Orbital
Orbital is a planetary orbit simulator for Mac OS X. It's designed for beginning physics and astronomy classes, but is also strangely fun to play with. The simulation uses an approximation of Newtonian gravity, which, while not accurate enough for planning your next shuttle launch, is plenty accurate for most other uses. Features include:
- Unlimited zoom and pan
- Orbit tracing
- Simulation reset to fine-tune orbits
- Saved solar systems
- Detailed planet information
The current release of Orbital (version 1.0.2) has been tested on Mac OS X v. 10.1.5 and later. It may work on earlier systems, but is not officially supported. Version 2.0 is being worked on periodically, but is currently stalled due to issues with collision detection, and the fact that I am primarily working on school stuff and Myko. If someone would like to take over development of Orbital, I will be happy to send them the code, as I don't expect to be able to work on it for some time. I hope to include these improvements:
- Multiple selection
- Improved user interface
- Multiple undo
- Simulation speed controls
- Much more accurate simulation
- Improved preferences
- Speed improvements
- Data exporting