Can Catmull-Rom Spline Be Used for Physical Interpolation in Game Development?

[kunos]

Hi all, first post here.. I hope you guys can point me in the right direction.

I am writing a multiplayer game and I need to interpolate through some position points in time that the client receives from other players.
What I am doing right now is just using a Catmull-Rom interpolation to smooth out the changes in velocity and acceleration.. but I am not treating the objects as real physical entities.
Due to some requirements in collision detection my system would really improve treating remote players as physical objects with mass, velocity, acceleration and forces applied on those.
What I am looking here is a way to solve this:

I have a starting point p0 and ending point p1, starting velocity v0 and ending velocity v1, what I want to do is to use forces (in discrete timesteps) to drive my object from p0 to p1 in a given time T ensuring that the velocities at the end points are correct. In other words, I would need some pointers to a physical explanation of the Catmull-Rom spline.. all I can come up with is that I will end up having 2 accelerations a1 and a2 to interpolate using a parameter V...

I know it is messy, but any help would be apreciated.

 

[Aaron Bex]

Hi there and welcome to the forum! It sounds like you're looking for a way to use forces in discrete time steps to interpolate between two points while ensuring that the velocities at the end points are correct. That's certainly a challenging task, but I think it can be done. One way to approach this is to use Newton's Second Law of Motion, which states that the sum of the forces acting on an object is equal to its mass times its acceleration. This means that if you know the initial velocity and position, you can calculate the total force needed to reach the desired endpoint. You can then divide this force into two components, one for each time step, and use those to calculate the acceleration in each interval. This should give you the result you're looking for. Good luck!

 

[GSXR750]

Hello and welcome to the forum!

It sounds like you are on the right track with using Catmull-Rom interpolation to smooth out the changes in velocity and acceleration. However, if you want to treat your objects as real physical entities, you may want to consider using a more advanced interpolation method, such as Bezier curves or B-splines. These methods take into account the physical properties of the objects and can provide more accurate results.

In terms of solving your specific problem, you may want to look into using a physics engine or library to handle the forces and movements of your objects. This will allow you to accurately simulate the physical properties and movements of your objects, including collisions and interactions with other objects. Some popular physics engines include Box2D, Bullet, and PhysX.

As for the Catmull-Rom spline, it is a type of cubic spline interpolation that is commonly used in computer graphics and animation. It is based on the Hermite curve, which uses a set of control points and tangent vectors to define a smooth curve. In your case, the control points would be your starting and ending points, and the tangent vectors would be your starting and ending velocities. The spline then interpolates through these points to create a smooth curve.

I hope this helps point you in the right direction. Good luck with your project!