How are you supposed to get the computer to know if you’re running into something or not. Is there a simple answer to this question? 
Are there any good books or online resources on this?
Basically, you shoot a ray from a one position to another and look if any polygons are hit.
There are many resources on those intersection methods, one I know is the book “Real-Time Rendering”.
Ok, thanks. I saw that book in Barnes and Noble the other day! I’ll have to give it a look. Thanks alot.
Collision detection is a real ‘bang your head against’ the wall subject. There seems to be no easy solution unless you use bounding boxes which arent very accurate. It really depends what you want to do…
An excellent web site for this is gamasutra.com, do a search for collision detection, there are two articles by Jeff Lander which should be read.
To do per polygon collision detection, you need to know a bit of vector maths…
Hope this helps
David