wxRASP

Preparing for my level 1 cert flight I noticed a sad lack of rocketry simulation packages for Linux. Never having enough simultaneous projects I decided to change this. wRASP is a popular simulation program descended from BASIC code written in 1979 (!!!) and has had several authors over the years. The current maintainer Chuck Gibke was kind enough to send me the source and away I went.

wxRASP is my port of the wRASP codebase. It uses the wxWindows toolkit, which means it can theoretically be compiled for GTK+, Motif, Win32 and Mac -- just about every platform worth noting. I say theoretically because I have only ever used it with GTK+ under Linux. If you would like to try it out on another platform, please let me know how it goes. I would like to get pre-compiled binaries up for all of them -- especially the ones where people are rather unlikely to have a compiler installed. Unfortunately I only have easy access to Linux and NT boxes, so I need to find someone to create the Mac binaries.

This is not a pixel-for-pixel port, I have changed the interface considerably. (And, hopefuly, for the better.) I am trying to keep the main screen as clean as possible. The 'Launch' pseudo-menu has been replaced with a more intuitive play/pause/stop system, with flight results displayed in dialog boxes. I am also working on cleaning up the backend code.

This is a preliminary, highly-alpha release, but I wanted to get something out. All that currently works is simple single stage rocket flight simulations using the RASP code. However, I suspect this accounts for the vast majority of its uses. Most of the menus are disabled and there are no units printed on the graph. The backend is messier than when I got it, but I'm working towards a coherent new system. I have been forcing myself to deal with the tedious GUI aspects for the last few days to get a working version; now I can go back to the fun backend stuff.

To install it you will need the wxWindows for the platform/toolkit you want to compile for, as well as the development libraries for the native toolkit. (This is why I want pre-compiled binaries, I realize not everyone on the planet finds this to be a reasonable requirement.) Now download the tarball of wxRASP and have at it. There is a Makefile included, but nothing fancy like a configure script. I don't think there is anything tricky about the compile once you have the libraries installed, but I could be wrong. Please try it if you're equiped to do so.

Update 3/15/2000: Version 0.02 released. Like before, but the backend code isn't so insane.

Update 3/18/2000: Version 0.03 released. Added the Options/Units dialog.