Comparison between Smoothed-Particle Hydrodynamics and Position Based Dynamics for real-time water simulation

Abstract: Two of the methods common in video game fluid simulation are SmoothedParticle Hydrodynamics (SPH), and Position Based Dynamics (PBD). They are both Lagrangian methods of fluid simulation. SPH has been used for many years in offline simulations and has truthful visuals, but is not as stable as the newer method PBD when using larger timesteps. SPH also tends to become unstable during compression. In this report both methods have been tested on different scenarios as the methods’ performance and visual depend on the scenario used. Additionally, the size of the particle radius was varied when comparing Compressible SPH (CSPH), Weak Compressible SPH (WCSPH), and PBD. From these tests, the conclusion could be drawn that CSPH performed slightly better than PBD regarding frames per second (FPS) in all cases except one. However, WCSPH and sometimes CSPH had stability issues. The stability of PBD and its possibility for larger timesteps with only minor FPS difference lead to the conclusion that PBD is overall the more suitable method for fluid simulation in video games.