Project Description

Summary

My project, dubbed Q-Blizzard, will be an exploration in creating particle systems that simulate snow in DirectX 9.0 XNA. I will be building a basic scene with a house and sky, with snow falling from the sky.

Objectives

  • Learn how to use DirectX XNA
  • Create a basic scene with snow falling from the sky.
  • Add in wind to make the simulation a true blizzard
  • Make the snow melt on geometry within the scene

Systems

I will be using my two Windows computers to test and develop the software using Visual Studio 2008. Here are some basic specs for my machines:

  • Desktop: Windows XP x86, 2 GB RAM, AMD Athlon 64 4200+ 2.21 GHz, Nvidia 7900GS 512 MB RAM
  • Laptop: Windows Vista x86, 2 GB RAM, Intel Core Duo 2.4 GHz, Nvidia 8400M GS 128MB Dedicated/767MB Shared

Presentation

For the presentation I plan on going over the basics of how I set up my particle system and show a thorough demo of the application in different configurations.

Wishlist

These are ideas for my project given that I have enough time to implement them, or just ideas for the application moving forward.

  • Fractal generation of different snowflake models that will fall in the particle system.
  • Pushing snow around, or having it pile up and react to being moved or large clumps of snow falling on other snow. Would require some sort of fluid dynamics research.
  • Some realistic lighting effects. Might require ray-tracing or radiosity.

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