Physics!

Abstract

There are many games for iOS that utilize a physics simulator to control the motion of actors. In general, this usually means some library is included in the game that describes the motion of bodies in a realistic way, using real physics formulas and concepts like mass, momentum, velocity, and other principles used to describe the real world. Do physics engines provide a perfect simulation of how objects move? Not really. For starters, we will be working with the library Box2D. As the name implies, it simulates the interaction of two-dimensional (2D) bodies, which is clearly not an accurate representation of reality. However, Box2D does provide a level of realism that is good enough to trick our monkey brains into believing that things in the game are moving in a realistic way.