Solar System Simulation
Personal Project
To finally learn how to use Scene Graph, I undertook the massive challenge of using it to build an n-body simulation.
Each planet is a different entity, with a component storing data such as the mass, radius and velocity. I used velocity verlet integration, looping over every body in the system and calculating their gravitational forces on each other. I used a custom material for the lighting of the planets, to darken the side farthest from the Sun.
The most difficult part of the project was scaling down the system to fit in the constraints of a UEFN scene, as I opted to use true scale values pulled from JPL Horizons. In the end, I used a combination of exponential factors and multipliers. I also found it difficult to get the camera controls to work well due to Scene Graph limitations, and to keep everything as smooth as possible.