The Program was written in C++ utilizing:
- OpenGL
- Microsoft Visual Studios C++.
The roller-coaster is contained in a skybox: a cube with textures of ground,horizon, and sky that fit together to appear as a seamless large environment. To give my skybox a more realistic effect of being infinitely far away, I had it unaffected by the translation of the camera. Thus, no matter how far I moved, the skybox will never get closer.
Catmull-Rom splines have C^1 continuity, local control, and interpolation. They are fantastic in ensuring C^1 continuity and having smooth curves. The Catmull-Rom spline essentially functions by taking 4 points and giving back positions from the interpolation between the 2nd and 3rd points where the starting position would be the integer 0 at the 2nd point and ending position would be the integer 1 at the 3rd point. With this, I stored these positions to shape the curve and track itself.
To create the track itself, I modified a track file containing a collection of control points that the track will go through.
Utilzing catmull-spline and conservation of energy, the camera follows the interpolated control points between 2 points (from 0 to 1 as indicated from the picture). We use these control points to help direct the camera's motion and its orientation by using it to calculate the overall velocity in the system depending on the level of height.
When light hits an object, an important fraction of it is reflected in all directions. When a certain flux of light arrives at the surface, this surface is illuminated differently according to the angle at which the light arrives. If the light is perpendicular to the surface, it is concentrated on a small surface. If it arrives at a gazing angle, the same quantity of light spreads on a greater surface. This means that when we compute the colour of a pixel, the angle between the incoming light and the surface normal matters.
By accurately computing the normals of my track, the lighting on my track produced a very high degree of visual realism.
https://www.mvps.org/directx/articles/catmull/
catmullRom.pdf
Press T to get on the track and press again to get off track
Press the U,I,O to increase transformations
Press the J,K,L to decrease transformations
Shift+Key will alter scale
Control+Key will alter translation
Key along will alter rotation rate
Pressing Comma will increase transformation Step
Pressing Period will decrease transformation Step
Pressing G will reset transformations
Pressing Q will toggle Quaternion Rotation
Pressing B will toggle reflections for the box textures
Pressing H will toggle heightmap
Pressing N will toggle Normals
Pressing P will print information