Modeling moment of inertia for virtual interactive environments

Virtual environments have begun using algorithms to model the world around us more accurately by accounting for the mechanical behaviors and properties of objects. Amongst the properties for modeling objects which are used are the moment of inertia, the mass and the center of mass. Many simulators make use of a scalar value for the moment of inertia even though this technique does not accurately represent the anisotropic properties of angular inertia. This paper presents a technique for using an inertia tensor matrix when calculating angular accelerations in virtual environments.