An interactive, educational and accurate Solar System simulation
A planetarium on your Desktop!
PlanetWerks is a three-dimensional widget-sized tour through our solar system. A sophisticated control system brings you amazing views and fun facts! Movement in PlanetWerks 2 incorporates accurate 2-body motion; so objects orbit the sun the same way they do in the actual solar system!
Screenshots
Also included, switch to a linear scale model to see just how vast the solar system really is. Four levels of precision rotation and zoom control to help get those great views! Then click planets and satellites for fun facts and statistics!
2.5 Changelog:
By IceArdor , # Mar 11, 2008 7:40:38 AM
By adler03 , # Feb 15, 2008 11:11:58 PM
special thanks for Reptilon, i want story to be continued
By MuXXa^bI4 , # Jan 26, 2008 7:07:09 AM
Animated planets are certainly possible, from a coding perspective anyway. However there are two big problems to overcome: 1) There aren't a lot of really great full-faced images of most planets, especially the outer ones; and 2) More images mean a larger widget, and also more memory use, so since I am just using CSS positioning, it would probably be very very slow on most computers. Even the current widget at 1600x1200 shows signs of lag on my computer
My plans for the next version are to allow the addition of new objects through a menu interface, so you can, for example, input orbit characteristics of a newly discovered object and see what path it takes. I'm also thinking of seeing whether or not moving the whole system is feasible, rather than keeping the sun eternally at (0,0,0).
Thanks very much for the comments everyone!
By GreyWyvern , # Dec 28, 2007 2:38:16 PM
By Helmers , # Dec 28, 2007 12:18:29 PM
By infinitejim@yahoo.com , # Dec 15, 2007 3:26:22 PM
Can you increase the background space so that the Outer Planets (etc) don't go off the screen on increased zoom leveles? Even without a background, I'd like to increase the size of it (using the Home key), and have the Outer Planets have more space to move! Maybe there's a way, if so, let me know? Thx, Jim. Again, NICE WIDGET.
By infinitejim@yahoo.com , # Dec 15, 2007 3:11:09 PM
By Pattty , # Dec 6, 2007 7:53:23 PM
even more cool!
By cecilia , # Nov 24, 2007 7:54:27 PM
By Maulkin , # Nov 22, 2007 6:57:48 PM
By froggy420 , # Oct 20, 2007 4:30:36 AM
By tubularek , # Oct 18, 2007 6:47:53 PM
Pluto's still a planet in my book... (and New Mexico's)
By Tangent128 , # Aug 25, 2007 11:09:39 PM
By ejenks909 , # Jul 11, 2007 10:04:25 PM
By Sk8r644 , # Jul 10, 2007 8:10:11 PM
By reisenderpro , # May 11, 2007 12:39:17 AM
Full screen mode and 3D acceleration might be a bit much to ask, yes?
By Deth On A Stik , # Mar 28, 2007 10:55:44 AM
wonders if it could develop into something really serious like celestia.
By chesss , # Feb 21, 2007 10:32:11 PM
By salem407i , # Jan 23, 2007 12:23:52 PM
Pluto is still in this simulation, but it is still the same size as before. IOW, very very small
It is also on a 17 degree incline wrt the other planets as it is in the actual solar system. Make sure you're looking all around outside the orbit of Neptune and you'll find it eventually
You may find it easier to halt the motion of the planets (C) and use the Q, W, A, S, Z, X, J and K keys to move around the system manually.
I thought about putting in a mechanism to move the planets automatically to focus in on each of them, but a) it would be a lot of work, and b) I think it's more fun to find them yourself
By GreyWyvern , # Jan 16, 2007 4:43:59 AM