Dr. Michael J. Gourlay

Dr. Michael J. Gourlay works as a Senior Software Engineer at Electronic Arts. He currently works on character physics. He previously worked as the Software Architect for the Football Sports Business Unit, as a senior lead engineer on Madden NFL, on the procedural animation system used by EA, on Mixed Martial Arts (MMA), and as a lead programmer on NASCAR. He wrote the visual effects system used in EA games worldwide and patented algorithms for interactive, high-bandwidth online applications. He also developed curricula for and taught at the University of Central Florida (UCF) Florida Interactive Entertainment Academy (FIEA), an interdisciplinary graduate program that teaches programmers, producers and artists how to make video games and training simulations. Prior to joining EA, he performed scientific research using computational fluid dynamics (CFD) and the world's largest massively parallel supercomputers. His previous research also includes nonlinear dynamics in quantum mechanical systems, and atomic, molecular and optical physics. Michael received his degrees in physics and philosophy from Georgia Tech and the University of Colorado at Boulder.

Interactive simulation of fluid-like continuous media.

• 2011 December 15:
• • Fluid Simulation for Video Games, part 11: Combustion
• 2011 November 10:
• • Lectured at the Red Stick Animation Festival Retrospective
• 2011 July 8:
• • Fluid Simulation for Video Games, part 10: Thermal effects
• 2011 March 22:
  • Fluid Simulation for Video Games, part 9: Body Buoyancy
• 2011 January 28:
  • Reddit linked to Intel vorton fluid sim articles.
• 2011 January 25:
  • Farsthary (Raul Fernandez Hernandez) added a vorton fluid particle simulation to Blender.
• 2010 November 5:
  • Fluid Simulation for Video games: part 8 - Baroclinicity: Fluid Buoyancy
• 2010 July-September:
  • Fluid videos: Vorton combustion. Curve ball. Blue sinks, red floats.
• 2010 August:
  • Jayeson Lee-Steere ported the vorton fluid sim to iPhone. Runs in real time (by SIGGRAPH standards). First 3D fluid-body simulation on an iPhone? .
• 2010 July:
  • Fluid-body Simulation using vortex particle operations: International Conference on Computer Graphics and Interactive Techniques, Los Angeles, California, Session: Animation, article 8, 2010.
• 2010 April 20:
  • Interview on Intel Software Network TV show called Visualize This!
• 2010 March 16:
  • Patent 7680038 awarded: Dynamic Bandwidth Detection and Response for Online Games (FreePatentsOnline)
• 2010 February 10:
  • Fluid Simulation for Video games: part 7 - Particle Operations for Fluid Motion
• 2010 January 21:
  • Fluid Simulation for Video games: part 6 - Differential Velocity Solvers
• 2009 December 7:
  • Fluid Simulation for Video games: part 5 - Profiling and Optimization
• 2009 October 28:
  • Fluid Simulation for Video games: part 4 - Two-way Fluid-body Interaction
• 2009 October 28:
  • Fluid Simulation for Video games on Gamasutra. Part 2
• 2009 October 15:
  • Fluid Simulation for Video games on Gamasutra. Part 1
• 2009 October 2:
  • Fluid Simulation for Video games: part 3 - Vortex Particle Fluid Simulation
• 2009 July 21:
  • Fluid Simulation for Video games: part 2 - Fluid Simulation Techniques(PDF)
• 2009 July 21:
  • Fluid videos: Atomic vortex ring. Ballistic mayhem. Galaxy of Dots.
• 2009 July 7:
  • Fluid Simulation for Video games: part 1 - Introduction to Fluid Dynamics (Visual Adrenaline)(PDF)
• 2009 July 6:
  • Game Engine Configuration Language: Part 5: Means of Abstraction
• 2009 May 15:
  • Kotaku reports on a game my students made to exercise their game engine, a work in progress.
• 2009 April 15:
  • Game Engine Configuration Language: Part 3: Binding, revisited
• 2009 Feb 2:
  • Game Engine as Operating System: Part 2: Actor Model of Concurrency
• 2009 Jan 20:
  • Fluid Video. Click on this link, or choose "HQ" in the menu bar below, to see a higher quality version.
• 2009 Jan 5:
  • Game Engine Configuration Languages: Part 1: Introduction
• 2008 Dec 1:
  • Game Engine as Operating System: Part 1: Game loop versus kernel
• 2008 Nov 3:
  • Prototype-based programming language with fast dynamic binding
• 2008 September 9:
  • Event system filter mechanism refinement
• 2008 Aug 11:
  • Citation in International Conference on Computer Graphics and Interactive Techniques ACM SIGGRAPH 2008 posters.
  • My poster at SIGgraph 2008. See A104, near the top.
  • Poster materials