Camera/transform advice

I’m trying to implement a solar system with a camera that can fly through it with six degrees of freedom. However, I’m still having trouble getting my head around the duality of the model and view transformations. I get the model placed OK with sun, planets, and moons, but when the camera/view comes in my head explodes.

Can someone give me advice as to how to proceed with a camera/view? Should I use gluLookAt() and modify up, lookAt, and position vectors? Or write my own and keep track of pitch, heading, and roll? Or maybe a combination?

If/when this sinks in it will be a great day filled with jollity and mirth. Small woodland creatures will dance about my feet. Until then, however, I’m in a haze :frowning:

I started from scratch and implemented my own camera, keeping track of the roll, pitch, and heading angles and making my own glRotate and glTranslate calls. It seems to work OK and was surprisingly simpler than I thought. I still don’t grok it completely, but at least I have something working.