Cursor Gravity

http://www.richardsimoes.com/gravity.html

by kirubakaran • 17 years ago

21 7 17 years ago

It's surprisingly fun for such a simple little thing, especially since the lack of friction makes it so much more compelling than the "marble in a bowl" demonstration I got when I was a kid.

aristus• 17 years ago

I used to do this with a large magnet and a little chip off the magnet... accidentally figured out how orbits work. Fun times. :)

tome• 17 years ago

He's used the Euler method, which I think is why you get aberrant behaviour when the cursor comes near the particle:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euler's_method#Error

extension• 17 years ago

This also serves as a good repro of a Firefox memory leak (watch your task manager while it's running). There won't be many usable canvas apps until their JS engine is tightened up or replaced.

allocativeeffic• 17 years ago

No, it gcs after a while. Memory usage steadily climbs until it hits a certain point and then drops back down.

pmjordan• 17 years ago

Nice little toy, but what's the next level? 2 objects, try to get a stable orbit? Talk about a steep difficulty curve. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/N-body_problem)

ilaksh• 17 years ago

Would work fine in IE if he just added the ExplorerCanvas js file (from Google) http://excanvas.sourceforge.net/

Cursor Gravity

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