Barnes-Hut 2D N-Body Solution

Summary:

This is the Barnes-Hut solution to the N-Body problem written in C++. It's much faster than my previous solution, and it renders in real-time using the freeGLUT library.

Implementation:

• Masses are stored inside of the Body class
• Bodies are loaded into a vector/list to represent the system of masses
• For every time step, the position and velocity of each mass is re-calculated and overwritten in the vector of bodies
• These calculations are estimated using an quadTree, which shortens the number of calculations by grouping masses together
• After the position and velocity are calculated, masses are displayed using points in openGL
• This runs infinitely, or until a mass escapes the area that the quadTree covers

Results:

1,500 Mass Simulation:

With QuadTree Displayed:

Future Improvements:

• Add multithreading
• Implement in 3D
• Add controls to zoom/move around in simulation
• Collision Handling
• Allow quadTree to expand/collapse to simulation size, rather than keeping it a static size