This requires more accurate physics so that, for example, the momentum of an object can knock over an obstacle or lift a sinking object.

However some game engines, such as Source, use physics in puzzles or in combat situations. More often than not, the simulation is geared towards providing a 'perceptually correct' approximation rather than a real simulation.

This leads to designs for physics engines that produce results in real-time but that replicate real world physics only for simple cases and typically with some approximation. In most computer games, speed of the processors and gameplay are more important than accuracy of simulation. Main articles: Game engine and Game physics Tire manufacturers use physics simulations to examine how new tire tread types will perform under wet and dry conditions, using new tire materials of varying flexibility and under different levels of weight loading. As with many calculation-laden processes in computing, the accuracy of the simulation is related to the resolution of the simulation and the precision of the calculations small fluctuations not modeled in the simulation can drastically change the predicted results. The techniques can be used to model weather patterns in weather forecasting, wind tunnel data for designing air- and watercraft or motor vehicles including racecars, and thermal cooling of computer processors for improving heat sinks. Due to the requirements of speed and high precision, special computer processors known as vector processors were developed to accelerate the calculations. Physics engines have been commonly used on supercomputers since the 1980s to perform computational fluid dynamics modeling, where particles are assigned force vectors that are combined to show circulation.

The results were calculated a single time only, and were tabulated into printed tables handed out to the artillery commanders. It was used to design ballistics tables to help the United States military estimate where artillery shells of various mass would land when fired at varying angles and gunpowder charges, also accounting for drift caused by wind. One of the first general purpose computers, ENIAC, was used as a very simple type of physics engine.

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