[dartos]

> but because of their vector nature, they could easily be mapped onto values from a simulation in a physics engine.

I don’t think the fact that the images are described with vectors magically makes it better for representing physics than any other image representation. Maybe less so, since there will be so much textual information not related to the physical properties of the object.

What about them makes it easier to map to physics than an AABB?

For soft body physics, im pretty sure a simpler sort of distance field representation would even be better. (I’m not as familiar with soft body as rigid body)

[ben_w]

For rendering them, more than for anything else. There's a convenient 1-to-1 mapping in both directions.

You can of course just rasterise the vector for output, it's not like people view these things on oscilloscopes.