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Re: New / Updated Star Map of Honorverse available somewhere?

PostPosted:Sun Nov 11, 2018 8:44 am
by John Fairbairn, KDE, GACM
Oliver Kindzorra wrote:
Tue Nov 06, 2018 9:27 am
3D requires technology and a way to present it. 2D doesn't and in printed form works even without electricity. But the real point is that there are missing parts, even if you do not consider newer developments in the story line of the newer books.
I was thinking of something along the lines of the type of thing provided in the Stereogram format, as is used in this link:
http://www.anopticalillusion.com/2015/1 ... ne-levine/
to depict a cube that has openings in it.

A star chart could be similarly represented in 3D, using a printed flat color image. Just a thought.

Re: New / Updated Star Map of Honorverse available somewhere?

PostPosted:Fri Nov 16, 2018 10:09 pm
by Karyn Hill, KDE, QBM, MP
John Fairbairn, KCE, MP wrote:
Sun Nov 11, 2018 8:44 am
Oliver Kindzorra wrote:
Tue Nov 06, 2018 9:27 am
3D requires technology and a way to present it. 2D doesn't and in printed form works even without electricity. But the real point is that there are missing parts, even if you do not consider newer developments in the story line of the newer books.
I was thinking of something along the lines of the type of thing provided in the Stereogram format, as is used in this link:
http://www.anopticalillusion.com/2015/1 ... ne-levine/
to depict a cube that has openings in it.

A star chart could be similarly represented in 3D, using a printed flat color image. Just a thought.
It's probably a symptom of my vision issues but nothing about that looks to me as if it even infers three dimensions, much less depicts it. Of course, 3D movies were an impossibility for me until fairly recently and they're still not quite exactly right, so perhaps there's some effect I still can't see and everyone else may see exactly what you mean.

Re: New / Updated Star Map of Honorverse available somewhere?

PostPosted:Sun Nov 18, 2018 9:22 am
by Philip Culmer
I'm not sure whether it's a technique thing or something about the way that an individual's visual system is wired, but I've never been able to see those in 3d.

Re: New / Updated Star Map of Honorverse available somewhere?

PostPosted:Sun Nov 18, 2018 8:13 pm
by John Fairbairn, KDE, GACM
Karyn Hill, KDE, QBM, MP wrote:
Fri Nov 16, 2018 10:09 pm

It's probably a symptom of my vision issues but nothing about that looks to me as if it even infers three dimensions, much less depicts it. Of course, 3D movies were an impossibility for me until fairly recently and they're still not quite exactly right, so perhaps there's some effect I still can't see and everyone else may see exactly what you mean.
Philip Culmer wrote:
Sun Nov 18, 2018 9:22 am
I'm not sure whether it's a technique thing or something about the way that an individual's visual system is wired, but I've never been able to see those in 3d.
A trick I use to obtain the 3-D viewing of these types of representations is this:
1) Bring up the desired image on the screen or print it in color, as large as possible.
2) Place the image (or the printed copy) about one foot from your face.
3) Look at and focus on the center of the image. If needed, on a printed version place a little pen or pencil dot in the center.
4) Slowly move your head back, while keeping that same focus. That means your eyes will be slightly crossed with regard to both eyes being centered on the image. As you move the image away, you will get the sense that the dot is splitting into two separate dots. For an example of what I mean, look at the three gold dots at the end of this post. Now, cross your eyes slightly, and the three dots should become two groups of three dots, more or less separated depending on how severely you cross your eyes. The groups will try to float back together as your brain tries to make your eyes uncross. NOTE: For some folks, if they cross their eyes their brain automatically suppresses the image from one eye. That can make resolving these images extremely difficult.
5) At some point as you move the image away, you will begin to sense that there is some sort of image 'hidden' in the swirl of what you see. You may see only part of it at first.
6) Continue to move the image away. Eventually, the image should come into focus for you.

It may feel like you are straining your eyes a bit. That is normal. Your brain is used to focusing your eyes at the point where both your eyes are looking. You are not used to looking at things cross-eyed, so your brain is trying to move the eye focus to the point where your visual fields cross while your eyes are trying to tell your brain that they need to be focused on the image. It takes time and patience to learn to do this.

Another possibility is to print a star map in two colors or in polarized form and then view that with appropriate decoding glasses.

Re: New / Updated Star Map of Honorverse available somewhere?

PostPosted:Mon Nov 19, 2018 8:45 pm
by Philip Culmer
Thank you, John.

I'm pretty good with coloured anaglyphs, and polarised ones, is just the crossed eye ones that throw me; possibly it's that suppression of one eye thing.

Re: New / Updated Star Map of Honorverse available somewhere?

