phoenixshade
Uploader

Proud to be an Ape
Posts: 26
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Two things I'd like to see in a future version: 1. TEST MASSES. These would react to gravity but produce none of their own. Why not just make a 1 kg object; isn't that the same thing? Well, for ONE object, yes, but say you want THOUSANDS of objects. The algorithm seems to compute gravity between every object in the system, no matter how small... generally a good thing, but as the number of objects rises, the number of calculations required rises according to x-1 Σ n n=1 where x is the number of objects in the simulation. But if we could make test masses with no gravity of their own, the number of calclations becomes x-1 Σ n n=m where x is the total number of objects and m is the number of test masses. So let's say you want to simulate the rings of Saturn and its large moons, considering the ring particles to be of negligible mass. You put in Saturn and say its dozen largest moons and 2000 ring particles and let 'er rip. Currently this would require 2025078 gravitational calculations per frame (and would probably crash the program). But if the ring particles are test masses with no gravity of their own, the number of calculations drops by almost 99% to only 26078 per frame. 2) Rotating frames confined to rotation IN THE ORBITAL PLANE. For example, I'd like to look at the dynamics of Trojan asteroid inclination with respect to Jupiter, so I'd like to look at the rotating frame obliquely. Currently, the axis of rotation is always orthogonal to the screen. Overall I love this program, but as with anything else, there are things I want to do that it can't... but I think both of the above are fairly easy to implement. (If you want to throw me some source code, I'll happily have a crack at it.)
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