Home
Search
 
What's New
Index
Books
Links
Q & A
Newsletter
Banners
 
Feedback
Tip Jar
 
C# Helper...
 
XML RSS Feed
Follow VBHelper on Twitter
 
 
MSDN Visual Basic Community
 
 
 
 
 
TitleMake a 3-D solar system model
Keywordsgraphics, DirectX, Direct3D, solar system
CategoriesGraphics
 
For more about three-dimensional graphics, but not about DirectX, see my book Visual Basic Graphics Programming.

Mike took a look at my series of Direct3D tutorials posted at VB Explorer, Using Direct3D with VB. Using those ideas, he built a 3-dimensional solar system simulation.

The program lets you "fly" around viewing planets (arrow keys to steer, and B for forward and backward). You can also click on a planet's option button to go to it. See the code and the tutorials mentioned above for details.

The program also has these features:

  1. Sphere function that creates a sphere that's made up of a single triangle list object. (Mike actually got this function from a Web site called TrackSys which he says is very cool.)
  2. The Sphere function also creates spheres that can be viewed from the inside.
  3. A function that rotates, scales, and translates a matrix in a single call.
  4. Toggle lighting, smooth shading, and background star environment map on and off. (The star field may hurt performance on some computers.)
  5. It has a generic Render function that is driven by data in an array of 3d object data.
 
 
Copyright © 1997-2010 Rocky Mountain Computer Consulting, Inc.   All rights reserved.
  Updated