Week 23: 23rd February - 1st March: Weeks Progress

So far this week, I have a flat plane at an angle under user control for rotation about the x and z axes. However, there is no particle of mass as of yet!!!! I have found that I have spent days working (and worrying!) about this rotation which in the grand scheme of things, is a very small part of it.

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Added Post - Sunday 1st:

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Very stressed at the moment as I have been having trouble with the rotations. It has therefore been decided that I must include a matrix class. The particle of mass has to be the next thing which is added as I need to get moving with this project now. I am also having trouble with this area too. I have realised that the the particle is not falling under gravity as I have no aspect of time involved in the code at the moment. Therefore I will need to look into this and perhaps add in a Frames Per Second (FPS) counter in the program too.

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I am not looking forward to the meeting tomorrow as I do not have mush to show for the work I have done. At the moment, all I have is the particle of mass hitting the inclined plane and bouncing back up - no maths is really used. There will be a lot to talk about at the meeting tomorrow.

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To Do:

• enter in matrix class
• enter in timer/time aspect
• enter in FPS
  

Week 23: 23rd February - 1st March: Weekend Progress

Over the weekend a have done quite a bit to the program. At my last meeting, I was told that the plane should be at an angle of some sort instead of flat and so this was something I needed to look at changing. Over the last week, I looked at rotating the plane and got it to rotate under user control. However, having looked at the code over the weekend, I realised that the rotation was not correct. What I have done so far is to simply draw the plane in OpenGL by drawing a quad. For this to happen, OpenGl needs 4 corner points. To calculate math equations needed for future work, the equation of the plane is also needed. This has been implemented well. Initially, I wanted the user to control the drawing of the plane completely by entering in 4 points in space and then the program would check if they were coplanar if not the last points would be altered to that they were coplanar. This was implemented but something i did not take into account was the fact that the point changed correctly and was coplanar but because the points signified the corner points the points need to set out a plane/quad. The plan was re thought again. The plane was therefore drawn flat on the xz plane and calculations were made to rotate the plane round the individual axes. The y axis was not taken into the calculations as all it would do would be to spin the plane. The rotations are not working correctly at the moment. They seem to be however, when I change the size of the angle it does not work the way I expected.

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Below are some of the resources I have used recently:

http://jerome.jouvie.free.fr/OpenGL/Tutorial8.php (22nd)

http://jerome.jouvie.free.fr/OpenGL/Lessons?Lesson1.php (22nd)

http://www.math.washington.edu/~king/coursedir/m445w04/notes/vector/equations.htm (19th)

http://jtaylor1142001.net/calcjat/solutions/VCrossProduct/VCP4PtsCoplanar.htm (23rd)

http://local.wasp.uwa.edu.au/~pbourke/geometry/planeeq (22nd)

http://www.cplusplus.com/reference/clibrary/cmath/cos.html (24th)

http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20071218120853AAOs5dQ (24th)

Week 22: 16th February - 22nd February: Meeting

In the meeting with Dr Lucas this week, we talked about a number of things.

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With regards to my progress on the project so far, I had the basic scene with a particle falling (seemingly) under gravity with what looked like the correct bounce off the flat. However, when I attempted to add in coefficient of friction and the coefficient of restitution of the bounce I somehow uncovered a bug which broke the program. Therefore, I was unable to show Dr Lucas my progress. I am however, not sure if what I have done is correct as I have seemed to predict the time and velocity and I do not think the equations made from then on are right and so it would have been beneficial to show Dr Lucas this and ask him for his opinion on what might be wrong. In reflection, I think I should have asked him anyway so that he knew I had potential problems.

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We also talked bout the weighting of the modules for the honours project and what we get marked on which was very helpful for me as I was very unsure about CS1001A and what was marked for it.

