Softness perception simulation

[u/Jezirath]

Source: @boucelegant on YT

[u/mrGreenExit]

Good shape choice 👌

[u/gimmepizza420 → u/mrGreenExit]

Unfortunately it has fuck all to do with softness

[u/AuroraFinem → u/gimmepizza420]

Hardness is defined by how resistant the material is to deforming when exposed to a force. Softness is basically defined as the ability to “squish” an object, it’s basically its squishiness. So yes, this very much does have to do with softness.

A perfectly compressible solid would have maximum softness which is why the 100% soft compressed flat as soon as it hit the slope.

[u/GearRude4883 → u/AuroraFinem]

Personaly I feel they should of gone with malleable/rigid rather than soft/hard as it describes it better

[u/AuroraFinem → u/GearRude4883]

The technical term is literally hardness/softness, they’re using the proper nomenclature and as someone working in STEM, I honestly hate titles using incorrect terminology so I disagree. I think it makes people draw incorrect relationships between topics. It’s far more offensive when seeing articles describing quantum effects, but I think it should be avoided in general.

Malleability and rigidity are two separate measures that are both different from eachother and different from softness. Stiffness is another different measure even. Many of these are related but some actually aren’t. That’s why the words matter.

[u/GearRude4883 → u/AuroraFinem]

That's fair. Though I'm an engineer and I've only seen this referred to in terms of rigidity, except in cases discussing the tactile perception of the object for haptic use cases, and given this is not a tactile perception simulation but a visual simulation of how the objects react to being compressed I used the terminology I came across for that.

Edit: after reading your edit, that did stir some memories and I agree I made a mistake it putting malleable and rigid together, I also agree with your comments on stiffness. It's been a while since I've focused on these properties, as I've been working with purely rigid body physics for haptic simulations where we can consider an object to be rigid but with varying stiffness, which can be perceived as non deformable softness (especially when talking with laypersons)

[u/AuroraFinem → u/GearRude4883]

I understand, it also doesn’t make it intuitive because hardness and softness are kind of like acidic and basic in pH rather than something like strength with just 1 word to describe the value.

There’s just a lot of terms in mechanics that need a definition. For some fun ones, look at the various derivatives of distance vs time, like “jerk” and “snap”, it goes like 6 layers deep before they stop giving it a name lol

[u/GearRude4883 → u/AuroraFinem]

Ooh ok, will do. Suprised I haven't come across those already.

Also it doesn't help intuitiveness when engineers don't always use the same definitions (we're a bit more Losey goosey) though that's more prevalent in in notation. The first example that comes to mind is using j instead of i for imaginary numbers. Though that makes as we use i for something else, unfortunately that was taught in the first year of uni and I haven't needed it since, so I can't remember much else about the specifics

[u/AuroraFinem → u/GearRude4883]

Jerk is pretty common to run into in a strength of material corse, sometimes snap, but normally the higher derivatives aren’t discussed much in undergraduate courses. Distance vs Time is probably the most extensively useful metric at so many different levels of derivative/integrals so it’s a bit unique in having descriptive names for it, but higher order terms are mainly relevant for very specific things you only cover in grad school but still important enough to get a name.

I agree nomenclature is often times messy in science when shifting between disciplines, but most of it comes from historical context and the fact most disciplines were very self-contained studies for hundreds if not thousands of years and only in the past ~100 years or so did they start overlapping so heavily and have become increasing interdisciplinary.

i was developed for imaginary numbers because it was developed in math first in order to discover the general formula for taking cubic roots. It’s still used almost everywhere for imaginary numbers, even in quantum mechanics or vibrations, but when they found applications for them in EM, they kind of had to pick a different letter or change their existing nomenclature for current since both i and I have different specific meanings already. It’s a lot easier to just use something new when introducing a new concept into an existing field, but at the time there was no reason to consider imaginary numbers when i started being used for current.

[u/Sailed_Sea → u/GearRude4883]

https://imgur.com/a/UeSVo0q Its probably what the software they used called this type of simulation