Physics in Video Games I am a programmer and I want to pursue the Game Design field. From talking to my teachers about it, they said that physics plays a major role. My Question is: How does physics transfer to a virtual computer based environment. Is it fundamentally the same or can you create a world that defies our rules.
 A: I'll provide just one example of how to make a game obey known physics here. Note that there are countless others.
Much of classical physics is based on Newton's second law $\vec F_\text{net}=m\vec a$. Another way to write this expression is $d \vec p/dt = \vec F_\text{net}$. Or taking the liberties that physicists usually do:
$$d\vec p = \vec F_\text{net}dt$$
This means that if you know all of the forces on some object (which you can again choose to obey known laws), you can figure out how the momentum $\vec p$ of the object will change in a very short time interval. This is useful because $\vec p=m\vec v$, so ultimately it allows you to figure out the trajectory of an object.
I suppose a generalization can be made from this. If you know your initial conditions, you can use a governing differential equation to figure out how the conditions will change a very short time later. This is how many simulations are done I believe.

By the way, too many spaceship games (and TV/movies for that matter!) don't obey this law. They do something more akin to $\vec F_\text{net} \propto \vec v$, which always bugs the heck out of me. If I turn my engines off I want to keep coasting, not stop.
