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Hypermatter Physical Components

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What are Hypermatter Physical Components?

Like a real component, a Hypermatter 'physical component' is a (physically based) composite object that is designed to fulfil a specific function, or to behave in a specific way. By attaching components to other components and/or ordinary Hyp objects, more complex, higher-level components can be constructed, to simulate such things as vehicles and simple machines and contraptions.

For example, a 'rotorunit' component consists of two rigid unit-cube Hyp objects that are constrained internally, each time-step, to be rotated relative to each other by a specified angle. A 'motorwheel' component consists of a rigid unit-cube 'motor' object and a soft, deformable 'wheel' object that are constrained internally, each time-step, to rotate relative to each other by a specified angular velocity (or to rotate freely, if in neutral gear).

A 'fully drivable' vehicle is constructed by attaching together these components, onto a Hyp object chassis/body. The front wheels can be 'steered' by attaching them to rotorunits, which, in turn, are attached to the chassis. The rear wheels are attached directly to the chassis.

To animate click on image

The constraint callback function of the vehicle, which is executed each time-step, takes as input a control structure containing the current values of various driving parameters, such as steering wheel angle, drive and brake modes, gear position, accelerator or brake pedal force/position, gravity, and front and rear wheel friction values. Each time it is called, the vehicle's constraint function executes the individual constraint functions of its various constituent components, according to the input parameters and the vehicle's own specifications and design features.

Vehicle Styles and Behaviours

Hypermatter vehicles are built from idealised equivalents of the same essential components that real or toy vehicles are built from.

Hypermatter’s physical component approach makes it extremely easy to construct many different types of physically based vehicle, and results in vehicular motion with many of the same nuances and subtleties of motion as real (or toy) vehicles. For example, the secondary motions and responses when a vehicle suddenly brakes, or accelerates, or turns a sharp corner, or suddenly lands on the ground.

The chassis/body of an HM vehicle is a regular Hyp object whose shape/structure can be edited to accommodate any geometry vehicle. Wider and longer vehicles, with low centres of gravity, are more stable and less prone to roll over if, say, cornering too fast or too tightly. The overall shape and size of the vehicle is one of the main factors determining how the vehicle will perform.

Other important factors include gravity and friction. By choosing these factors appropriately, vehicles can be custom designed to perform particular stunts, or to practice skid control, for example. If gravity is too high then the vehicle may not be able to climb steep hills or slopes. Too low, and there may not be sufficient traction force between the wheels and the ground.

The current vehicle demo is set up to enable skidding, and has a fairly low gravity. If you increase the gravity, but still want the vehicle to skid, you will need to also reduce the friction on the rear wheels. You can try this out, and see how simple and intuitive Hypermatter vehicles are to control.

A special `speed-up' parameter is included that can be tuned to gain optimal performances when running on systems with different computer speeds and display rates (fps). A balance can be made between slower running vehicles at higher display rates, and faster vehicles at lower display rates.

Main Features :

• Realism HM vehicles are built from actual 'physical components', enabling many different forms and shapes of vehicle to be constructed. These precisely engineered components, together with the accuracy of Hypermatter's underlying elasticity model and contact/collision algorithms, ensure extremely realistic and natural dynamics and responses.

Please note: To run the demo executable we recommend a reasonably fast PC. (On a single 2.8GHz processor, or dual 2.0Ghz processors, with a budget graphics card, we find that a SpeedUp of 5 or 6 works well).

Copyright 2009 OPL