Computing: Free Pascal Programming

Plane in the wind simulation


Download Plane desktop application (Windows 64bit) Download Plane source code (Lazarus/Free Pascal)

Description: Kinematics application, that simulates a plane moving in the wind. Physically spoken, it's a case of velocity addition, mathematically spoken a case of vector calculation. Just fill in the plane velocity (= velocity relative to the air mass) and the velocity and angle of the wind and push the Start button. The program calculates the plane total velocity and the angle it is deviated (from its original east-direction towards the north) and moves the two planes (plane 1 = no wind) accordingly.
Wind with north-east direction (angle = 0 - 90º) is tail-wind, thus the velocity of plane 2 is increased; wind with north-west direction (angle = 90º - 180º) is head wind, thus the velocity of the plane is decreased. Special cases: Angle = 0: full tail-wind (from the west); angle = 90º: full cross-wind (from the south); angle = 180º: full head wind (from the east). The deviation angle depends on the relative velocities of the plane and the wind. Note that if this angle = 45º, the displacement of the plane towards the north (y-axis) is the same as its displacement towards the east (x-axis); this corresponds mathematically to sin(45º) = cos(45º).

Free Pascal features: Creating objects during run-time. Using a timer and images' Left and Top properties to create simple graphical animations (displacements of objects). Using small shapes to draw curves.

Screenshot:

Physics: Plane in the wind simulation

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