Planetary Simulation

This is what the sim will look like when paused.

Inspiration

We wanted to create a basic simulation of the solar system. With user interaction being at the forefront of our project, we tried to provide the end-user with a fun and interactive way to learn elementary information about the planets in our solar system.

What it does

So our project creates a visual model of the planetary orbits around the sun. Users will be able to play/pause the simulation to access additional information on the planets when the cursor hovers over a planet. A fast-forward button is also available to speed up the orbit velocities.

How we built it

We wanted to keep all of the orbits and planets visible to the user at all times so we had to accommodate for this by making the planets and elliptical orbits not to scale. Although we skipped out on those details, we believed that at the center of a model of the solar system were the speeds of planets relative to each other.

Challenges we ran into

Some challenges we ran into when we were building our model included having issues with sound playback and proper displaying of planets. We had minor issues along the way, but these were the two that took the most time. Additionally, we faced challenges at the implementation level. We knew what we wanted to accomplish, but since part of our team was not familiar with Process and the its visual components of it, the documentation had to be referenced.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

An accomplishment that we are proud of is getting the speeds of the planets relative to real speed planetary speed provided by Nasa. Additionally, we are proud that we were able to get real images of the planets and have the image and name orbit the sun.