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Re:Ask HN: What are some cool but obscure data structures yo... by vvanders on Thursday July 21, 2022 @08:24PM (#32186995)
Realtime collision detection[1] has a fantastic chapter in this with some really good practical examples if I remember right.

Great book, I used to refer to it as 3D "data structures" book which is very much in theme with this thread.

[1] https://www.amazon.com/Real-Time-Collision-Detection-Interac...

Re:Ask HN: What are some cool but obscure data structures yo... by trebcon on Thursday July 21, 2022 @10:03PM (#32187623)
The implicit grid data structure from there is a personal favorite of mine. I used it in a game once and it performed incredibly well for our use case.

It's a bit too complicated to totally summarize here, but it uses a bit per object in the scene. Then bit-wise operations are used to perform quick set operations on objects.

This data structure got me generally interested in algorithms that use bits for set operations. I found the Roaring Bitmap github page has a lot of useful information and references wrt this topic: https://github.com/RoaringBitmap/RoaringBitmap

Re:Ask HN: What are some cool but obscure data structures yo... by phkahler on Friday July 22, 2022 @04:10AM (#32189736)
I spent a lot of time optimizing an octree for ray tracing. It is my favorite "spatial index" because it's the only one I know that can be dynamically updated and always results in the same structure for given object placement.
Re:Ask HN: What are some cool but obscure data structures yo... by thegeomaster on Friday July 22, 2022 @07:19AM (#32190747)
It's a stellar book. I work on a commercial realtime physics engine, the "orange book" is practically required reading here.
Re:Ask HN: What are some cool but obscure data structures yo... by SotCodeLaureate on Friday July 22, 2022 @02:28AM (#32189167)
I often recommend this book, RTCD, as a "better intro to data structures and algorithms" (sometimes as "the best"). The advice often falls on deaf ears, unfortunately.
Re:Ask HN: What are some cool but obscure data structures yo... by Gene_Parmesan on Friday July 22, 2022 @03:09AM (#32189379)
Seconding the RTCD recommendation. Handy code examples, and my favorite part is that the book is real-world-performance-conscious (hence the "real-time" in the title).