ssystem is an OpenGL Solar System simulator. Visit the Sun, the
nine planets and a few major satellites (catalog based background stars are also supported) with four camera modes.
Although ssystem is not 100% accurate I've tried to keep it as close
to reality as possible. However, ssystem's goal has always been visual appearence rather than accuracy, so you may find many bugs in positioning algorithms.
Only planets and Moon positions are within a range of real positions,
all other satellites (even though their orbits are, more or less, accurate) are NOT in their real positions (yet).
-Linux/UNIX or Windows 95/NT OS
-OpenGL library (Mesa 3.0 recommended)
-GLUT library (v3.7 or higher required)
-JPEG library (the IJG one)
-3D accelerator (NOT REQUIRED but HIGHLY RECOMENDED) tested on:
Voodoo Graphics (linux and win95/98)
Voodoo2 (linux and win95/98)
Voodoo Rush (linux and win95/98)
Riva 128 (win95/98)
Riva TNT (win95/98)
Permedia (win95/98)
If your 3d chipset is not listed above and ssystem runs hardware
accelerated let me know.
See Makefile for compile time options.
-bench
Aborts program execution after 1000 frames, displaying
framerate
-fullscreen [mode_string]
Runs program in full screen mode. Under Linux/UNIX machines
you won't be able to switch video modes so you don't have
to supply a mode_string (in fact, ssystem will complain if
you do so).
Windows 95/98 version lets you choose the videomode. Just
add a mode string after the fullscreen keyword. Mode string
sintax is:
WIDTHxHEIGHT:COLOR_DEPTH@REFRESH_RATE
Refresh rate is optional. So if you want to run ssystem at
640x480 32 bits colordepth your command line is something like:
ssystem -fullscreen 640x480:32
If you want a 100 Hz refresh rate then type:
sssytem -fullscreen 640x480:32@100
NOTE: NOT ALL VIDEOMODES ARE SUPPORTED. ONLY A FEW ONES
WORK ON MY COMPUTER. IF THE VIDEO MODE YOU'VE SELECTED IS
NOT SUPPORTED SSYSTEM USES CURRENT VIDEO MODE.
Hardware acceleration is not required, but highly recommended for
smooth framerates. I get 83fps (running on Linux) with the "-bench" command line option on my Celery 450 and 56fps at 1024x768:32 (running on win98 with a Riva TNT card). Ssystem rocks in this video mode.
The Planets' Sphere detail (SLICES and STACKS) is the key factor in
performance, people with slow CPUs should use lower values (see ssystem.conf file).
Home/End: Selects previous/next target body
SHIFT + Home/End: Selects previous/next source body in B2B camera mode
Insert: Current planet trail on/off
h : Online help
a : Atmosphere on/off
t : Texture on/off
l : Lighting on/off
f : Flat/Smooth shading model
r : Real time on/off
s : Stars on/off
S : Screenshot (in JPEG format)
m/M : Increase/Decrease star brightness
d : Demo mode on/off
n : Moves camera near current planet
c : Camera modes
o/O : Wider/Narrower FOV
p : Pause
b : Distant bodies labels on/off
B : Stars labels on/off
i : Info (HUD) on/off
j : Joystick control on/off
Page Up/Down: Increase/decrease speed
z/Z: Increase/decrease zoom factor
(only available in B2B and orbiter camera modes)
Hold SHIFT for faster operation in the following key bindings:
+/-: Increase/Decrease time factor
Arrow keys: Rotate camera
There are 4 camera modes:
-Linked: This is the default mode. Camera follows the selected body.
'n' is very useful in this mode.
-Body to Body: This mode lets you view body X as seen from body Y.
-Orbiter: Camera moves around the select body in a circular orbit (
completes an orbit in 0.5 local days). Try the zoom key 'z' in this
mode.
-Free Camera: You control the camera with arrow keys/josytick/mouse.
-Keyboard
When in free camera mode arrow keys rotates camera, Page Up/Down
increase/decrease camera speed.
Linked mode is a bit different, here arrow keys are useless. You can
move the camera towards the planet by increasing speed. Once you're
near the planet program sets camera speed to zero.
-Mouse
In free camera mode you can control the camera with the mouse by left
clicking over the window (keep it pressed) and moving the mouse.
-Joystick
As with the mouse you have to select free camera mode, then activate
joystick (j). X and Y axis control camera, buttons A and B control
acceleration. Press C or D button buttons to set camera speed to 0
(if your joystick has only two buttons you can achieve this by
pressing A and B simultaneously)
Outer bodies movement is a bit jerky. Although ssystem uses double
precision floating point arithmetic, Mesa uses simple precision arithmetic internally. Tuning scales i've been able to reduce this annoying effect (only Charon is highly affected). The good news: I know how this effect can be solved; the bad news: this will requiere a total rewrite of large parts of the code so i guess it should wait for the next release :-(
If you're seeing black lines across the planets this is not a bug.
Ssystem default to "unbordered" textures (which work fine on most 3D hardware) but software-only OpenGL drivers and maybe some hardware accelerated drivers requiere bordered textures. Simply edit ssystem.conf and set border=1 (remove the # char in line 18). Some 3D hardware won't work if border is set to 1 (3Dfx).
Fullscreen modes will only work properly under drivers supporting
the current video mode (*nix) or the video mode you have supplied in the command line (win32). If you force fullscreen mode and your hardware does not support the video mode ssystem won't work (properly).
-Brian Paul (Mesa) http://www.ssec.wisc.edu/~brianp/MesQ.html
-Daryll Strauss (Linux Glide)
-David Bucciarelli (Mesa 3dfx driver) http://www-hmw.caribel.pisa.it/fxmesa/index.shtml
-Curtis L. Olson (star catalog stuff)
-This software is based in part on the work of The Independent JPEG Group
-Galilean and Saturn satellites computed using code extracted with permission from XEphem, (c) 1997 Elwood Charles Downey http://iraf.noao.edu/~ecdowney/xephem.html
-Keith Burnett's planet positioning algorithm used with persmission. http://www.xylem.demon.co.uk/kepler/
-Nacho (beta testing)
-Kevin Kamel (US mirror)
-Rafael Barbera (v1.4 performance improvement trick)
-Aaron Worley and his orrery simulation (configuration file and many ideas) http://hirame.hiram.edu/~worleyam/hitch/index.html
-Elias Martenson (SUN Makefile)
-Andrey Zakhvatov (FreeBSD stuff)
-Mike Oliphant and Rob Clark (screenshot function)
http://www.ling.ed.ac.uk/~oliphant/pyro
-John Kilburg and Bill Spitzak (SGI Makefiles)
-Bjorn Jonsson (Io, Europa and Saturn textures)
-Larry Manley (MoonPos, PlutoPos function and VSOP87 stuff, see astrolib.c)
-Tigran A. Aivazian (bug reports and suggestions)
-Axel Groll (extensive beta testing)
-And of course, thank you :-)
This is my first OpenGL program and i guess it will be always in
development, so I'd really appreciate your feedback.
Constructive criticism is always welcome. :-)
Check ssytem homepage for updates and news:
http://www1.las.es/~amil/ssystem
Raul Alonso amil@las.es