Interaction with Dynamic Large Bodies in Efficient, Real-Time Water Simulation

Abstract

Water is an important part of nature. Interactively simulating large areas of flowing water would be a welcome addition to many virtual worlds, but the simulation is computationally demanding. Another problem is combining the simulation with rigid bodies, which are the most common interaction solution in virtual worlds. Heightfield water simulation is fast, but is especially hard to couple with rigid bodies: Usually water simply flows through the bodies. We propose a method that generalizes the extremely fast virtual pipe method to handle large, dynamic bodies. Our method diverts water around the objects. This enables us, for example, to dynamically build and destroy dams on rivers in a large virtual world.