TITLE: 3D Pool
NAME: Chris Jeppesen
COUNTRY: USA
EMAIL: chrisj@digiquill.com
WEBPAGE: http://www.digiquill.com/kwansys/index.txt
TOPIC: Games
COPYRIGHT: I SUBMIT TO THE STANDARD RAYTRACING COMPETITION COPYRIGHT.
MPGFILE: cdjpool.mpg
ZIPFILE: cdjpool.zip
RENDERER USED: 
    POV-Ray for Windows v3.10

TOOLS USED: 

  Person.inc, Created by Hero Ngauv
  cmpeg.exe
  sPatch.exe

CREATION TIME: 

  about 2 1/2 months design
  Final render time: About 30 hours on 3 machines


HARDWARE USED: 

  AMD K6 266MHz w/ 128MB RAM
  AMD K6 233MHz w/  64MB RAM
  AMD K5 166MHz w/  32MB RAM


ANIMATION DESCRIPTION: 

  Everyone knows that All Work and No Play makes Jack a dull boy. So, Astronaut

Johnny Lingo has put together a small game room on board the Space Station
Kwan.
He put together a three-dimensional pool table from some PVC pipe and
plexiglass
and hooked it to the station computer so he would have someone to play against 
when everyone else was outside working.
  
  3D Pool is played with 14 striped and solid colored balls and one cue ball.
The
object is basically the same as two dimensional Eight-Ball, except there are
two
black balls, one striped and one solid. The object is to pocket all your balls,
black one last, before the opponent does.

  Since the pool table is completely boxed in, cue sticks cannot work. Instead,

there is a series of electric coils embedded in the rails of the table. The cue

ball has a solid aluminum core, so it reacts to the coils. The other balls are
solid plastic, and therefore inert. The coils are synchronized and controlled
by
the computer to simulate the action of a stick on the cue ball. So that you can
see where you will shoot, holographic film has been attached to all six faces
of
the table. An imaginary cue stick is projected holographically. 

  The computer figures its shots mathematically. The person lines up the image
of
the cue where he wants to shoot, with a hand controller.


VIEWING RECOMMENDATIONS: 

  Any old MPEG player should work, preferrably run it at 15-20 fps. I've tested
it
with Microsoft ActiveMovie player and VMPEG.


DESCRIPTION OF HOW THIS ANIMATION WAS CREATED: 

  This animation makes extensive use of arrays, macros, loops, and file I/O to 
figure the trajectory of the pool balls. The hardest part of this project was 
the mechanics engine, an .inc file with several macros. This file uses the
standard
conservation of energy and momentum formulas, for the special case of all the
balls
having the same size and mass. It keeps two arrays of vectors, one element for
each
ball. The formulas are stepped 20 times for each frame, a total of 16000 steps
in
this animation. 

  Before each shot, the aimer looks for a shot that is not too indirect, and
not
blocked by other balls. This is simple vector math. In another version I may