VRSS Simulator in Unity
The old README has been shifted into the new Wiki that is being set up for this repository. Check out the Wiki here!
Project Overview
The Virtual Reality Solar System (VRSS) Simulator is an ongoing Physics project at King's College London where students are tasked to simulate the Solar System as a scale model in the Unity Engine. This simulation requires real physics to happen, so custom gravity had to be implemented using Unity's Scripting API and appropriate scaling had to be chosen for variables such as mass, length and time. The ultimate aim of this was to allow a user to experience the simulated environment in Virtual Reality, allowing them to directly influence the celestial bodies and their orbits found within the simulator.
This first began as a batch of mini-projects completed in the Final Years of BSc Physics students, which then expanded beyond their semester in 2022 to turn it into an educational tool to demonstrate how Newtonian Physics can be used to understand the Solar System.
An example of one of these mini-projects can be found here, which demonstrates a Virtual Reality Sandbox Simulator of the Solar System allowing you to pick up celestial objects and throw them in the empty vacuum of space like a children's ball pit.
How To Read The Wiki
The first sections of the VRSS Wiki are written to be as general as possible, allowing anyone to follow the guides to play-test the simulator themselves or allow contributors of the project to work on and collaborate.
The later sections of the Wiki become more technical, showcasing features in more depth to explain how aspects of the simulator work and why certain methods and ideas were chosen so that future collaborators can understand the pre-existing work and build upon it.
It should be the task of every collaborator to expand, correct and simplify the wiki wherever possible to ensure it grows into a suitable knowledge base that collates all required information without the need of publishing separate reports and manuals.