Quote:Original post by Anonymous Poster
Why is venus going the wrong way? Don't all of the planets move in the same direction?
Nightwalk seems to have confused two things here: Venus is orbiting the sun in the same direction as the other planets, but Venus' rotation is retrograd.
You'll probably know that, but the planets and the sun are way too large compared to the distances between them (but else there would be barely visible dots....). The distances of the planets also don't seem to be correct - especially Jupiter should be farther from sun compared to the other planets.
If you want to make the simulator more realistic, besides calculating gravity of one planet acting on the other ones, you've to take into account that the planets are not in one plane and the sun is also moveable.
Quote:Original post by Nightwalk
So to become parabolic, Does the planet have to slightly drift out of orbit for a second and then come back in at a different ellipse?
That seems to make sense! cool
No, if the orbit is parabolic the planet will drift out of the system and won't come back.
Take A look at this VB Source Code. You can download the .exe too.
Can someome tell me if I have actually implemented the gravity correctly?
I used 2D cartesian Vectors to combine the forces of gravity and planet momentum to get the new planet vectors.
And why is it so hard to get a parabolic orbit, mostly they are circular or eliptical? Is it like this in reality? I guess so!
Nightwalk
