How can I determine the velocity after impact of a 2D ball collision?

Question

Consider two balls moving towards each other. Each has a given mass and velocity. Assuming the balls collide, how can you determine what direction the balls will take afterwards? (taking into consideration the mass & velocity)

I realise it's quite a big question, perhaps someone could direct me to an appropriate tutorial.

Answer 1

I definitely recommend reading Pool Hall Lessons: Fast, Accurate Collision Detection Between Circles or Spheres. It will give you a lot of information about circle to circle collisions, and how to handle them.

Answer 2

This site has a good tutorial just for your question, I like it because it has a lot of helpful diagrams to help you understand the concept, and gives plenty of example code:

The Physics of elastic collisions between particles

Answer 3

I think what you are looking for has already been answered on StackOverflow.

Hope that helps.