Note to check out how to deform a surface using OpenGL http://ivanleben.blogspot.com/2008/03/water-reflections-with-opengl.html http://www.darwin3d.com/gdm1998.htm http://developer.nvidia.com/object/cube_map_ogl_tutorial.html http://people.sc.fsu.edu/~blanco/Cg/Cg_projects.htm http://herakles.zcu.cz/~miva/index.php?prom=projects&lang=en http://www.opengl.org/news/monthly_archives/2005/09 And an interesting tutorial on rope simulation at gamedev.ne t.