   Fast cloth simulation ( on GPU? )
  Hi,I''m interested in making ship sails.  First thing that comes to mind is to use cloth simulation.  Since cloth simulation is still pretty cpu intensive, I thought of doing it on the GPU.  I read NVidia''s paper regarding cloth simulation on the GPU using verlet integration.  Just wondering if anyone has attempted this and can tell me how well it performs / looks.  I have read papers like "Dynamic Response Textures" and "Precomputing Interactive Dynamic Deformable Scenes" in attempt to do fast cloth simulation but I''m a bit overwhelmed with the math.  Any other recommendations regarding fast simulation of cloth is greatly appreciated.  Thanks. 
  Verlet-integration is great for simulating physics, that being: Cloth Simulation, Rag Dolls and other rigid-body systems.BUT!... If you are to create a highly realistic simulation of a ship-sail, I''ll doubt that Verlet-Integration is the correct choice for you, since it only approximates particle-positions per frame.Hitman 1 and 2 used Verlet-Integration for physics. The result were great... for a game. The system also allows you to gain a performance increase, by lowering the number of approximations. This is what IO Interactive did when they ported Hitman 2 to the PS2-console.Best regardsRoquqkie  ;  If all you''re going to use the cloth sim for is sails you can ignore collision detection and you won''t have to use a very high resolution cloth mesh since the sail is pretty stiff so you can ignore small wrinkles. All this means that you cloth simulation will be plenty fast. I wouldn''t try doing it on the GPU, it''s much more complex to implement and you''ll have a really hard time doing good air resistance and wind effects, which seem pretty crucial to simulating a sail. Read Thomas Jakobsebs article mentioned above here: http://www.ioi.dk/Homepages/thomasj/publications/gdc2001.htmIt really is fairly simple to implement. ;  Hi, thanks for the replies.  I have read Thomas Jakobsen''s paper.  I think I''ll try it to implement it on the CPU first.  If it''s too slow, then maybe move it to the GPU and compare.  GameCat:  You''re right, I don''t need any collision detection.  I guess I have to be careful on how I set up my sails too since the Verlet-integration method doesn''t deal with self-intersections.Roquqkie: What do you mean by "lowering the number of approximations"?  Do you mean lower the number of iterations until the constraints are satisfied?  What other method do you recommend for the highly realistic simulation of a ship-sail? ;  If you''re trying to implement your sail using verlet integration, you can check out http://members.shaw.ca/jordanisaak/graphics.htm for an example program with source.j 