Do Video Games Fake Buoyancy?

A deep dive into implementing buoyancy simulation for a 3D ocean in games. Covers Archimedes' principle, the CPU/GPU data transfer problem, asynchronous GPU readbacks, voxel-based volume displacement approximation, and a plane-fitting approach used by games like Atlas. Multiple solutions are compared: simple height-matching, physics-based rigid body forces, voxel grids, and a faked buoyancy approach with spring physics denoising. Each method has distinct tradeoffs between accuracy, performance, and artistic control.