Time integration method in P2 physics

[Gan_HOPE326]

Hi all,

 

I've just experienced some trouble with P2 physics. My game uses Newtonian gravity, which requires pretty good integration, and I get some huge errors by just using basic P2 methods (applyForce etc.). My guess is, this is an integration problem, since Newtonian gravity is notoriously hard to integrate numerically. I was considering some fixes, but does anyone know first what integration method does P2 use for its physics step, and if it is possible to change it to a more expensive and precise one? For example, could I do a leapfrog or a Runge-Kutta without editing the source code? I don't know where to find these methods either, I've tried searching the source code but didn't find it. Thanks!

[Oscar Abraham]

The P2 Physics in the phaser documentation is only a wrapper for the p2.js library. Not all its properties are exposed in the wrapper. For example, to access the real p2js body in a phaser body, you need to access its data property.

Here is the p2.js library, with all the information you need: https://github.com/schteppe/p2.js
 

--

P.D.
Sorry. Edit.

Also, maybe you are expecting applyForce to work l ike applyImpulse in Box2D? It happened to me. applyForce just adds to the forces applied over time; it factors dt in. There is no applyImpulse, but you could just multiply the force with your expected dt.

[Gan_HOPE326]

The P2 Physics in the phaser documentation is only a wrapper for the p2.js library. Not all its properties are exposed in the wrapper. For example, to access the real p2js body in a phaser body, you need to access its data property.

Here is the p2.js library, with all the information you need: https://github.com/schteppe/p2.js

 

--

P.D.

Sorry. Edit.

Also, maybe you are expecting applyForce to work l ike applyImpulse in Box2D? It happened to me. applyForce just adds to the forces applied over time; it factors dt in. There is no applyImpulse, but you could just multiply the force with your expected dt.

 

 

Thanks!

No, I wasn't expecting applyForce to work like that, I never used Box2D anyway. In fact, I'm a physicist, so I would have never mixed the two  . What happens is that basically I have my little starship trying to orbit around a planet with gravity going like 1/r^2, but the energy isn't conserved properly and the rocket spirals down to its doom without even completing one loop. I know numerical imperfections are unavoidable, but didn't expect them to be THIS bad. So I was considering making the position a kinematic variable and integrating it on my own, but since that requires more work I was wondering whether it could be avoided. Checking P2.js though it looks like the integration is carried out using the "naive" Euler method (v(t+dt) = v(t) + a(t)*dt; x(t+dt) = x(t) + v(t+dt)*dt;) and there aren't any options for slightly more expensive but more precise methods like Runge-Kutta. So it looks like I'm on my own for this one (either that, or I make an addition to P2 myself...).

EDIT:

Alright, I found out the issue... it was something really stupid, in fact. I didn't know it, but the body.damping parameter was set to 0.1 by default, thus leading to the body slowly losing kinetic energy... I didn't realize it when it was just moving in vacuum, but as soon as planets were added it became dramatically relevant. Just setting body.damping = 0 solved everything!

[Oscar Abraham]

: ) You should do that. I often find that physics written on javascript aren't usually very stable, I supose it is because javascript is kind of heavy. Asm is doing great things on Firefox, though. I hope you do make the contribution to P2.js, it would be really cool.

 

The best javascript written physics library I know is the one that comes with Turbulenz, but Turbulenz is so complicated and I am to lazy that I mostly leave everything related to it alone.