System Software

[Ben W Bell]

Right. Does anyone know of a piece of software that does the following?

Allows me to set up a star system (not for Traveller specifically just for normal orbital dynamics).

Place planets/moons etc in their orbits.

Run the system back and forward in time to find the set up of the system at any given time.

I'm wanting this for my Traveller game so I can present different views of the systems to the players each time they return to the (enemy held) system.

 

[Ranger]

There is a program called Starry Night (I think) that will do that for our Solar System. I played around with it while visiting my parent's house in AZ last winter. At the time I thought it would be neat if someone could write an add on that would let you import data from H&E or Gal 2.4 so you could do exactly what you're describing. I am not a programer in any sense, so I have no idea how big a project that would be. Since the basic engin is aready built, would it be hard to do that?

 

[Vargas]

Perhaps this will lead in the right direction?

http://www.burtleburtle.net/bob/physics/binary.html

 

[sandman]

http://www.shatters.net/celestia/


Free as in Beer and as in Speech.

Complete Solar System simulation, and you can modify everything, from planetary data, orbits, textures, object form... There's even a sample Ringworld for it

 

[Ranger]

Very nice program! Now if those non-programming types (like me) can find and coerce, err.. convince someone to show us how to import data from H&E, we'll be cooking with gas.

Rob

 

[grendelttroll]

Looks like a decent program - especially since they made a version for my OS.