Interactive model of our solar system in WebGL
This is a project created for a course at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.
CSCE 470 - Computer Graphics
Instructor: Hongfeng Yu
The project was created in a team of four, consisting of:
Chase Heble
Fabio Reina
Igor Soares
Marcelo Sobral
In this project, we create an interactive model of the solar system. A set of techniques, such as billboarding, Phong shading, skybox, and spherical texture mapping, have been used in this project. A web-based GUI has been developed to adjust the different parameters for system controls. Our project design provides a web-based interactive system to facilitate an education of our solar system.
The user can explore the solar system model using the wasd keys to move the position and dragging the mouse to move the camera. There are multiple settings for controlling the system on the top right drop-down menu. These controls include editing the different size and time scales, displaying orbits, and setting a relative position. The current date can be changed by clicking on the Date field near the top left. Oribt positions will be calculated based on the entered date. A user can also view info on a planet, Earth's moon, or the Sun be left-clicking on the object. The info will be displayed in the top left.
This project won a "People's Choice Award" for the class, voted on by the students.
A short video of the project in action at Hongfeng Yu's course webpage: http://vis.unl.edu/~yu/course/csce470/award/index.html
A demo of the project is located at: http://cse.unl.edu/~cheble/CSCE-470-Group-Project/step_0/solar_system.html