Orrery for macOS
Overview
This project provides a reasonably accurate model of the 8 major planets in the solar system. The orbital mechanics for each planet were calculated based on publicly available orbital elements and the current date. A simple hud panel is provided with a slider that increases or reverses the render date, providing a rudimentary animation of the planetary orbits.
Usage
Scene kit provides a navigation framework for its 3d scenes. The following are the navigation methods using a trackpad:
- Two Fingers pans the XY axis
- Pinch zooms in and out
- Click pan rotates 3d model
Installation
General Setup
- Clone or Download the project from github.
- Open the Orrery.xcodeproj file.
- Click the Orrery project file in xcode.
- On the General tab under Signing, add your team signing credentials. (This requires an apple developer ID)
Run from the command line
- Follow the general setup
- Open Terminal and navigate to the top level Orrery directory
- Enter the command: make run
Run from Xcode
- Follow the general setup
- Click build and run on the top left of xcode (or Command R).
Requirements
- macOS 10.12 or later
- xcode 9.2 or later
Notes & Caveats
This project has been written in a mixture of Swift, Objective C and C. The class OrbitalPositions was written in objective c because Swift still has a difficult time with simple math operations. This is still a work in progress and has not been fully tested. Specifically, Unit Tests are only included for the cartisianPositionForPlanet: method on OrbitalPositions and the scene kit render loop could be optimized further.
Acknowledgements
- Orbital mechanics calculations and elements provided by: http://www.stjarnhimlen.se/comp/tutorial.html
- Background knowledge and a working example http://lab.la-grange.ca/en/building-jsorrery-a-javascript-webgl-solar-system
- Planet textures: http://planetpixelemporium.com/planets.html
Created by Michael Golden on 1/8/18. Copyright © 2018 norobostudios. All rights reserved.