Restoration of realistic animation is a critical part in the area of computer graphics. The goal of this sort of simulation is to imitate the behavior of the transformation in real life to the greatest extent. Physics-based simulation provides a solid background and proficient theories that can be applied in the simulation. In this dissertation, I will present real-time simulations which are physics-based in the area of terrain deformation and ship oscillations. When ground vehicles navigate on soft terrains such as sand, snow and mud, they often leave distinctive tracks. The realistic simulation of such vehicle-terrain interaction is important for ground based visual simulations and many video games. However, the existing research in terrain deformation has not addressed this issue effectively. In this dissertation, I present a new terrain deformation algorithm for simulating vehicle-terrain interaction in real time. The algorithm is based on the classic terramechanics theories, and calculates terrain deformation according to the vehicle load, velocity, tire size, and soil concentration. As a result, this algorithm can simulate different vehicle tracks on different types of terrains with different vehicle properties. I demonstrate my algorithm by vehicle tracks on soft terrain. In the field of ship oscillation simulation, I propose a new method for simulating ship motions in waves. Although there have been plenty of previous work on physics based fluid-solid simulation, most of these methods are not suitable for real-time applications. In particular, few methods are designed specifically for simulating ship motion in waves. My method is based on physics theories of ship motion, but with necessary simplifications to ensure real-time performance. My results show that this method is well suited to simulate sophisticated ship motions in real time applications.

Background. Being able to modify virtual environments can create immersive experiences for video-game players. Storing data as volumetric scalar fields allows for highly modifiable 3D environments that can be converted into GPU-friendly triangles with isosurface algorithms. Using scalar fields and isosurface algorithms can be more computationally expensive and require more data than the more commonly used polygonal models. Objectives. The aim of this thesis is to explore solutions to modifying real-time 3D environments with isosurface algorithms. This will be done in two parts. First in terms of observing how modern games deal with storing scalar fields, researching which isosurface algorithms are being used and how they are being used in games. The second part is to create an application and limit the data storage required while still running at a real-time speed. Methods. There are two methods to achieve the aim. The first is to research and see which data structures and isosurface algorithms are being used in modern games and how they are utilized. The second method will be done by implementation. The implementation will use the GPU through compute shaders and use marching cubes as isosurface algorithm. It will utilize Christopher Dyken’s Histogram Pyramids for stream compaction. Two different versions will be implemented that differ in terms of what data types will be used for storage. The first using the data type char and the second int. Between these two versions, the runtime speed will be measured and compared on two different hardware configurations. Results. Finding good data on what algorithms games use is difficult. Modern games are using scalar fields in many different ways: Some allow almost complete modification of terrain, others only use it for a 3D environment. For data storage, octrees and chunks are two common ways to store the fields. Dual Contouring appears to be the primary isosurface algorithm being used based on the researched games. The results of the implementation were very fast and usable in real time environments for destruction of terrain on a large scale. The less storage intensive variation of this implementation(char) gave faster results on modern hardware but the opposite(int) was true on older hardware. Conclusions. Modifying scalar field terrain is done at a very large scale in modern games. The choice of using Dual Contouring or Marching Cubes depends on the use-case. For areas where sharp features can be important Dual Contouring is the preferred choice. Likely for these reasons Dual Contouring was found to be a popular choice in the studied games. For other areas, like many types of terrain, Marching Cubes is very fast, as can be seen in the implementation. By using the char version of the implementation, interacting with the environment in real-time is possible at high frame-rates.