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Re: An alternative presentation...
Posted By: Stephen L. (SoundEffect) <soundeffect@hotmail.com>Date: 2/11/12 12:24 p.m.

In Response To: Re: An alternative presentation... (OldNick)


: Thanks for the kind opinion, I hoped you'd like it. The display is admittedly
: busy (looks better at full size, and yes, it all suddenly clicks when in
: motion), but in order to make hand-flying and navigation convenient and
: enjoyable while keeping everything to scale you just have to provide some
: artificial augmentation of depth-perception and spatial awareness (since
: the field of view is unavoidably narrow). The last time I looked at
: Celestia you couldn't fly the viewpoint by hand, which I would assume was
: because they hadn't found acceptable solutions to these problems.

: I certainly agree that a 2D map provides a more easily grasped overview, and
: should have prevented some of the more egregious mistakes which various
: authors have made. But if you want to eliminate all possibility of such
: errors, you have to deal with that third dimension at some point.
: Presumably you've seen those oblique visualisations which show relative
: positions of nearby stars using radial and vertical lines referred to the
: Sun. The capability to dynamically create that sort of display centred on
: any object (and then fly around it) was definitely on my desirable feature
: list. I appreciate that it would be difficult to make that work on
: multiple scales and for large numbers of objects, but in all seriousness,
: i'm genuinely sorry to say that I doubt if the idea of one giant zoomable
: picture containing everything can be made to work. Or at least not without
: scene-management (deciding what to draw) and LOD-switching (how detailed
: an object to draw) software to support it.

: On a lighter note, perhaps readers who lack our familiarity with positional
: astronomy would be interested to see just how the galactic plane which
: you're mapping on relates to our Earth-bound notions of up and down - or
: at least North and South. In this picture (with the HUD turned off and the
: constellation overlay turned on) North is up. The nested ellipses are the
: approximate orbits of the major Solar planets, with the Sun at the centre
: - too distant to show a disc. The long slanted line running from top to
: bottom of the image represents the galactic plane which is the flat
: surface of your map. Here it's actually the far side of a circular hoop
: 100000 lightyears across representing the approximate rim of our galaxy.
: The shorter slanted line crossing it at right angles represents the
: top-to-bottom extent of the central galactic bulge (the yolk in the fried
: egg, if you like). The white ellipse left of centre represents one of the
: Milky Way's satellite dwarf galaxies, on the far side of our galaxy. I
: told you my galaxy representations were a bit sketchy : ), and yes, it
: should be drawn behind the planetary orbits rather than on top of them.

: To put it another, possibly clearer way: to create this image I started with
: the viewpoint at the Sun's position and swung around to point at the
: centre of the galaxy, where the long and short lines cross. I then
: reversed out of the Solar System in a straight line far enough to get the
: whole of Neptune's orbit on-screen. We're sitting on the plane of the
: galactic disc looking down on the northern side of our system's ecliptic
: plane (defined by the planets' orbits), with (nominal) galactic centre
: directly behind the Sun.

:

That view is also pretty cool. I understand your context with the related image perfectly. I also realize the solar system is spinning more of less in a steering wheel angle compared to a horizontal galactic plane. Disconcerting, but it's true.

On my map, another feature would be the ability to click on a star and get a zoomed-in layout of the system with planets and such. Not too many fully-known systems in the Haloverse, but it would be a start.

There's so much wasted potential in the Halo universe. There's so many, many things that could be done just with existing info, but only a few novels and games are all we have. So much potential!

My HBO Articles



Message Index




Replies:

teaser Galaxy Map underwayStephen L. (SoundEffect) 2/8/12 8:27 p.m.
     O.OZackDark 2/8/12 8:57 p.m.
           Re: O.OStephen L. (SoundEffect) 2/8/12 9:10 p.m.
                 No GPU?ZackDark 2/8/12 9:16 p.m.
                       Re: No GPU?Stephen L. (SoundEffect) 2/8/12 9:50 p.m.
                             Re: No GPU?ZackDark 2/9/12 10:02 a.m.
                                   Re: No GPU?Stephen L. (SoundEffect) 2/9/12 11:42 a.m.
                                         Re: No GPU?ZackDark 2/9/12 12:05 p.m.
                                               Re: No GPU?Stephen L. (SoundEffect) 2/9/12 1:54 p.m.
     Re: teaser Galaxy Map underwaySeraph XXVII 2/8/12 10:21 p.m.
           Re: teaser Galaxy Map underwayStephen L. (SoundEffect) 2/9/12 5:40 a.m.
     Re: teaser Galaxy Map underwayDEEP NNN 2/9/12 6:31 a.m.
           Re: teaser Galaxy Map underwayStephen L. (SoundEffect) 2/9/12 6:50 a.m.
                 Re: teaser Galaxy Map underwayDEEP NNN 2/9/12 7:02 a.m.
                       Re: teaser Galaxy Map underwayStephen L. (SoundEffect) 2/9/12 8:01 a.m.
     Re: teaser Galaxy Map underwayDragonclaws 2/9/12 6:25 p.m.
           Re: teaser Galaxy Map underwayStephen L. (SoundEffect) 2/10/12 6:35 a.m.
                 Re: teaser Galaxy Map underwayPaused 2/10/12 3:23 p.m.
                       Re: teaser Galaxy Map underwayZackDark 2/10/12 5:09 p.m.
                       Re: teaser Galaxy Map underwayStephen L. (SoundEffect) 2/10/12 5:14 p.m.
                             Re: teaser Galaxy Map underwayPaused 2/10/12 5:39 p.m.
                                   Re: teaser Galaxy Map underwayStephen L. (SoundEffect) 2/10/12 6:44 p.m.
                                         Re: teaser Galaxy Map underwayPaused 2/10/12 7:55 p.m.
                                               Re: teaser Galaxy Map underwayStephen L. (SoundEffect) 2/10/12 9:45 p.m.
                                                     An alternative presentation...OldNick 2/10/12 10:49 p.m.
                                                           Re: An alternative presentation...Stephen L. (SoundEffect) 2/11/12 9:01 a.m.
                                                                 Re: An alternative presentation...OldNick 2/11/12 11:52 a.m.
                                                                       Re: An alternative presentation...Stephen L. (SoundEffect) 2/11/12 12:24 p.m.



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