Astronomy and Astrophysics – Astrophysics – Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics
Scientific paper
2009-05-07
Astronomy and Astrophysics
Astrophysics
Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics
10 pages, 4 figures. As accepted by Journal of Virtual Worlds Research
Scientific paper
In virtual worlds, objects fall straight down. By replacing a few lines of code to include Newton's gravity, virtual world software can become an N-body simulation code with visualization included where objects move under their mutual gravitational attraction as stars in a cluster. We report on our recent experience of adding a gravitational N-body simulator to the OpenSim virtual world physics engine. OpenSim is an open-source, virtual world server that provides a 3D immersive experience to users who connect using the popular "Second Life" client software from Linden Labs. With the addition of the N-body simulation engine, which we are calling NEO, short for N-Body Experiments in OpenSim, multiple users can collaboratively create point-mass gravitating objects in the virtual world and then observe the subsequent gravitational evolution of their "stellar" system. We view this work as an experiment examining the suitability of virtual worlds for scientific visualization, and we report on future work to enhance and expand the prototype we have built. We also discuss some standardization and technology issues raised by our unusual use of virtual worlds.
Ames Jeff
Farr Will M.
Hut Piet
Johnson Adrian
No associations
LandOfFree
An Experiment in Using Virtual Worlds for Scientific Visualization of Self-Gravitating Systems does not yet have a rating. At this time, there are no reviews or comments for this scientific paper.
If you have personal experience with An Experiment in Using Virtual Worlds for Scientific Visualization of Self-Gravitating Systems, we encourage you to share that experience with our LandOfFree.com community. Your opinion is very important and An Experiment in Using Virtual Worlds for Scientific Visualization of Self-Gravitating Systems will most certainly appreciate the feedback.
Profile ID: LFWR-SCP-O-455864