Development update: preview of next version

It was last year (2007) that I updated the rendering of atmospheric haze in my Gravity simulator. However, I never updated the development website (where the last message dated from 2004....).

Over the last few months I started updating the simulator.
These things are updated:

• Addition of multiple satellites, at the place of mouse click (like in the famous Satellites Java applet)
• Atmospheric haze rendering
• Switch from Euler to "Runge Kutta 4" integrator (for updating the position of the orbiting satellite).
• more..
  

So here some previews of the visual updates in the upcomming version.
Also notice the use of more high resolution Earth textures:





(you can see a slight problem here: the atmospheric haze is rendered *over* the HUD text messages)

Blog website created

Development news

On this page I will add regular notes when I have updated things to my gravity simulator. You will also be able to download test releases from here.

I moved the development log from my Gravity simulator homepage over here. The ability to post comments is something usefull for development updates, I suppose..

regards

(old message pasted to this blog) Development news

I just uploaded an update, changelog:
release 0.1 -> 0.2
==================
*corrected compiler options..
now one should be able to run it without extra libraries.

Download Test release 0.2

Limitations..

- You cannot (yet) control more than 1 orbiting object..
- You cannot (yet) have more than Earth and Moon to orbit..
- The moon isn't really orbiting yet, it's just flying circles.
- The earth is Static.
- You cannot land/launch from planet's surface (yet)..
- Saving/reading pos/vel to file isn't possible yet..

All this means that there are lot's of things for me possible to
implement in next releases!

(old message pasted to this blog) Development news

You can now download a test, so if you like, please try it... and give some feedback at my contact address: jvanakker (at) gmail.com thanks!

Please read the readme.txt in the package first...

Download Test release 0.1 (link deactivated, 0.2 is out)

One thing I forgot to add in the readme, is that you can use the Scroll wheel to zoom In or Out
in any camera view

(old message pasted to this blog) Development news

Today I did a few things:

- Corrected the moons distance (is now on scale)
- Added another Ortho camera to moon
I also improved the control of your satellite, the user is now able to control it normally via:
- +X Acceleration, -X acceleration,
- +Y acceleration, -Y acceleration.
You can do this via the arrow keys.
This way, one can have some control over the orbiting object, and try to do some fun things,
like putting it in Lunar-orbit..

Some more screenshots..

large screenshot 1
large screenshot 2
large screenshot 3
lunar orbit seen from moon's perspective

Note, that in *this* screenshot, the Moon's orbit was NOT yet on a realistic scale...

(old message pasted to this blog) Development news

Today I added the option to show a trail of the orbiting satellite.
I do this using the GLLines object in GLScene.
At every timestep, I add a new node of the line object at the coordinates
of the current satellite position.
here are some examples :)





Note that in the following screenshot, the collision with Earth's surface is turned off...