How exactly do you implement collision detection? What are the costs involved? Do different platforms(c/c++, java, cocoa/iphone, flash, directX) have different optimizations for calculating collisions. And lastly are there libraries available to do this for me, or some that I can just interpret for my platform of choice?

As I understand it you would need to loop through the collision map and find the area in question and then compair the input thing(e.g. a sprite) to the type of pixel that is in the questioned area. I understand the very basic idea, but I don't understand the underlying implementation or even a higher level one for that matter. It would seem that this type of detection, or any for that matter, is very costly. Tile map? Bit array? How are these created from an image(I would guess looping and doing stuff)?

The reason I ask this question is to get a better understanding of the efficiency behind the scenes and to understand exactly what is going on. Links, references, or examples would be very helpful. I know this question is a bit longwinded so any help or references would be very welcome. Thanks SO!