Hi guys, Even though this may not be related to game development, I still would love your opinions on this one. As I had mentioned in one of my earlier topics regarding suggestions for a project. A professor at my college has suggested me something which sounds really interesting & I am planning to pick it up. Well since I was begging him to give me something to work in graphics, here are the two topics which he suggested. The first one I am really interested in is 1) Modeling the Solar System Here’s the synopsis that I wrote :- The project will re-create our solar system. All the planets will be represented in 3-dimension either made in a 3D editing tool (3D Studio Max or Maya) or 3- Dimensional primitives (Sphere) textured. Based on the orbits which the planets will follow , it will give out the occasions on which either a solar or lunar eclipse will take place. The planet earth will be divided into 8 sections to limit the scope of the project ,the project will also say at which section the eclipse will be observed & the necessary details such as date (& if possible the time).A zoom in / out function will be added so that the user can have a panoramic view of the entire system . Language used to demonstrate this will be Win32 & C/C++ for the core, supplemented with one of the API’s namely Microsoft’s Direct-X or OpenGl. 2) Making A Fern using Fractals I haven’t looked into this topic at all, but I believe it is something which can be done in good old C/C++ graphics. Since the topic being a part of my curriculum, the professor deferred the discussion when we encounter it. Before I dive into the questions I have , I would like to explain what all I know , I know quite some of C++ , I have worked with numerous languages like java , c# , but the knowledge of each one of them is kind of superficial , I don’t know either of them in detail. But I am through various concepts of programming , OOP , but as mentioned I haven’t muscled my way through anything complicated. Out of interest I had started out with DirectX & a bit of Win32, as of now I can only work around with loading bitmaps & animating them. Actually up to the 8th chapter of La-Mothe’s tricks book, which explains concepts like double buffering, line algorithms etc. I was hoping to have a longer run with the 2D stuff before I picked up 3D , but this has come up out of no where and I need to submit my synopsis as soon a possible. I have just assumed about the planets can be either shown as textured or loaded from 3D models , I m not aware of either of the processes .I have other extensions to the project thought up , but I at least need to get the bare basics I mentioned above up & running. Here are some things which i would like to know , what kind of complexity does the task I have mentioned above hold , some ideas were just brainstormed so I haven’t given them much thought , neither have I worked in 3D , so my train of thought may not hold up. Given time to work on the project is around 5 months, so considering someone with average skills , is it possible to pick up the 1st mentioned project , since it really interests me. Any other suggestions are welcome. Thanks

Any kind of advice would be welcome :|

Simulating the solar system would be straightforward and you would learn a lot. I think the eclipse predictions would be the hard part, but maybe that would just be a matter of finding some code written somewhere.

A 2D fractal fern generator would be pretty easy to implement. If you don't want to commit to something you might not be able to finish, this would be a good project.

I agree with JohnBolton.

Also, you should modify your signiture to:
1) Remove the extra blank lines at the end, and...
2) Use HTML tags to print smaller text, like JohnBolton's signiture has.

Its not a huge deal, but sigs that take up a lot of space are generally frowned upon by the mods and other forum members.

Here's a sample sig, feel free to use it:


It looks like this:
"I think there is a world market for maybe five computers." -- Thomas Watson, Chairman of IBM, 1943


Good luck

Thanks for the replys guys , i was only worried about it being possible techinically for a fairly starter profile.
@Ravyne : thanks, i never had the idea , html was being used to format the sigs :)