A two-body simulation in your terminal!
This project implements a two-body gravity simulation using some basic force equations.
$ python3 ncurses-sim.py
It works by iteratively calculating the position, velocity and acceleration of the individuals bodies at every time-step.
self._updateAcceleration()
self._updateVelocities()
self._updatePositions()First, it updates the x and y components of the acceleration forced experienced by every body as a result of the other bodies's force according to the following formula.
mi * mj
Fi = Σ ───────────────
i≠j |ri - rj + e|^2
Acceleration is the change in velocity over time. By updating the acceleration, we can know how much the velocities need to change for the next time step. Hence, the updated acceleration values are used to calculate the new updated velocities.
Finally, the updated velocities are used to calculate the updated positions (x, y) of the bodies.
The core file simulation.py is what actually performs the calculations mentioned above. This is separate from the visual displays i.e. ncurses-sim.py and smooth.py used to render out the bodies onto a screen/terminal. Both of these files use the core simulation.py python library to yield positions of the bodies to be rendered onto the screen.
Loosely separated python files allow for anyone to build their own frontend for displaying the data in their own manner