Spacebox

Inspiration

We wanted to combine two of our favorite things: space and sandbox games: SPACEBOX. We want to make it easier for everyone to understand what the Hohmann Transfer is and why it matters through an accurate simulation of a rocket in space.

What it does

It's a sandbox game with a rocket YOU CAN CONTROL with many different exciting configurations! ✔️ Fly the rocket from the earth to the moon! ✔️ What would happen if you flew a rocket between 3 suns? ✔️ Explore a foreign star system! The effect of gravity of each object affects the movement of every other object.

How we built it

We used p5.js for our simulation's graphics. The back end is written in javascript.

Challenges we ran into

One physics related challenge we ran into involved the conservation of energy within our simulation. We researched different numerical integration techniques to minimize error giving us a more accurate result. One of the mathematical challenges we faced was the fitting and spinning of the images, which required us to rotate the coordinate system using a rotation matrix.

Implementation: We decided to use P5.js for our simulation, but we lacked experience with game development.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We have made our model quite flexible, which makes it possible to add many bodies to our simulation somewhat easily. This makes it possible to make interesting orbitals, such as Setup #3, which incorporates an example of a stable 3-body system.

What we learned

How to use P5.js : p5.js is a great environment for aesthetic looking simulations. Learning the framework and making something out of it was hard but rewarding. Javascript : Only one person had experience with javascript so everybody else had to learn how to code in our back end language. Experience in one of the most used languages is definitely useful.