Three Views of Saturn on the ZX Spectrum

This is an excellent little demonstration of the graphical capabilities of the ZX Spectrum. Called the Rings of Saturn this basic program was written by Maurice Gavin and published in Popular Computing Weekly in September 1983.

As the title of the video suggests, the demonstration shows three views of a jaundiced looking Saturn. The angle and type of view is inputted by the user. So for example, a view with a tilt (seen in the top right hand corner of the screen) of 0 Degrees means that the program will draw Saturn as viewed over its equator (rings seen head on).

As would be expected changing the tilt to something like 11.5 degrees tends to produce the most aesthetically pleasing results.

This is a small but very thorough program. By this, I mean that even aspects of the rings such as the Cassini Division (the apparent gap running through the rings) is included. Another point worthy of mention is that the program does not use the 'CIRCLE' command as Saturn (and indeed all planets) tend to be flattened at the poles and bulging at the equator - this type of shape is called an oblate spheroid.

All in all an excellent program which it needs to be remembered takes up little more than 3K.

Category:

Science & Technology

Tags:

• Basic
• Programming
• ZX Spectrum
• Saturn
• Oblate Spheroid
• Cassini Division
• Demo
• Retro

[yourcomputeronline]

@mjlambert80 It's a pleasure. I should point out that the demonstration above is running at twice the speed of a standard Spectrum. When push comes to shove I would say that the Speccy is my favourite machine as well (closely followed by the Atari 800 and ZX81).

[mjlambert80]

An excellent display of capabilities of my favourite computer of all time. And in what, less than 100 lines of basic? Fantastic. Thanks for putting these videos up, I'm so glad I found them!