Interactive Physics-Based Deformation for Virtual Worlds

When creating immersive interactive virtual worlds, it is important to not only provide plausible visuals, but also to allow the user to interact with the virtual scene in a natural way. While rigid-body physics simulations are widely used to provide basic interaction, realistic soft-body deformations of virtual objects are challenging and therefore typically not offered.We present a client-server architecture for interactive physics-based deformation, which makes it possible to add physically accurate response to interaction to any virtual environment. The architecture is highly flexible, can be used from any web enabled client, and facilitates synchronization of computed deformations across multiple users and devices.