Quote:
Originally Posted by Jeff Root
I know very little about how gravity simulations are done in general, or how
grav is doing it in particular, but I suspect that it isn't practical to simulate
individual stars. There are estimated to be something like 300 billion stars
in the Milky Way....
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Well,
grav says he's using close to 400,000 points. Whether they're "stars" or little "regions" of space with a certain mass, it shouldn't matter. Apparently he is polling each point, running its characteristics through a single closed-form algorithm to tell it where to move, then on to the next point. That is indeed considerably more efficient than polling each point and running the characteristics through a simple algorithm
for every other star in the galaxy, and adding up the results to make a single move.
Somebody would have to pay me to check the math
grav is churning out, though.
Objects orbiting on the outer rim of the galaxy should have just a little more acceleration due to gravity than an object close to the rim.