PostPosted:Wed Nov 21, 2018 1:56 am
by Karyn Hill, KDE, QBM, MP
John Fairbairn, KCE, MP wrote:
Sun Nov 18, 2018 8:13 pm
A trick I use to obtain the 3-D viewing of these types of representations is this:
1) Bring up the desired image on the screen or print it in color, as large as possible.
2) Place the image (or the printed copy) about one foot from your face.
3) Look at and focus on the center of the image. If needed, on a printed version place a little pen or pencil dot in the center.
4) Slowly move your head back, while keeping that same focus. That means your eyes will be slightly crossed with regard to both eyes being centered on the image. As you move the image away, you will get the sense that the dot is splitting into two separate dots. For an example of what I mean, look at the three gold dots at the end of this post. Now, cross your eyes slightly, and the three dots should become two groups of three dots, more or less separated depending on how severely you cross your eyes. The groups will try to float back together as your brain tries to make your eyes uncross. NOTE: For some folks, if they cross their eyes their brain automatically suppresses the image from one eye. That can make resolving these images extremely difficult.
5) At some point as you move the image away, you will begin to sense that there is some sort of image 'hidden' in the swirl of what you see. You may see only part of it at first.
6) Continue to move the image away. Eventually, the image should come into focus for you.

It may feel like you are straining your eyes a bit. That is normal. Your brain is used to focusing your eyes at the point where both your eyes are looking. You are not used to looking at things cross-eyed, so your brain is trying to move the eye focus to the point where your visual fields cross while your eyes are trying to tell your brain that they need to be focused on the image. It takes time and patience to learn to do this.
I have a strong-ish torsion in my left eye so this is unlikely to ever work for me. I imagine it's a pretty cool effect, though!

Re: New / Updated Star Map of Honorverse available somewhere?

PostPosted:Thu Nov 22, 2018 2:28 am
by Doug Needham
I have no issues with seeing 3D in images like that, and back in the 80s, actually worked on some early 3D visualization attempts of stars within the solar neighborhood (seems a natural thing for someone strong with computers who also is studying astrophysics and has access to very high-end graphics devices to do, wouldn't you say??). And while I could certainly see doing something like this, and could turn out either interactive VR or a 3D rendering relatively easily which would be extremely accurate, there is just one huge issue...

What is the designation of Manticore A/B? Erewhon? Trevor's Star? The reality is on σ Draconis and Sol are the two systems which play a major role and are associated with stars I can look up in a catalogue. Manticore A/B being a G0/G2 binary pair at 512 ly from Earth and 475 ly from σ Dra is all we know. And I would make a guess that even going through catalogues such as the Washington Double Star (which includes not only binary but visual doubles), GAIA 2 or others that finding an actual binary star system satisfying those criteria would yield results. Indeed, a quick check on the distance of σ Dra from Earth yields an interesting glitch... at under 19ly from Earth, we cannot construct any satisfactory triangle. The closest we can get to this is:

Sol σ Dra Manticore
____________512ly_______________________
*__19ly__*________475ly_____________ *

We lack over 18ly. And that means that inaccuracies from a 2D map would stick out like Tzar Bomba did from 1000km when detonated. But I am not surprised... We know how David likes putting in details, and many of these probably come from before BuNine really got going.

But hey... I still consider the Honorverse to be in the top 3 "universes" for SciFi IMO. (C.J. Cherryh's Union-Alliance and Anne McCaffrey's being the other two, with McCaffrey's mainly being there for localized, not wide scale details). And for something like this, it is nothing like Larry Niven's goof in the first paperback edition of Ringworld.

Re: New / Updated Star Map of Honorverse available somewhere?

PostPosted:Fri Nov 23, 2018 5:24 am
by John Fairbairn, KDE, GACM
Doug Needham wrote:
Thu Nov 22, 2018 2:28 am
{B}ack in the 80s, {I} actually worked on some early 3D visualization attempts of stars within the solar neighborhood (seems a natural thing for someone strong with computers who also is studying astrophysics and has access to very high-end graphics devices to do, wouldn't you say??). And while I could certainly see doing something like this, and could turn out either interactive VR or a 3D rendering relatively easily which would be extremely accurate, there is just one huge issue...

{Only} σ Draconis and Sol are the two systems which play a major role and are associated with stars I can look up in a catalogue. Manticore A/B being a G0/G2 binary pair at 512 ly from Earth and 475 ly from σ Dra{conis} ...
No other stars mentioned in the entire Honorverse set can be found in an actual star catalogue? I believe we'd only need one more to triangulate an absolute point in space for Manticore (even if it really does not exist there).

However, that may not really be needed. Since we presumably know the distance from Sol to σ Draconis, that should give us the triangle needed to determine the exact angle of the intersection of a 512 ly line from from Sol and 475 ly line from from σ Draconis. From that, we can construct a pair of cones for each line that shows the circumference of the sweep of that angle from the two origin points, and any G2/G0 binary pair on that circumference could be presumed to be Manticore A/B, unless it already is named. I would WAG that there are not more than maybe, say, a couple thousand such. ;)

The others could be plotted from there, since Mr. Weber kindly gave us sets of 2D charts that have general directions and distances.

