

The physics of Angry Birds - d_r
http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2010/10/physics-of-angry-birds/

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zackola
The cool thing about the article was that I learned about the free video
tracking/analysis software. Could be pretty interesting stuff in other
contexts.

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bgraves
I have a friend who recently started teaching physics to high school students.
I showed him this software, which I found through searching a few weeks ago,
and he loved it.

Another great program is Vernier Video Physics for iOS devices.
<http://www.vernier.com/soft/videophysics.html>

Also, Angry Birds physics makes _me_ angry -- it's terribly unrealistic.

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noglorp
I hate the endless "zomg angry birds is teh best evar" rhetoric.

How is it that one of the most copied game mechanics in Flash gaming gets
treated as original?

Raise your hand if you have played 20 different pre-angry-birds catapult
destruction games! Worse yet is that it is like an instant implementation with
Box2D.

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tptacek
You got downmodded, presumably for snark (or for being off-topic?) but not
being a game dev I'm glad to have learned about box2d; thanks!

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poundy
On a lighter note, what is the physics behind a bird hitting and breaking
through concrete walls and ice barriers?

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gurtwo
That's what I hoped to see when I clicked in the link; an explanation of the
collision model when the bird hits the blocks. The initial parabolic flight is
just basic physics.

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siglesias
Parabolic trajectories? Snooze.

Let's get a game that makes a mechanic out of Lorentz transforms!

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siglesias
Seriously though if anyone wants to brainstorm about this, you send me a tweet
thru my HN handle.

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ankimal
KISS - Keep it Simple Stupid. Very addictive, hugely successful and deservedly
so.

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ginkgo
This is somewhat related:
<http://hypertextbook.com/facts/2007/mariogravity.shtml>

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guynamedloren
This type of article on the front page makes me not want to read HN anymore.
Yes, it is slightly interesting, but how does this apply to hacking or
entrepreneurs at all? It is just a basic physics problem. I fail to see any
value added to the HN community.

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ars
HN is not just about hacking and entrepreneurs, it's about anything
interesting.

I found it mildly interesting, not interesting enough to upvote, but a bit -
it had a tip on an interesting piece of software too (Tracker Video analysis).
Obviously other people found it a bit more interesting, there's nothing wrong
with that.

The title is a bit cheating though, since I thought it was about actual birds,
not a game.

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guynamedloren
There are plenty of places on the internet to find "anything interesting"
(see: reddit, digg, youtube). Those places do a great job at wasting time that
could otherwise be spent being productive. In other words, those places exist
as entertainment portals. There is nothing wrong with that. Entertainment is
healthy.

I do not come to Hacker News, however, to waste time. I come to Hacker News
for intellectual debate and a deeper form of thinking. Both of these, among
others, foster personal growth and learning. That is the value I pull from
Hacker News. I'm sure PG would understand where I'm coming from here. So let's
keep "anything interesting" to digg. They're doing great so far.

~~~
ElbertF
From the guidelines:

 _What to Submit

On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes
more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the
answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity._

<http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html>

~~~
guynamedloren
Thanks for looking this up, but I think it's reasonable to note that "anything
that good hackers would find interesting" is not necessarily the same as the
vague category of "anything interesting".

~~~
RyanMcGreal
Also in the linked document:

> Please don't submit comments complaining that a submission is inappropriate
> for the site. If you think something is spam or offtopic, flag it by going
> to its page and clicking on the "flag" link. (Not all users will see this;
> there is a karma threshold.) If you flag something, please don't also
> comment that you did.

