UI long term development perspective: physics engine

[Steven **]

Umm...  I don't think you need a full physics engine for the stuff
you're talking about.

Having a scroll that isn't a 1:1 map to the user's action isn't hard.
It's just an extra calculation in the scroll code.

I think it's a great idea to have some rate-aiding on scrolling.  But
I think an actual physics engine is overkill.

-Steven

On 3/22/07, Florent THIERY <fthiery at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi
>
> I know it's not gonna come in the priority list before at least a year
> (or ever), but if we want to add eye candy & (possibly) useability to
> the UI (such as smooth realistic list scrolling, as seen in apple's
> iphone demo on contacts lists), we'll need a physics engine, so that
> moves & animations aren't all linear.
>
> All i found so far is the akamaru lib, needs just GLib:
>
> http://people.freedesktop.org/~krh/akamaru.git/
>
> If you want to take a quick look at the code:
> svn co http://svn.kiba-dock.org/akamaru/ akamaru
>
> It's a verlet integration implementation;  modelization includes
> elasticity, friction, gravity, geometrical objects...
>
> The only (AFAIK) implementation using this model is kiba-dock, a *fun*
> app launcher, but we may find another use to it in the future.
>
> For instance, it may be useful to gesture recognition (i'm not aware
> if existing gesture recognition engines measure speed, acceleration,
> ...).
>
> There's an undergoing verlet integration into the e17 project (by rephorm)
> see http://rephorm.com/news/tag/physics , so we may see some UI
> physics integration into e17 someday.
>
> Such early projects mainly show "rope-like" animations, but maybe the
> API wil spare some time for different usages.
>
> Well, that was just a useless thought, but i'd be happy to know if
> other people are wondering about improving the user experience
> regarding physics-model-based UI animation.
>
> FLorent
>
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