Physics Engine - Determining the velocity of objects after collision

While researching information for my physics engine, I have come across a problem with determining the velocities of objects (or the magnitude of the "impulse" of the collision) after a collision. Numerous sources have said to use the Coefficient of restitution, but according to Wi开发者_运维技巧kipedia, this depends on the properties of both the objects in the collision. Unfortunately, to determine the CoR, you need to know the final velocities of the objects!

Well, you'll have to pick one, or make one up.

The thing is that the two questions are dual -- that is, the one you use is determined by your point of view, or choice.

So, do you know more about the objects? FIgure out their coefficient from that. If you have an idea of the velocities after impact, you can work the problem backwards.

If you have neither one, pick a value and see if they behave the way you expect, and if not, frob the values.

And why doesn't Chrome know how to spell "frob"? It should know all the words in the Jargon File.

What you'll want to do is to define the CoR for a particular object to some value and use that to calculate final velocity.

You'll have to choose how "bouncy" a particular object is somewhere - there's no magic involved.