[OT] clever use of mask

[Geoff Canyon]

On Wed, Dec 30, 2015 at 6:47 PM, Bob Sneidar <bobsneidar at iotecdigital.com>
wrote:

> I should point out, (and forgive me if this was obvious) that the graphic
> is not 3D. It's two masked images going by in different directions, but on
> the left and right there is no "wrapping" so to speak.
>

​I get that. At the point I abandoned, I had a functional 3D simulation
with accuracy down to centimeters across a solar-system-sized space, with
gravity calculated for all objects, by all objects, with every spherical
object in our solar system and a couple asteroids as well. I had a ship
that I could orient and accelerate​ in 3D space, and land on any of the
bodies -- including the sun ;-)

What I was lacking was a reasonable way to represent planets visually once
they were close enough to resolve to something larger than a dot. I just
had them as growing circles. I didn't need something beautiful, just
something reasonable. The point wasn't to build a gorgeous app, since I
knew 3D rendering was an impossibility. It was just to build something that
doesn't cheat gravity the way Kerbal and Simple Rockets do.

gc