Open Simulator with Physics Engine

[Joshua Minor]

On Feb 14, 2008, at 3:36 PM, Edward Cherlin wrote:
>
> Even point particles under gravity is good. I did some on the Apple ][
> using TutSIM in the 80s--elliptical comet orbits, chaotic 3-body
> orbits. My father worked on the famous bouncing ball program on the
> old MIT Whirlwind in vacuum tube days.

Indeed, there is a lot of room for experimentation and learning even  
in a very simple simulation.  No fancy 3D graphics needed :)

>> Someone could port something like these:
>>  http://arkitus.com/Play/?id=22
>>  http://arkitus.com/Play/?id=18

Although there is no mention of it on the page, these are GPL.  I  
spoke with the author some months ago.

>> Soda or Moovl would make a *great* XO activity:
>>  http://sodaplay.com/
>>  http://www.moovl.co.uk/
>
> Hot stuff, but proprietary.

The source to a simple version of Soda is published as Synthesis  
example #16 in
"Processing, A Programming Handbook for Visual Designers and Artists"
and can be found in the example code zip on this page:
http://www.processing.org/learning/books/

There used to be a simple version of Moovl with source on the  
processing site also, but the link is broken.

Either of these, or a number of other folks' work inspired by them,  
would be a fine place for someone to start if they wanted to build  
something for the XO, which I believe was your point to begin with :)

-josh