A modular physics methodology for games

Currently, games with rich environments allowing a wide range of possible interactions and supporting a large number of physical simulations make use of a large number of scripts and bespoke physical simulations, adapted to fit the needs of the game. This thesis proposes a methodology that can be used to tie together various different physical simulations, both off-the-shelf and bespoke, such as rigid body physics, electrical and magnetic simulations to give something greater than the sum of the individual parts. We present a notation for designing the overall physical simulation and a means for the different parts to interact. Experiments using an implementation of the methodology containing electricity, rigid body simulation, magnetics (including electro-magnetics), buoyancy and sound show that it is possible to model everyday objects such an electric motor or a doorbell. These object work ‘as expected’, without the need for special scripts and new, originally unexpected, interactions are possible without further modification of the experiment setup.EThOS - Electronic Theses Online ServiceGBUnited Kingdo

Digital games as hypermedia literature

Digitale Spiele waren schon lange Gegenstand von wissenschaftlichen Studien, in letzter Zeit häuften sich die Diskussionen, ob Ansätze der traditionellen Medienwissenschaften auch auf digitale Spiele angewendet werden können, oder ob ein völlig neuer Zugang notwendig ist. Im Kontrast zu diesen Diskussionen stehen Publikationen aus dem Bereich der Spieleentwicklung selbst, die sich primär mit produktionstechnischen und ästhetischen Aspekten beschäftigen und damit oft Werke normativer Poetik hervorbringen. Diese Arbeit versucht, die Struktur von digitalen Spielen in einem Referenzsystem mit anderen Hypermedia-Artefakten zu platzieren um aufzuzeigen, welche Erzählstrukturen vorhanden sind und wie sie zustande kommen. Die Strukturen von untersuchten Spielen, Filmen und Hypertexten werden als Knoten-basierende Hypermediaartefakte behandelt. Darüberhinaus werden etliche Methoden untersucht, Erzählstrukturen zu generieren die nicht diesem System entsprechen. Im zweiten Teil der Arbeit werden visuelle Aspekte von digitalen Spielen denen der Kinofilme gegenübergestellt. Die Analyse der Strukturen zeigt, dass die Knoten-basierende Herangehensweise für eine Vielfalt von Hypermedia funktioniert, auch digitale Spiele. In diesem Sinne können digitale Spiele wie jede andere Form der Hypermedia behandelt werden ohne dass das Element der Interaktivität das Modell stört. Die behandelten dynamischen und teilweise autonomen Systeme Erzählstrukturen zu schaffen können in der kommerziellen Anwendung noch nicht beobachtet werden. Hier zeigt sich eher ein Trend zu linearen, film-artigen Strukturen. Dies wird auch im zweiten Teil der Arbeit bestätigt, wo gezeigt wird, dass auch die visuelle Seite der Spiele immer filmischere Qualitäten annimmt.Digital games have long been a focus of research; recently there have been more and more discussions whether traditional methods of media studies can be applied to digital games, or if an entirely new frame of reference is needed. This thesis attempts to put the structure of digital games into a frame of reference with other interactive and non-interactive hypermedia artefacts, showing which narrative structures exist and how they are generated. The narrative structures of the examined games, films and hypertexts are treated as node-based hypermedia. From this starting point, a number of strategies for the creation of dynamic narratives are examined that do not conform to the node-based approach. In the second part the visual side of digital games are examined with cinematic film as a comparison. The structural analysis shows that the node-based approach is useful for examining many forms of hypermedia, including games. In this sense, digital games can be treated as any other form of media, without the element of interactivity disrupting the model. The dynamic and sometimes autonomous methods of creating narratives cannot be observed in mainstream game development yet, the current trends in the field point towards more linear, film-like presentation and layout of narratives. This analogy is confirmed on the visual side well, where digital games acquire more and more filmic traits

Tree Structure Retrieval for Apple Trees from 3D Pointcloud

3D reconstruction is a challenging problem and has been an important research topic in the areas of remote sensing and computer vision for many years. Existing 3D reconstruction approaches are not suitable for orchard applications due to complicated tree structures. Current tree reconstruction has included models specific to trees of a certain density, but the impact of varying Leaf Area Index(LAI) on model performance has not been studied. To better manage an apple orchard, this thesis proposes methods for evaluating an apple canopy density mapping system as an input for a variable-rate sprayer for both trellis-structured (2D) and standalone (3D) apple orchards using a 2D LiDAR (Light Detection and Ranging). The canopy density mapping system has been validated for robustness and repeatability with multiple scans. The consistency of the whole row during multiple passes has a correlation R^2 = 0.97. The proposed system will help the decision-making in a variable-rate sprayer. To further study the individual tree structure, this thesis proposes a novel and fast approach to reconstruct and analyse 3D trees over a range of Leaf Area Index (LAI) values from LiDAR for morphology analysis for height, branch length and angles of real and simulated apple trees. After using Principal Component Analysis (PCA) to extract the trunk points, an improved Mean Shift algorithm is introduced as Adapted Mean Shift (AMS) to classify different branch clusters and extract the branch nodes. A full evaluation workflow of tree parameters including trunk and branches is introduced for morphology analysis to investigate the accuracy of the approach over different LAI values. Tree height, branch length, and branch angles were analysed and compared to the ground truth for trees with a range of LAI values. When the LAI is smaller than 0.1, the accuracy for height and length is greater than 90\% and the accuracy for the angles is around 80\%. When the LAI is greater than 0.1, the branch accuracy reduces to 40\%. This analysis of tree reconstruction performance concerning LAI values, as well as the combination of efficient and accurate structure reconstruction, opens the possibility of improving orchard management and botanical studies on a large scale. To improve the accuracy of traditional tree structure analysis, a deep learning approach is introduced to pre-process and classify unbalanced, in-homogeneous, and noisy point cloud data. TreeNet is inspired by 3D U-Net, adding classes and median filters to segment trunk, branch, and leave parts. TreeNet outperformed 3D U-Net and SVM in the case of Kappa, Matthews Correlation Coefficient(MCC), and F1-score value in segmentation. The TreeNet-AMS combined method also showed improvement in tree structure analysis than the traditional AMS method mentioned above. Following on from this research, efficient tree structure analysis on tree height, trunk length, branch position, and branch length could be conducted. Knowing the tree morphology is proved to be closely relevant to thinning, spraying and yield, the proposed work will then largely benefit the relevant studies in agriculture and forestry

