Collision detection is going to be very important in future games IMO; the scenario of spawning heaps of boxes in gmod relies upon collision detection, and if a GPU could handle that then it would make the amount of collisions possible be raised by a huge factor.
In the future, I hope to see games that have collisions like ricocheting bullets and shrapnel, or even the ability for props to warp or shatter realisticly under impact, instead of just disintegrating or a image of a bullet hole appearing.
That would be frickin awesome!
There is no 3D game it isn't important in. Without it, you, your units, your allies, your foes, the guns, the wammo, and everything else that can move will fall through the floor and never stop falling until it throws some mathematical exception.
The thing is, most (if not all) games can get by with very simplified physics including collision detection. It is literally as simple as this:
Code:
if (z < floor)
// you fell off the map
else
// you're still on, or above, the floor
Even simulating a bullets motion isn't very hard. What makes it hard is details:
a) Is there wind blowing?
b) Is gravity involved?
c) Is there humidty?
d) What's the air pressure and density?
e) What is the muzzle velocity?
f) Do we make objects react to impact? If so, how complex?
etc.
Add on top of that, the volume of bullets created by a minigun. Then add on top of that 20 enemies firing mini guns at you at the same time. Do you make the enemies all show and their hits just a probability with no physics at all? Do you just not allow that many miniguns in the scene at a time? etc.
The early games broke down the physics of firing to as simple as this:
Code:
if (cursor.target == enemy.hitbox)
// enemy hurt
else
// not hit
As the average computer grows more powerful, developers are adding more and more physics calculations, triangles on characters/walls/objects, and more objects that aren't attached to something.
But, as always, it is the graphics that are still killing performance more than anything else (binary sucks for graphics). So the more physics calculations you add, it is still the ability to render graphics that is dragging the performance down. Physics, except in games that are centered around it like World of Goo and Portal, just aren't that high of a priority.
