Reactor (software)

Reactor is a physics engine from the Irish software company Havok for use in Autodesk 3ds Max.

Overview

Reactor shipped fully integrated with 3ds max from versions 5 to 2011. In 3ds max 2012, Reactor was replaced by a PhysX-based engine called MassFX. Reactor was often used for realistic physics simulation that would be difficult or time-consuming to animate by hand.

Dynamics types

Reactor is capable of computing rigid body, soft body, cloth and rope collisions, and even all four types interacting with each other. A robust physics engine, reactor can handle several hundred rigid bodies interacting with each other without a problem on most computers. Reactor can also simulate dynamics of any supported type interacting with a water volume, including adjustable viscosity and depth, among other things.

Forces and constraints

Reactor includes a large number of forces that can be used in simulation, apart from the default gravity: springs, dashpots, motors, wind, fractures (breakable objects), even a "toy car" type, with definable body/axis/wheels. Reactor also has many constraints available, including hinges, point-to-point constraints, prismatic constraints, car-wheel constraints, point-to-path constraints, and even ragdoll constraints to realistically simulate a lifeless body. In addition, reactor is compatible with Space Warp modifiers in 3ds max.

Reactor

Reactor (video game)

Reactor is a raster video arcade game released in 1982 by Gottlieb. The object of the game is to cool down the reactor core without being hurled by magnetism and repulsion by enemy swarms of nuclear particles.

Reactor was developed by Tim Skelly, who was also responsible for Star Castle and Solar Quest. It was the first arcade game to credit the developer on the game's title screen.

Gameplay

The player controls a cursor that can move freely within a screen-sized arena, the nuclear reactor. The center contains a sun-type gravitational power source, the slowly overheating reactor core. The surrounding wall or the sun, if touched results in death. The cursor is controlled with a trackball by the player, who has to roll it fast in one direction in order to overcome the momentum of gravitation imposed by the sun. Swarms of enemy objects named after various radioactive particles float around in the reactor arena, obeying simple physical laws. These enemies can freely bounce into the walls at low speeds, have a repulsive force against each other and actively attack the player cursor. Boss types often break up into several smaller particles.

XHOF-FM

XHOF-FM, also known as Reactor 105.7, is a radio station in Mexico City that plays alternative rock music, and hip hop mainly in English and Spanish. Its broadcast frequency is 105.7 MHz.

XHOF-FM broadcasts in HD.

History

Radio Departamento

The Department of the Federal District (DDF) solicited a permit for a radio station in 1967. However, the station seemed cursed from the beginning. The Department had a hard time procuring the permit; one month after it was issued, the government was still evaluating the technical parameters. Additionally, the original callsign of XEDO-FM had to be changed (in April 1968) when it was discovered that a Michoacán radio station had been using those calls since 1961.

In March 1969, the SCT informed the DDF that the latter still had not complied with the requirements for the construction of the station. "Radio Departamento", however, soon got on track to launch May 1, 1969, from the top floor of the old Ayuntamiento building, with 161 square metres (1,730 sq ft) of floor space to work with.

Software

Computer software also called a program or simply software is any set of instructions that directs a computer to perform specific tasks or operations. Computer software consists of computer programs, libraries and related non-executable data (such as online documentation or digital media). Computer software is non-tangible, contrasted with computer hardware, which is the physical component of computers. Computer hardware and software require each other and neither can be realistically used without the other.

At the lowest level, executable code consists of machine language instructions specific to an individual processor—typically a central processing unit (CPU). A machine language consists of groups of binary values signifying processor instructions that change the state of the computer from its preceding state. For example, an instruction may change the value stored in a particular storage location in the computer—an effect that is not directly observable to the user. An instruction may also (indirectly) cause something to appear on a display of the computer system—a state change which should be visible to the user. The processor carries out the instructions in the order they are provided, unless it is instructed to "jump" to a different instruction, or interrupted.

Software (novel)

Software is a 1982 cyberpunk science fiction novel written by Rudy Rucker. It won the first Philip K. Dick Award in 1983. The novel is the first book in Rucker's Ware Tetralogy, and was followed by a sequel, Wetware, in 1988.

Plot summary

Software introduces Cobb Anderson as a retired computer scientist who was once tried for treason for figuring out how to give robots artificial intelligence and free will, creating the race of boppers. By 2020, they have created a complex society on the Moon, where the boppers developed because they depend on super-cooled superconducting circuits. In that year, Anderson is a pheezer — a freaky geezer, Rucker's depiction of elderly Baby Boomers — living in poverty in Florida and terrified because he lacks the money to buy a new artificial heart to replace his failing, secondhand one.

As the story begins, Anderson is approached by a robot duplicate of himself who invites him to the Moon to be given immortality. Meanwhile, the series' other main character, Sta-Hi Mooney the 1st — born Stanley Hilary Mooney Jr. — a 25-year-old cab driver and "brainsurfer", is kidnapped by a gang of serial killers known as the Little Kidders who almost eat his brain. When Anderson and Mooney travel to the Moon together at the boppers' expense, they find that these events are closely related: the "immortality" given to Anderson turns out to be having his mind transferred into software via the same brain-destroying technique used by the Little Kidders.

Software (development cooperation)

See also

Further reading