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Before the end of the meeting, I asked for feedback on the proposal to find out where I was marked down so that I can ensure that the same mistakes do not happen in the dissertation. Dr Lucas told me that I did not go into enough information about the subject, why it was a problem, evidence supporting this, the motivation behind doing the project and the background of my chosen area of research. I also had to make myself sound more positive and enthusiastic about the topic.

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This meeting was extremely useful and I hope to meet with Dr Lucas before our next meeting to show him my program without the bug.

Week 22: 16th February - 22nd February: So Far..... and Next Steps

I stated in the last few blogs, that I wanted the first stage done and ready to show to Dr Lucas by tuesday. As usual, I have not reached my goal. Unfortunately, I have only the basic framework ready which contains the flat plane in the middle of the screen and the whole scene is lit with a basic camera available for user control of the scene.

I have looked over all the maths needed (I think!) for this first stage. The hard part comes when I try to implement this into code. I seem to take everything really literally and so something I find it difficult to get a good grasp on the best way to do things. This usually ends up with a lot of time spent on 'trial and error' so to speak and in turn this will be my biggest downfall as I do not have all the time in the world to complete this project and I really want to get onto the movement of a sphere in the environment.

Progress on the writing of the dissertation has also been non-existent. However, Dr Lucas has mentioned that I should not worry about it til March perhaps so I am, at the moment, trying to focus on the programming side of my project.

Next steps - well I am going to repeat myself here and say that I want the first stage done for next week but for today I need to get as much as possible done for tomorrow to show Dr Lucas.

I also need to ask Dr Lucas for some feedback on the proposal now that we have it back.

Week 21: 9th February - 15th February: Week Plan

Yesterday, I made a general timetable which I am going to try and stick to as best as possible. It is a timetable which fits in most of my activities for the week. It has all my classes, free time, and sectioned taime scheduled for honours project work as well as the rest of my modules. I also made a plan for this week it is as follows:

• have the first stage done (draft version) - stage one was to have a particle of mass bouncing on a flat surface
• note all equations I need for first stage
• work it all out on paper
• keep blogging
• keep updating log book

This will be done for next week hopefully and then it will mean I am on fairly the right time scale according to my gantt chart. I will look back over what I have done and review it.

Week 20: 2nd February - 8th February: Progress

In this weeks lecture, we discussed all the sections of the dissertation focusing on the literature review. I now have a solid basis to begin the literature review when it comes to writing it. It is a very importatn part of the dissertation and has to show a lot about the work you have done and so after it is written, I will go over some of the points that were given to us in the lecture to act as a check list before handing it in.
Note: must have a look at endnote at some point.

Plan:

• Must have a particle bouncing on a flat surface by a week on tuesday so that I can show/talk to Dr Lucas about it.
• Keep noting down each equation used, its source and its purpose for reference later

Week 20: 2nd February - 8th February: Meeting And Schedule

Unfortunately, (again!) not a lot was done last week as I was quite ill for the majority of it. I have to get back on schedule as I am very much behind on the work, especially the programming.

I had my second meeting with Dr Lucas today. He was told of how little I have done so far but he knows about the window layout and the research which has been done and is as always ongoing. I asked about when to start writing the dissertation. He said that it was better to start programming most of the project first so that they is something to base the wirting on. March time will probably be the best time to start thinking about the dissertation I think and so consentration is now being put on actually getting somewhere constructive with the programming.

Week 19: 26th January - 1st February: Week in Review

So far not a lot of programming has been done. I have the very basic OpenGL window set up and now I will have to sit down and really plan exactly what i will be doing and get a solid code structure set up so that the code can remain as neat and tidy and especially efficient.

The lecture this week spoke about the management of time and also gave us a website to look at:

www.grad.ac.uk

Must keep in mind:

• approx. only 9 hours a day that I can actually manage
• do the important things before they become urgent
• prioritise and plan

I have decided that I will plan each day the night before and the same for each week and at the end of each I will review what has been done and why etc.

This will probably be the best way for me to stick on track as it is something I am not good at.