Chris Leighton CPE 471 - Final Project March 16, 2004 |
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Overview
SolarSystemSim is a program that depicts our solar system in animation using hierarchical modeling, texture maps, lighting, and camera rotation. Because of the scale of the solar system, the sizes of the planets are not in proportion with their astronomical proportions. If they had been, the planets would have been too small to be seen, so I made them all much bigger than they would have appeared with respect to the sun. I tried as mush as possible to keep the planets in proportion with the other planets. The orbital radii are also fabricated to fit all the enlarged planets in the world coordinate frame. Besides the planets orbiting the sun, the animation can also be changed to include axes and orbital paths, or be sped up, slowed down or paused. The user interface is simple to use because there is no user interface. The user can control almost every option using the keyboard, with the exception of camera rotations which are controlled by clicking and dragging the mouse. The specific hotkeys are listed below. | ||
Functionality TRANSFORMS |
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Screen Shots |
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Default Settings - No axes or orbits are drawn. | ||
Progressive Orbits - The circular orbits of each planet are drawn as a portion of their full rotation about the sun. Once a complete orbit is made, the orbital path is redrawn. | ||
Tilted Progressive Orbits - The circular orbits of each planet are drawn as a portion of their full rotation about the sun. Once a complete orbit is made, the orbital path is redrawn. In this picture, the camera is tilted for a better viewing perspective. | ||
Complete Orbits - The circular orbits of each planet are drawn in full, and are not redrawn as a fraction of the planets current completed orbit about the sun, as is done in progressive orbital path drawing. | ||
Tilted Complete Orbits - The circular orbits of each planet are drawn in full, and are not redrawn as a fraction of the planets current completed orbit about the sun, as is done in progressive orbital path drawing. In this picture, the camera is tilted for a better viewing perspective. | ||
Axes and Complete Orbits - The axes of each planets coordinate frame (though faint in this screen shot) are drawn, in green, along with the planets' complete orbital paths. In this picture, the camera is tilted for a better viewing perspective. | ||
Resources & Links NASA - JPL Solar System Simulator (texture maps) |