Patent ID: 8065127
Filing Date: 2011-11-22
Classification: G06F

Abstract:
1. An architecture tangibly embodied on a non-transitory computer readable medium, the architecture which, when executed, creates a particle system to be used in a physical simulation, the architecture comprising: a plurality of particle generation modules, wherein a particle generation module generates particles in a particle system; a plurality of particle motion modules, wherein a particle motion module produces physical motion of particles in a particle system; a plurality of particle display modules, wherein a particle display module renders particles in a particle system; a plurality of target effect modules, wherein a target effect module modifies particles in a particle system to perform in a certain way when they collide with an object; and a plurality of particle data structures, wherein a particle data structure stores and maintains a state of particles in a particle system, wherein a particle system for a physical simulation is created by selecting as many of the modules and data structures needed for the physical simulation and combining the selected modules and data structures into a procedure to be run on a computer, and when the procedure is run, the physical simulation of a particular particle's state occurs at a different rate than a rate at which the particular particle is displayed such that data associated with the particular particle's state is stored in a first cache and texture map data associated with the display of the particular particle is stored in a second cache different from the first cache.