Check which ports are open to the outside world. Helps make sure that your firewall rules are working as intended.
One of a set of tools we are providing to everyone as a way of saying thank you for being a part of the community.
if you really want you can do all the calculation yourself and draw directly to a canvas, but I don't recommend this since this is a real hard job to do and there are already made libraries available for free. One is the so often cited DirectX (in particular the Direct3D part of it) and another one is OpenGL.
The former deals heavily with COM objects and is hard to understand while the latter is a procedural API and quite easy to learn. OpenGL has very good references (do you know the movies "Independence day", "Terminator 2" or "Jurassic Park"? I'm sure you know at least one of them. The special effects shown in these movies all where made with OpenGL.
To get started with OpenGL (if you prefer it over DX) point your browser to one of the major Delphi sites (DSP, Deli, Torry's) and search for GLScene. There's a D2 version with source code (version 0.3.2 beta) and a D3 version (0.4.3 beta) without sources. A D4 version is under work.
Ciao, Mike