Sir, your post has taken this topic in an interesting and expanded direction. Thank you.

Re: New / Updated Star Map of Honorverse available somewhere?

PostPosted:Sat Nov 24, 2018 2:38 am
by Doug Needham
John,

Yea... the only systems in the Honorverse to which corresponding stars in the real world are known are Sol and Beowulf. For the rest, it is like trying to find the address of your new friend who goes by the name Snake who lives in an unfamiliar part of town, knowing only his nickname and maybe the color of his house. Unless hidden someplace in a buried reference, there are no references to real world names or other designations which could then be used to lookup the star and get the details. There may or may not be something roughly corresponding, such as a star at the distance specified for Manticore which is a binary pair of roughly the correct spectral classes, but I can guarantee you that it would be pure coincidence and would still not be Manticore in even the remotest of ways.

As for your WAG... and the rest of your thinking in that paragraph, I can guarantee that the number of stars which would match would be much less than you think. See my original reply regarding the triangle which would be used to create the cone, and you will see why. But a simple search of the Hipparcos data set for stars with a parallax between 6.21 and 6.87 milliarcseconds (e.g. stars within a shell ranging from 475 to 525ly), which are multiple stars, with a spectral class roughly around G0, we only get 164 stars. And it should be noted that the number of systems is more like half of that number (not all stars came up with their companions... for example, if one had a K or M class companion, only one of the pair would show up). But this is a pretty thick shell of 50ly. If we instead drop it to 6.21 to 6.52 milliarcsecs (512.5 +/- 12.5 ly), which is still generous, this drops to roughly a dozen systems, all of which could be eliminated for reasons listed in my original reply.

Now, even if we knew the ID for Manticore A/B, we still would not be able to necessarily ID and find how to place the other stars, since a 2D map loses details in the projection from 3D. In effect, the projection is a lossy form of compression. The only way we would really be able to do the 3D map is if between David and BuNine, they had produced a table such as this one, and then assigned names for use in-story. Indeed, were I to be deciding to create a story-verse as David did back when he started the Honorverse, I would be going to something like the Hipparchus or Gaia datasets, picking stars, and then computing the figures to use, also accounting for motion since we are talking a significant enough time ... I actually still have the F77 code which would allow me to do that burned onto a CD (which I transferred off of 2400ft magtapes over 2 decades ago, roughly a decade after I had transferred them from their original punchcards), though if I wanted the graphics output, I would have to rewrite those sections of the code. And I would get back the results in seconds, instead of minutes (or longer if the mainframe decided to glitch on my JCL deck) LOL

Re: New / Updated Star Map of Honorverse available somewhere?

PostPosted:Sat Nov 24, 2018 5:09 am
by John Fairbairn, KDE, GACM
Sir -

And absolutely none of those ~12 binary pairs would fit the description of Manticore A/B closely enough to use as a starting point? I understand your comments about the loss of data in a 3D compression to 2D. However, there are some clues in the distances given in the 2D maps that have been produced that might help resolve some of that. Just a thought.

Reaching back in time ...

I started my electronics on the electro-mechanical MilSpec R390 receiver in 1964. After service in 1967, I went to work for Control Data Corp, and first used their CDC 160A and then the CDC 3300. I was an R&D techie, helping on the building and design of an automated clock-writer for large scale disk files, and on head-crash detectors. While doing that, I also went to school at CDI for cert as a computer service tech (Customer Engineer). From that, I was assigned to further schooling on CDC 7600 systems, and then assigned to a 7600 satellited 6600. Shortly after, CDC rifted 20% of its work force and I lost my job there. I went to work for EMR Computers, then on to other things.

Eventually (in the mid 1970s) I started my own company doing technical communications. To do my work, I was an early adopter of an Altair 8800, then moving to an IBM 286 clone. At ages 5 and 8, my kids were the first two in our school district to own and use personal computers of their own for schoolwork (TI 994A PCs)

As part of my business, one of my contracts was to write the test procedures for the Advanced Tactical Fighter and Sub Hunter avionic electronics. Another was for the installation, operation, calibration, maintenance, and software manuals for CIMCORP on the (then) two largest gantry robots in the world. A third was as one of a team of eight diagnostic writers charged with reading line by line through all 14,000,000 lines of the code in the Cray Research UNICOS operating system, looking for ways that users could promote themselves into undue privilege. This was a 2-year project to certify UNICOS at the B-1 level under Federal Trusted Systems requirements. My particular slice of that was to read/test/proof all of the OS Trusted Processes.

The closest I ever got to computer use in astronomy was a 2-day seminar led by Clifford Stoll of The Cuckoo's Egg fame. Stoll was an astronomer as well as a SysAdmin, and some of his computers at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory were so used.

I just thought that some of the information we already have might yield some clues. Any other astronomic cartographers out there who might care to comment?