Bounding Spheres

The direction is a vector between the centres of the spheres.

To find the actual point of collision you can simply scale that vector by the radius of one sphere and add it to the sphere''s position vector (just be careful which sphere you use as the direction''s initial point and which as the terminal point).

actually, the equation is very simple for a perfectly elastic collision (like 2 really really really super boncey balls smacking into each other, rather than an inelastic collision like 2 cars, 2 football players, 2 wads of grape jelly, etc...)

anyway, each sphere will have a velocity x,y,z

(as long as both spheres are of equal mass)
sphere1 = x1,y1,z1
sphere2 = x2,y2,z2

after collision:
sphere1 = x2,y2,z2
sphere2 = x1,y1,z1


that looks silly, but they really do just take each others velocity. i have to run back to work, but if you want a less elastic collision (perfectly elastic collisions don''t occur in the real world) or formulas for 2 objects of different mass post again, i am sure anyone with a college pissics book on their shelf can look up the formulas for you.

Brett Lynnes
cheez_keeper@hotmail.com

quote:

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after collision:
sphere1 = x2,y2,z2
sphere2 = x1,y1,z1

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thats only correct if the collision is head on, if it''s off center, it gets more complicated.

NeHe has a great example on how to calculate the resulting velocities (at nehe.gamedev.net). I think it''s tutorial #31.

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emptyhead
Watch out for advice from the successfull, they don''t want company