I’ve been doing some work lately with the physics engine that is in the Flare data visualization library. This is a very simple little engine that just deals with particles, forces, and springs. The Flare physics package does not include any rigid body mechanics or collision detection, since it was built as a tool for data visualization as opposed to simulation. For the purpose of things like tag clouds and force-directed layouts, this is just the trick. I can’t speak much for the rest of the Flare library, as so far, it really hasn’t met any of my needs. But, definitely check it out. There is great code here.

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