently, physical simulations have become more realistic, but the simulations have largely been limited to rigid bodies. Pervasive simulations of continuous media like cloth and fluids remain uncommon, largely because fluid dynamics entail conceptual and computational challenges that make simulating fluids difficult. This article begins a series that explains fluid dynamics and its simulation techniques. The series culminates in an example of a fluid simulation algorithm suitable for use in a video game.