Lagoa Multiphysics 1.0 – Teaser from Thiago Costa on Vimeo.

Computers and physics go together like Jimi Hendrix and a guitar. One was practically made for the other.  Computational physics was one of the very first applications of computers and, indeed, along with decrypting military codes, virtual physics was one of the very uses that lead to the development of the modern computer.

However, while certain physical problems are easily solvable with sufficient computational power, many of the more common ‘real-world’ physics that surround us are much more difficult to simulate.  While dropping your clothes in a pile on the floor might be easier than washing them, simulating the behavior of such an action would be extremely difficult.  Non-rigid physics of objects like cloth, water, putty,etc is very difficult to do.

Still, the folks over at Lagao Technologies (there’s not much there, but the owner says more is coming soon) have come up with an absolutely amazing and super powerful physics engine for representing exactly this sort of interaction! How long these take to render at video-game or movie quality is anyone’s guess, but as processing power increases there is a lot of potential here.

Lagao Technologies

Via CrunchGear.