Double Pendulum Simulation in C

Overview

This project simulates a double pendulum, using differential equations to model the system's angular momentum over time, and renders the motion in real time with raylib.

Controls

• Press Space to start or pause the simulation.
• While paused, click and drag either pendulum to set a new angle.
• Release the mouse, then press Space again to continue from the new position.

raylib C setup

Installation by operating system

macOS (Apple Silicon and Intel)

1. Install Homebrew if needed.
2. Install dependencies:

brew update
brew install raylib pkg-config

Linux (Debian/Ubuntu)

1. Update package lists.
2. Install compiler, make, pkg-config, and raylib development files:

sudo apt update
sudo apt install -y build-essential clang pkg-config libraylib-dev

Linux (Fedora / RHEL / Rocky / AlmaLinux)

1. Install compiler, make, pkg-config, and raylib development files:

sudo dnf install -y gcc clang make pkgconf-pkg-config raylib-devel

2. Build and run:

make
make run

If raylib-devel is not available in your enabled repositories (common on some RHEL-based setups), enable EPEL/extra repos for your distribution or install raylib from source first.

Windows

The easiest path is WSL2 with Ubuntu.

1. Open your Ubuntu (WSL2) terminal in the project folder.
2. Install dependencies:

sudo apt update
sudo apt install -y build-essential clang pkg-config libraylib-dev

Alternative (native Windows): use MSYS2 UCRT64 and install equivalent packages for clang, make, pkg-config, and raylib.

Build and run

After installing dependencies on your platform:

Build

make

Run

make run

Clean

make clean

Inspiration

Special thanks to Daniel Hirsch for sparking the idea for this project through his video on the same topic.

Though this project is strongly inspired by that work, no code has been copied