Press Release

CMLabs selected to simulate water ride vehicle and fluid

Vortex particle system used to simulate vehicle and fluid for water ride.

November 18, 2005 – Montreal, Canada — CMLabs Simulations Inc., is pleased to announce a significant project awarded by a multinational entertainment company to improve product development.

A water ride consisting of a rigid boat floating through a narrow channel into a large pool was simulated at nearly real-time frame rates. The simulation includes computation of the fluid flow and buoyancy, the contacts and collisions between the boats or between a boat and the channel, and the brakes and motors of the mechanical system that drags the boats between different parts of the ride or controls their course. Up to 25 boats can be simulated simultaneously. The simulation was designed and implemented by CMLabs’ professional services team using Vortex, a COTS software tool for modeling and simulating vehicles, machines, and robots, for high-fidelity, real-time, interactive 3D graphics simulations.

The effect of water and waves in the channel and pool are simulated using mesh-free methods that are fast and stable enough to allow freedom in balancing accuracy and speed requirements.

Vortex allows realistic simulation by introducing real-life physics into 3D graphics scenes. Vortex has been used to simulate a variety of heavy ground vehicles for training systems, from mobile cranes to tracked armored vehicles, meeting stringent validation tests imposed by demanding customers. The VxParticles system, integrated into Vortex, simulates particle effects such as smoke, fire, fog and dust. Bi-directional interaction between particles and rigid bodies is seamless, automatic, and stable.

VxPartcles was recently extended to handle smoothed particle hydrodynamics (SPH) methods for simulating general fluids and gases, greatly contributing to the successful realization of the water ride project. This is one of the first full 3D simulations of fluids and buoyancy running at near interactive rates.

The success of this project hinged on the right balance of speed, accuracy, and visual quality, in order to be useful for the design engineers, their customers and operations personnel.

About CMLabs
CMLabs provides specialized physics modeling for real-time, interactive, 3D graphics simulations. CMLabs’ combination of professional services and innovative software tools enable developers to create high-fidelity interactive applications working at interactive rates and behaving according to real world laws of physics. CMLabs’ commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) product Vortex is the leading development platform for physics-based modeling of vehicles, machines and robots. Vortex is used by applications developers to build physically accurate motion models and interactive behaviors for demanding industrial applications such as training, virtual reality, and robotics and general visualization.

For more information, please visit CMLabs on the web at www.cm-labs.com or email info@cm-labs.com.