3D Game Programming for Kids, 2nd Edition

Not Perfect, But Still a Great Simulation

You may have noticed that the Moon completely covers up the Sun after it moves through a waning crescent. That is, our simulation shows a total solar eclipse every month. This is a pretty good clue that our simulation is not perfect since solar eclipses are rare. What would we need to make it better?

First, the sizes and distances of the Earth and Moon in our simulation are way off. The Sun in our simulation has size 100. A correctly sized Earth would have a size of less than 1—ours is 40! Even if the Earth had the correct size, it’s still way too close to the Sun. Our simulated Earth is 300 away from the Sun. To be accurate, for a Sun of size 100, the Earth should be 11,000 away! The Moon is too ...