Multithreading 2D gravity calculations
- by Postman
I'm building a space exploration game and I've currently started working on gravity ( In C# with XNA).
The gravity still needs tweaking, but before I can do that, I need to address some performance issues with my physics calculations.
This is using 100 objects, normally rendering 1000 of them with no physics calculations gets well over 300 FPS (which is my FPS cap), but any more than 10 or so objects brings the game (and the single thread it runs on) to its knees when doing physics calculations.
I checked my thread usage and the first thread was killing itself from all the work, so I figured I just needed to do the physics calculation on another thread. However when I try to run the Gravity.cs class's Update method on another thread, even if Gravity's Update method has nothing in it, the game is still down to 2 FPS.
Gravity.cs
public void Update()
{
foreach (KeyValuePair<string, Entity> e in entityEngine.Entities)
{
Vector2 Force = new Vector2();
foreach (KeyValuePair<string, Entity> e2 in entityEngine.Entities)
{
if (e2.Key != e.Key)
{
float distance = Vector2.Distance(entityEngine.Entities[e.Key].Position, entityEngine.Entities[e2.Key].Position);
if (distance > (entityEngine.Entities[e.Key].Texture.Width / 2 + entityEngine.Entities[e2.Key].Texture.Width / 2))
{
double angle = Math.Atan2(entityEngine.Entities[e2.Key].Position.Y - entityEngine.Entities[e.Key].Position.Y, entityEngine.Entities[e2.Key].Position.X - entityEngine.Entities[e.Key].Position.X);
float mult = 0.1f *
(entityEngine.Entities[e.Key].Mass * entityEngine.Entities[e2.Key].Mass) / distance * distance;
Vector2 VecForce = new Vector2((float)Math.Cos(angle), (float)Math.Sin(angle));
VecForce.Normalize();
Force = Vector2.Add(Force, VecForce * mult);
}
}
}
entityEngine.Entities[e.Key].Position += Force;
}
}
Yeah, I know. It's a nested foreach loop, but I don't know how else to do the gravity calculation, and this seems to work, it's just so intensive that it needs its own thread.
(Even if someone knows a super efficient way to do these calculations, I'd still like to know how I COULD do it on multiple threads instead)
EntityEngine.cs (manages an instance of Gravity.cs)
public class EntityEngine
{
public Dictionary<string, Entity> Entities = new Dictionary<string, Entity>();
public Gravity gravity;
private Thread T;
public EntityEngine()
{
gravity = new Gravity(this);
}
public void Update()
{
foreach (KeyValuePair<string, Entity> e in Entities)
{
Entities[e.Key].Update();
}
T = new Thread(new ThreadStart(gravity.Update));
T.IsBackground = true;
T.Start();
}
}
EntityEngine is created in Game1.cs, and its Update() method is called within Game1.cs.
I need my physics calculation in Gravity.cs to run every time the game updates, in a separate thread so that the calculation doesn't slow the game down to horribly low (0-2) FPS.
How would I go about making this threading work? (any suggestions for an improved Planetary Gravity system are welcome if anyone has them)
I'm also not looking for a lesson in why I shouldn't use threading or the dangers of using it incorrectly, I'm looking for a straight answer on how to do it. I've already spent an hour googling this very question with little results that I understood or were helpful. I don't mean to come off rude, but it always seems hard as a programming noob to get a straight meaningful answer, I usually rather get an answer so complex I'd easily be able to solve my issue if I understood it, or someone saying why I shouldn't do what I want to do and offering no alternatives (that are helpful).
Thank you for the help!
