This rise of this infamously difficult, yet simple game has baffled everyone.
But that's exactly the reason why it's become so popular. The difficulty is insanely hard, but the mechanics are insanely simple. Or is it?
Frank Nosechese examines the physics behind the game.
His link is here:
http://fnoschese.wordpress.com/2014/01/30/flappy-bird-when-reality-seems-unrealistic/
In the first part of his experiment, he analyzed the game by recording it in video. He then measured the movement of each pixels via Logger Pro, a neat program that allows one to perform video-image analysis.
Image from http://fnoschese.wordpress.com/2014/01/30/flappy-bird-when-reality-seems-unrealistic/
His results shows that the bird is accelerating downward, with an almost constant acceleration equivalent to the earth's. (9.75 m / s / s)
So we know that the bird is falling downward, the same way any object in real life falls.
Frank tries another explanation that the impulse after every tap is inconsistent. In real life, it Should be consistent.
What does that mean?
Simple, impulse is the CHANGE in LINEAR MOMENTUM. Let's compare this to a car going really fast (and constant velocity - say 200 km / hr). For some crazy reason you chose to put the car in reverse. The car will not go in reverse immediately, it would need to slow down, stop, and then finally reverse. If the car was slow in the beginning though (say and 5 km / hr), it would just need to stop, and then reverse. It takes less time for a slow car to go to reverse than a fast car.
In short, it's easier to change the velocity of a fast moving object than a slow moving object.
Should the same physics apply in Flappy bird.
But according to Frank, no.
You can actually answer the question by simply playing the game yourself. When you play the game and tap the bird Several times, it goes up and up, but the jump height is ALWAYS the same. Had the game followed the real physics, it would go higher and higher. That's why if you're in the game and you are trying to go through a pipe above, you would need to tap Several times, about three or four and least. But if real physics applied, you could just do it with two taps and most.
The reason for this is that the code of Flappy bird's velocity resets itself after every tap. Thus your "going up" is always the same height when it should be changing, depending how fast you're going.
Here is my poor drawing in comparison. Blue arrows show the projectile motion of Flappy Bird after two taps to get through the pipes with real physics. Red arrows show actual taps in the game.
Anyway, this blog was just to clarify Frank's post. ^ ^
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