After some persuasion from others I decided to focus on programming the application in directX 10, backwards compatiabiliy can wait until a possible later date.
The layout at current can either be the relatively simple circular layout...
or based on a Bezier Surface.
The lighting that can be seen is just a basic Phong Shader at current. Working on it has allowed me to get to grips with the DirectX 10 Input Assembler, its shader system and HLSL10.
Also implemented so far is the basis of the physics system and the Verlet Integration. While working on the physics I experimented with variable time stepping just to see the results. As has been documented there seems to be some strange errors with variable time stepping. As the physics calculations are likely to become very intensive fixed time stepping at a rate of approximately 10 milliseconds per update seems the sensible update frequency to use at current.
