CompuServe Thread

<BTW, how is the particle system coming along – still optimizing the interface?> Version 1.0 about to be shipped, as soon as I hear from a few testers. I've been ready to test and ship several times before, but have always found absolutely essential capabilities that just had to be added, while testing. For example, in one test case all the bodies disappeared, so I incorporated capability to zoom out, and to follow a body wherever it went. But I think I'm really done this time! — Just wait 'until you see the sample animation (demo) for advanced users. —- Version 1.0 incorporates: – Capability to handle many bodies. This capability used with zooming allows you, for example, to simulate the solar system and render two views of the model on the same flic. One with all planets visible and then, in a corner of the screen, a zoomed-in view of the earth and moon, or Saturn and its rings. – Faster (even with zooming and panning) I just generated 30 frames using 120,000 particles while I had breakfast. Each particle was assigned one of 255 colors. The rendering included panning to follow the action, plus zooming. No compiled C-code yet<g>. Maybe when I want to use 1,000,000 particles. POCO is absolutely incredible, how do they do it?! – A new configuration available for initial state of particles. – Generalized "gravity" equation. User specifies the exponent (3 = gravity, 2 = old formula). The 120,000-particle simulation, just mentioned, above used an exponent of 1.6. – Automatic computation of velocity to place particles in orbit around a body (for any exponent value). – Settings for "new user" and "advanced user." Advanced users can enter many bodies (all values on one line). – Simplified data entry for new users. – Capability to scale all values. Needed to eliminate the work of manually adjusting many bodies. – Adherence to C-style guidelines (didn't go Hungarian – sorry Mr. Tissavary). – Your comments on implicit assumptions (for code maintainers <g>) have been incorporated. Ed K