OpenGL Car Physics demo

This project consists of an application written in C/C++ and OpenGL (Fedora Linux environment) where a car physics is implemented via rigid body dynamics (rather than a simpler raycast approach). I used some open source libraries to deal with loading models, textures, and the physics engine.

This application was developed as a final project for the "Real Time Graphics Programming" course at the University of Milan. A detailed report document was delivered as well, and an adaptation can be found in the Wiki section of this repo.

How to use

Before compiling and starting the application, you need to install some stuff:

• OpenGL 3.3 or higher (I followed this guide)

• GTK+ 3.24 for the additional GUI

• Assimp (docs page here as 3D models loader

I actually included the glad.h and stb_image.h files in the repo: glad is the loader for the OpenGL drawing functions, and stb_image is a public domain library to load/decode images (such as textures) from file/memory.

Then, you can move on and do the following:

1. Clone this repo locally
2. Download the Bullet Physics engine (version 2.83 was used during development)
3. Move the Bullet source code in the includes folder (so that the path to Bullet will be ./includes/bullet/*)

To compile from terminal, use the following:

$ g++ src/* -o App -I ./includes -lGL -lglfw -ldl -lassimp -I ./includes/bullet/ ./includes/bullet/BulletDynamics/libBulletDynamics.a ./includes/bullet/BulletCollision/libBulletCollision.a ./includes/bullet/LinearMath/libLinearMath.a `pkg-config --cflags --libs gtk+-3.0`

This is needed to link libraries all together. After compilation is finished, type the following to execute the application:

$ ./App

Controls

Use the arrow keys to accelerate/brake and turn left/right. Spacebar is the handbrake. Scroll the mouse wheel to adjust distance from the car, and move the mouse while holding down left click to rotate the camera around the car.

Errors

Sometimes Assimp causes a compile-time error because of an environment variable, as discussed in this Stack Overflow post. The quick fix to this is typing the following before compiling/executing:

export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/usr/local/lib

I found no other critical issues, but I can try to help if you find any.

Credits

I went through the FANTASTIC online tutorials LearnOpenGL written by Joey de Vries. Check it out if you are interested in computer graphics as well!

Also, I thank the following artists whose assets I used while making this project:

• Car model: Low Poly American Muscle Car by T Allen Studios on OpenGameArt.Org
• Skybox: clouds skybox 1 by Luke.RUSTLTD on OpenGameArt.Org
• Asphalt texture: Black asphalt tilling 256px by Tiziana on OpenGameArt.Org
• Grass texture: from synthetic grass texture pack by para on OpenGameArt.Org