Gravit - A gravity simulator
Created by Gerald Kaszuba
About
Gravit is a gravity simulator which runs under Linux, Windows and Mac OS X. It's released under the GNU General Public License which makes it free. It uses Newtonian physics using the Barnes-Hut N-body algorithm. Although the main goal of Gravit is to be as accurate as possible, it also creates beautiful looking gravity patterns. It records the history of each particle so it can animate and display a path of its travels. At any stage you can rotate your view in 3D and zoom in and out. Gravit uses OpenGL with Lua, SDL, SDL_ttf and SDL_image.
Screen Shots
Features
- It looks pretty :)
- View the simulation in 3D using stereoscopic imaging!
- Can be installed as a screen saver in Windows
- You can record, then play back at any speed
- Stores every particle's position for every frame in memory
- Compresses history when needed, for very long recordings
- Mouse controllable rotation
- Console with script execution
- Colours can be based on mass, velocity, acceleration, momentum or kinetic energy
- See an octtree being created in real-time
- Save/Load functionality
- Update display/input while recording a frame
Details
- It is written in C and uses Lua, SDL, SDL_ttf, SDL_image and OpenGL.
- It uses the Barnes-Hut Algorithm.
- Gravit was called Graviton, but i changed the name because someone already used Graviton for their project!
Documentation
So far I have made a several pages of documentation. i'll attempt to keep it up to date. The Gravit documentation is here.
Discussion and Support
I recently added Gravit on Google Groups if you need some support or want to talk about Gravit.
You can sign up directly here:
Download
Gravit 0.4.2 has console tab completion, some new shortcut keys, when accessing the console with drawosd 0 the console will now render, added stereoosd command to view the osd in stereo, few bug fixes.
Read the ChangeLog for the more details.
Older downloadable files are available and you can grab the sources on github.
To Do
I will probably never do these, but feel free to :)
- Fix gimbal lock with 3d rotation
- Better camera controls
- Console tab-completition
- Be more user friendly!
- Screenshot to jpg
- Create Videos
- Tutorial Demonstration
- Multi-threading
- Network Distributed
Resources
Other Gravity Simulators
- NEMO - A mature open source gravity simulator. Also lists many gravity simulators and resources.
- Gravity 6 - A free Windows gravity simulator focusing on the Solar System.
