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Phun is an educational, entertaining and
somewhat (!) addictive piece of
software for designing and exploring 2D multi-physics simulations in a
cartoony fashion. It is part of our
long term mission to bring visual physics based simulation to the
masses. The
application is developed for Umevatoriet,
Umeås new science
center, where it will run on a large interactive display, but you can
also download
it and run it on your own pc.
In Phun we combine several ambitions:
- A science center installation for Umevatoriet that also can
be used before and after a visit.
- To make physics fun. Even though Phun certainly
can do "falling bricks" it can also do alot more!
- To promote interest in science and technology
among kids, youth, students and most likely adults too... "- We wants students!"
- A high level of interactivity and a simple
and efficient interface that encourages creativity and exploration
(this is why we choose 2D over 3D) rather than efficiency and usage patterns influenced by the tool
- To enable learning using a constructionist approach, pretty much like Netlogo for complex systems
- To use fast and stable cutting-edge methods for
multi-physics simulation and solvers (i.e. Phun is also used to for
testing and developing new simulation methods and to produce scientific
results)
Future work will include lots of added funtionality and optimization,
on-line repositories of simulation components and scenes. A
research project will look at the learning aspects of Phun.
The development
of Phun was carried out as a MSc project by Computing Science
student Emil Ernerfeldt supervised by
Kenneth Bodin, HPC2N/VRlab.
Check it out in this video,
(xvid codec, also
available as wmv). For further information and downloading
Phun, visit Phunland.
You are also welcome to contact us with questions, proposals and ideas:
Kenneth Bodin, bodin@hpc2n.umu.se
Emil Ernerfeldt, phungame@gmail.com
Much credit also goes to:
Claude Lacoursière, claude@hpc2n.umu.se
The methods for rigid body contacts and constraints in Phun are based
on Dr Lacoursière's excellent work on regularized
variational
steppers. Read more in his thesis:
Ghosts
and machines: regularized variational methods for interactive
simulations of multibodies with dry frictional contacts.
Dept. of Computing Science, Umeå University, 2007
Have Phun!
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