Solar System Simulation

by Travis Angevine

Description

My project is intended to simulate the interaction of stars and planets in a solar system. A user is able to move around and place different planets to orbit the sun, and, once ready, view how they all would move in relation to one another.

Features

• Mouse controlled movement
• Texture mapping for planets and sun
• Movement based on Newton's law of gravity
• Planet path tracking

Controls

• W,S - Zoom camera in and out
• A,D - Strafe camera left and right
• 1-9 - Select one of the planets, mercury through pluto (yes, I included pluto as a planet)
• M - Start and stop animation.
• <,> - Slow down or speen up animation
• R - Toggle between using the mouse to rotate the camera and placing planets
• Left Click - When toggled to place planets, click to place a planet at the current location.

Pictures

Different planets are different sizes, as in reality, and have different masses. Jupiter only appears larger than the sun because the camera is closer.

With proper placements of planets you can emulate a circular orbit around the sun.

Larger planets can have a gravitational influence over smaller ones. This is seen in the above image in the paths of the two planets.

You can move the camera up and down in the world as well, giving full 3 dimemsions of orbit and planet travel.

Sources

• Planet Textures - All the textures used for the sun and planets
• Sherical Texure Mapping - Mapping textures to a sphere
• Kyle Haughey's Final Project - An example of a similar project. Used as a reference for the physics model.

Download

Be warned, makefile only set up to build on linux.
Source Code