Do realistic water physics exist?

[The Wok]

Never seen a game with like realistic water that can slide, splash and leave a mark on the wall etc.... I mean we sometimes see that in games but it's just an animation.

Except 2d games ofc

[Χάρης]

That's gonna take a while to achieve. I think the most impressive thing would be if rain drops actually gathered and made a water puddle on certain surfaces with real time physics.

[Haunt Jemima]

Fluid mechanics is a notoriously difficult course with some complicated math behind it. Accurately modeling the behavior of fluid in games to behave the same way it does in reality seems like it would be awfully complicated and taxing on a cpu/gpu. So no, I don't think it exists yet.

[Gus the Crocodile]

I've seen some good models that exist for technical purposes, but it's a very computationally expensive thing to do, for generally very little benefit to a game.

[Washell]

Avatar 2 trailer shows some great water stuff, including the slide/splash/mark stuff you mention. It's not gonna run in realtime (yet) though.

[Incarnate]

No game programs for undertow, rip currents, wave velocity, or "drowning machines."

Devs stopped caring about physics in general a decade ago. In fact, it's devolved since 2008. Look at the famous Crowbcat GTA IV vs GTA V comparison video for evidence:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GWVtZJo-HqI

[Affronter]

Yes, but not in games.

There's terrific fluid dynamics software (Next Limit RealFlow for example) but requires a bit of rendering horsepower. Implementing it into game engines requires optimization to keep the overall play performance at adequate frame rates is the challenge.

[Q-T_3.14.exe]

I can imagine the lag.

[Menzagitat]

https://twitter.com/Vuthric/status/1512640001472962565

[skOsH♥]

Originally posted by Χάρης:

That's gonna take a while to achieve. I think the most impressive thing would be if rain drops actually gathered and made a water puddle on certain surfaces with real time physics.

That's a ridiculous amount of ray tracing calculations to make the beads of water drops

[Menzagitat]

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1319310/Meor/
https://nelstuff.itch.io/meor

[AD]

Have talked to people who does physics simulations of fluids. It's very computationally intensive to get something actually realistic, so my guess is that game devs just aim for something that's realistic enough. Otherwise games would become slideshows.

Of course, as we get better hardware it enables games to have more and more realistic water physics and new techniques to get more realistic water can probably be developed. So by being creative I'm sure game devs will eventually find ways to make water seem realistic (i.e. gamers won't tell it's not realistic unless they look really, really close). The question isn't if it can be done but if game devs will want to do it, since it might not be top priority.