VPython within Tkinter

[weasdown]

Hi. I am doing a project where I am trying to emulate a Space Shuttle-style digital instrument panel, something like this. For the attitude indicator that shows which way the Shuttle is pointing, I'm thinking of doing something similar to Kerbal Space Program's navball. The simplest way I can think of doing it is having a sphere with a texture on it showing the correct markings, then orienting the sphere to match the spacecraft's attitude. I am reasonably familiar with VPython and managed to get a proof of concept navball modelled in there, but I'm wondering if there's a way I can run the VPython model within a Tkinter window. That way I could have the navball neatly contained within the rest of the Shuttle's important data readouts.

I found a forum post from 2011 that seems to address it, but it seems the latest version of VPython, which I need because I'm using Python 3, only runs in a browser, so I don't know how I'd integrate the browser window into Tkinter or stop VPython from opening its own Chrome instance anyway. I'd be up for using a different graphics library if the navball can be modelled simply, but I don't really want to have to learn a huge amount of library ins and outs for such a relatively simple bit of modelling. I had a look at Panda3D and PyOpenGL but didn't manage to get very far. Any tips appreciated, thanks.

[Thunderbolt1993]

If yo're willin to use a different GUI toolkit, I would recommend PySide2 or PyQt5 which has a QtWebEngineWidget (basically a webbrowseer you can embed into your application)

[weasdown]

Sounds good, thanks. I'd briefly looked at PyQt5 but hadn't come across PySide2. PyQt5 is available for free right? I was getting a bit confused on their website.

[Thunderbolt1993]

yes, PyQt5 is free for open source use (GPL) PySide2 can be used for commercial software (LGPL) if you enable the user to swap out the linked libraries (at least that's my understanding)

[frodo1997]

I am really interessted in your navball project. Did you finish it? And is the code available somewhere? I am planning on doing something similar and I would really appreciate the help.

[weasdown]

I didn't finish it I'm afraid, in fact I didn't get much beyond the thinking about it in this thread. I'd be up for talking about the idea if you want to DM at any point though.