This repository has been archived. It serves as a place to preserve my original A-Level Computer Science Project, Sombrero, as it was when I completed it. Any future changes to this project will be made in a separate repository.
Sombrero is my A-Level Computer Science project (AQA), focused on simulating the three-dimensional N-Body Problem. Basic documentation can be found at alevel-sombrero.readme.io, and reference for the Simulation class can be found in the Reference section of that site.
These instructions will get a copy of the project running on your local machine, for development and testing purposes (I haven't written the make install command yet).
In order to produce the output .mp4 files, you will need to have avconv installed.
sudo apt-get install libav-tools
If you don't have cmake installed already, you will also need to install it.
sudo apt-get install cmake
You will also need a copy of pngwriter installed on your machine.
sudo apt-get install libpng12-dev libfreetype6-dev
git clone https://github.com/pngwriter/pngwriter.git
cd pngwriter
cmake -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=/usr/
sudo make install
It is also important to note that you will require g++-4.9 in order to compile Sombrero (as regex is used). You can check your installed version of g++ using the following command. If it says that you have 4.9.x installed, you should be good to go!
g++ --version
If you don't already have g++-4.9 installed, you can install it with the following commands:
sudo apt-get install software-properties-common
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ubuntu-toolchain-r/test
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install g++-4.9
sudo update-alternatives --install /usr/bin/g++ g++ /usr/bin/g++-4.9 50
To download a copy of the repository, you will need to type the following commands:
git clone https://github.com/tvarnish/sombrero.git
cd sombrero
make setup
Once the software has been installed, the program can be run from within the sombrero directory using the following command:
./sombrero
If you wish to time the simulation, you can use time on the program, like so:
time ./sombrero
You can change what the script does by editing the file: src/testing.cpp. Once you have changed this file, call make in the main directory (sombrero), and then run the software as described above. Full scripting / usage notes can be found at sombrero.readme.io
Initialisation files are comprised of a number of lines, each describing one 'body' in the simulation. Each line must be writen as follows (replacing the text in the example below with a numerical value, e.g. 5 or 4.0e10, etc.):
x position,y position,z position,mass,radius,x velocity,y velocity,z velocity
So, for example, if we were to have the Sun at the centre of the simulation (currently stationary), we could write:
0,0,0,1.989e30,6.955e8,0,0,0
If you wish to write a comment in the file, you can use // to indicate that anything after the double forward slash on that line is a comment. For example:
0,0,0,1.989e30,6.955e8,0,0,0 // An example of a comment
// Another example of a comment
You may also place any whitespace (except a newline!) between each of the parameters and the commas, if you wish.
The output files generated by the software (in the format simulationname_output.csv) follow the same structure as the initialisation files supplied to the software, as described above.
Sombrero will also produce an .mp4 file of the simulation (still images from the simulation can be found the images/ directory).