1. A Spring 2005 CS 426 Senior Project By Group 15 John Studebaker, Justin Gerthoffer, David Colborne CSE Dept., University of Nevada, Reno Advisors (CSE Dept., University of Nevada, Reno): Dr. Sergiu Dascalu, Dr. Frederick Harris, Brian Westphal, Jeff Stuart Introduction Thraxion is a software project designed to allow the user to easily design a three dimensional scene that can be performed in real time. A rudimentary physics engine, already built by Jon Studebaker and Justin Gerthoffer, was the basis for the present engine. Ease of use and making the existing engine more accurate are two of the major goals of this project. The software allows the building of scenes to display what would happen under a set of initial conditions set by the user. The environment allows for spheres colliding with solid objects, distance constraints between objects and solid object collision. It allows for the saving and loading of three dimensional scenes for running at later times. The users are able to choose pre-built objects and create almost any environment they wish with them. Almost anyone should be able to benefit from the program since ease of use is one of its major goals. Target audiences include younger students who might wish to see what they have learned about basic Newtonian physics in action, as well as programmers looking for an easy-to-use three dimensional collision simulator for a graphics engine. The program is novel in that it is basic, moderately fast, and easy to use, yet it is still able to create and manage complex three dimensional simulations. It could be a perfect tool for quick demonstrations in 3D involving basic physics. Abstract Thraxion is a user interactive 3D action simulator that models the behavior of objects in motion. Using a physics engine and collision detection, Thraxion is able to model the behavior of objects of varying mass, size, composition, and texture colliding against each other. The user is able to create objects, edit the force directions and magnitudes action upon the objects, and may then begin a simulation based on these parameters. The user may then save the initial conditions of the simulation, load different initial conditions, or create a new scenario. Because Thraxion is based on OpenGL and the Qt user interface libraries, it has multiple platform support and is being actively developed on Linux and Mac OS X. Figure 1 Figures: Figure 1 – Layered Architectural Diagram Figure 2 – Screen Shot – Design View (OS X) Figure 3 – Screen Shot – Demo View (Linux) Future Work Much remains to be done, or, at least, there is plenty of room for improvement. One of the improvements that could be made include revising the collision detection algorithm such that it uses an efficient tree-based structure, for greater performance. Other improvements could be made in the user interface, making the buttons and menu options more inherently meaningful. A useful help system could be incorporated into the software, allowing greater usability for new users. The Macintosh version user interface can be modified so that it more closely resembles and behaves like a native Mactintosh application. Support for additional operating systems, including full support for Windows XP, could be useful. Allowing screens to be printed is another possibility. Allowing Thraxion to be scripted, such that objects and forces may be edited through a script window, similar to an HTML edit form, and allowing Thraxion save files to be scripted could greatly enhance productivity for potential power-users of Thraxion. Additional built-in shape types and editing functions would be useful. Ultimately, the possible work that can be put into Thraxion is almost endless, and dependent on what application domains Thraxion ends up inhabiting. If it becomes something of a multipurpose 3D editor, similar in nature to GIMP, then numerous features may be added, including text-on-object support. However, if Thraxion develops into more of an add-on to a gaming engine, or a gaming engine itself, optimizing the code for performance and memory will take on much greater importance. This project was developed in CS 426 Senior Projects during the Spring 2005 semester Conclusions The Thraxion action simulation software is an innovative, low cost and low overhead solution where users can experiment and interact with a basic physics and graphics engine. The focus of Thraxion has been on creating a multi-platform 3D simulation engine that is rich in functionality but low on total overhead in terms of memory and speed. The possibilities for utilizing our work are endless and could involve applications such as game design, computer animation, or even educational applications. For game design, Thraxion may serve as a basic collision detection engine that could be useful for simulating the effect of object collisions on background objects. Computer animation may benefit from having Thraxion handle the basic collisions and interactions between simple objects, leaving the complicated collisions and interactions to more complex programs that incur greater overhead. For educational applications, Thraxion could serve as an easy-to-use demonstration tool of basic Newtonian physics on multiple objects for the high school or early college level. Thraxion could also serve an educational purpose as a simple, working, non-theoretical example of how to implement a low-cost, low-overhead 3D collision engine. Consequently, further refinements in code and collision detection algorithms used would result in a stronger application for any of these domains. Figure 2Figure 3