The Importance of Calculus to the Development of Video Games

by Nathan Hemness

Submitted : Spring 2018

In the last half century, space travel has become an important and growing aspect of humanity as we strive to further ourselves into the future. To successfully undertake missions to places beyond our own world, simulation is necessary to prevent the needless loss of both life and resources. Calculus is one of the most important aspects involved in calculating expeditions into space due to its ability to plan and project trajectories and vectors while taking into account other variables such as gravitational pull and mass. Video-game simulations are a unique and broader method of allowing large populations to study, understand, and practice creating missions that involve building rockets and sending them into space. One such game, Kerbal Space Program, is one of the more prominent games due to its comprehensive covering of Newtonian concepts of mass, force, resistance, and gravity. By using real-world formulae including Hohmann’s Transfer and Tsiolkovsky’s Rocket equation, it can be proven that these simulations are efficient in utilizing calculus and creating scenarios that reflect what could occur in an actual environment with a very low percent error between the pre-calculated formulae and the simulated scenario.

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