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| <h2>Tutorial 6: Planets</h2> | |
| By Sean Luke | |
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| [Requires Java3D] [<a href="tutorial6.html">Tutorial 6</a> documentation] | |
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| <p>Some planetary orbits, primarily to introduce the 3D graphics facility and 3D continuous field. The orbits are totally ridiculous: they're circles rather than ellipses; they're all on the same plane; and they're at the log of the proper distance so the planets can actually be seen. | |
| <p>This tutorial portrays the planets using planetary texture maps provided, with permission by James Hastings-Trew at <a href="http://planetpixelemporium.com/">JHT's Planet Pixel Emporium</a>. The Earth texture map is from <a href="http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Newsroom/BlueMarble/">NASA</a>. Java3D is not particularly fast at loading these texture maps: you have to be patient. | |
| <p>The demo is good place for you to try rotation, translation, and scaling of the 3D environment. You drag in various ways: | |
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| <li>Left mouse button: Rotate the environment. | |
| <li>Middle mouse button or alt/option-left-mouse: Move the camera towards or away from the environment. | |
| <li>Right mouse button or command-left-mouse: Translate the environment (move it side to side). | |
| <li>Scale Text Field: change the magnification. This one is particularly useful in this context. | |
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| <p><hr><font color='red'>Note:</font> this description is different from the one which appears after following the tutorial documentation. This is because the tutorial documentation overrides the <tt>getInfo</tt> method to provide a description. If this method is not overridden, MASON instead tries to display a file called <tt>index.html</tt> stored in the same directory as the simulation (which is what's going on here). | |
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