Queensland University of Technology: Handbook 2009

The Queensland University of Technology handbook gives an outline of the faculties and subject offerings available that were offered by QUT

Simulation of Imagined Realities: Environmental Design Decision Support Tools in Architecture

The spur for this research was a lack of use by architecture practitioners of the environmental design decision support tools (eddst’s) they learn to use during their education. It was hypothesised that lessons for the improvement of eddst’s could be found in a systematic examination of the problems encountered by design teams with a range of currently available eddst’s. The research plan was to establish through surveys and case studies how practising architects who have tried to use building eddst’s assess the effectiveness of these tools. A range of different types of eddst was examined, each addressing a different aspect of the environment in buildings. The research did not achieve its original goal of developing a formula for the generation of new eddst’s for architects in the fields of building acoustics, lighting, thermal design and aerodynamics. What was found is a more fundamental common denominator underlying building design eddst’s: the need for built-in Quality Assurance measures that assure not only the architect, but also the simulationist and the client of the reality of the ebuilding performance predictions. It was found that contrary to their general reputation, designers do want detailed quantitative environmental information. They want to be able to discuss costs and benefits of decisions. However, they also want to be able to understand and trust this information. The output from eddst’s must therefore also be qualitative in the sense that it communicates the quality of life resulting from a design decision. What is proposed therefore for designers and simulationists is Quality Assurance (QA) procedures that are codified and incorporated into the design tools themselves. These are to ensure that the ‘black box’ of a digital simulation of building performance yields information that designers feel they can trust. The research demonstrates that to address the issues identified in the practitioner surveys, a Quality Control (QC) reality test is the single most important feature needed in any QA process. This would be a reality test that examines whether the ebuildings constructed with an eddst behave in a believable manner - like a ‘real’ building. The proposed Simulation QA (SimQA) approach is an internet web service. It is a database of the databases available on the internet of Quality Assured performance data. Each time a person sets up a new Quality tested eddst input file or measures a building, it becomes another “data point” - another database listed in the SimQA metadata. Also required in a robust QA process is the development of international norms for the simulation of building performance. www.aecsimqa.net is proposed as the venue for the development of an international documentation standard for simulation. Finally, modern computer-based building performance simulation has not rid the design profession of its traditional problem with design tools: that they evaluate completed designs. The proposed database will make web-accessible a set of tested building designs and their associated performance measures. Placed at the designer’s fingertips this will reveal insights into how their current building design should perform. It should be possible to generate initial design ideas based on systematic study of the successful precedents

Programming Languages and Systems

This open access book constitutes the proceedings of the 30th European Symposium on Programming, ESOP 2021, which was held during March 27 until April 1, 2021, as part of the European Joint Conferences on Theory and Practice of Software, ETAPS 2021. The conference was planned to take place in Luxembourg and changed to an online format due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The 24 papers included in this volume were carefully reviewed and selected from 79 submissions. They deal with fundamental issues in the specification, design, analysis, and implementation of programming languages and systems

Education handbook

2002 handbook for the faculty of Educatio

Queensland University of Technology: Handbook 2010

The Queensland University of Technology handbook gives an outline of the faculties and subject offerings available that were offered by QUT

Education handbook

2003 handbook for the faculty of Educatio

Real Time Animation of Trees Based on BBSC in Computer Games

That researchers in the field of computer games usually find it is difficult to simulate the motion of actual 3D model trees lies in the fact that the tree model itself has very complicated structure, and many sophisticated factors need to be considered during the simulation. Though there are some works on simulating 3D tree and its motion, few of them are used in computer games due to the high demand for real-time in computer games. In this paper, an approach of animating trees in computer games based on a novel tree model representation—Ball B-Spline Curves (BBSCs) are proposed. By taking advantage of the good features of the BBSC-based model, physical simulation of the motion of leafless trees with wind blowing becomes easier and more efficient. The method can generate realistic 3D tree animation in real-time, which meets the high requirement for real time in computer games