Virtual Planets !

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Please check out these Demo Files (http://guymcarthur.com/projects/vplanets/) .

My concept for "Virtual Planets" is something like 9planets, an encyclopedia of the Solar System, but will have much more of a 'wow' factor, more useful reference material, detailed text, slideshows, etc.

But the center pieces of content will be interactive 3-D models, rendered using Java applets, so the pages require no special plugins, nothing other than an ordinary web browser.

To see a sample of what is possible (just the barest beginning), check out
the link above (click on one of the autogen_*.html files).

The Shout3D applet is pretty remarkable. In a little over 100K download, (which the browser will cache after the first load) you get a component that can render nearly everything in the VRML97 specification (including events, sounds and lights), with quality and framerates equivilant to multi-megabyte plugins which use hardware rendering.

I'm going to be purchasing an educational license (this will remove the logo banner in the bottom of the applet).

The applet is an extensible object, too. One of the next things I'll be doing is adding a viewpoint selector (i.e. view Jupiter from Io and so on), and simple GUI controls. Right now, you can rotate by clicking and dragging with the mouse, zoom in by holding down control and dragging in or out, and pan by shift plus drag. Framerate will be displayed by 'f'.

There is plenty of room for optimization too... the goal is something acceptable on say a 56K modem connection and a Pentium II-class system.

I'd love to hear any feedback / suggestions. And if you'd like to help develop content, you can download the trial version of Shout3D, check out it's great demos and documentation, and I'll make the content files available over CVS.

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Attached is a remarkably ugly mockup I just whipped up. Really just a starting point, as you see there is a lot left to define!

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I did some research on internationalization and localization (i18n and l10n). It will be pretty simple. All you will need to contribute is an editor that does utf8 (unicode), either directly as unicode or as unicode escape sequences.

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I made a simple crude test to see if rings can work out. It does! Flawless and spooky. Check out this demo (http://guymcarthur.com/projects/vplanets/autogen_ring-test.html) .

(Rotate the world because initially it is edge on).
It uses a transparent image on the ends of a cylinder with height 0.

One trick will be to have a lit and an unlit side of the rings. I'm pretty sure this will be handled automatically (in the demo both sides are lit the same because it is the "headlight" that is the light source).

It's amazing how simple this stuff is. I've attached the code for the demo in this post.

[SEDShead]

Cool. I'm assuming "crude" includes that the ring looks a little ragged.

I also tried it on Netscape 4.78 running on MacOS 9.2.2 under "Classic" mode in Mac OS X. Loads a little slow, but still works fine.

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Originally posted by SEDShead
Cool. I'm assuming "crude" includes that the ring looks a little ragged.


Yeah, I just outlined a circle in Gimp, then smudged white around it! :p

One of the sites has ring radius vs. brightness, gotta find a way to rotate it around full circle. Probably will write a little GD or Java program to make the real image....

Glad to see that someone else has finally posted in this thread! :cool:

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I wrote a trivially simple extension of the Shout3dApplet to show viewpoint selection (http://guymcarthur.com/projects/vplanets/earth.html) . Check it out!

Note: it is actually shifting the viewpoint to center it or something, which messes some of them up. Haven't found out how to disable that, but I know it's possible from some of the demos.

Also found out some really cool things. Not only can you extend the Java classes that do the rendering, you can extend the VRML language itself! One example given was making a "mass" field, then implementing an Nbody engine....

If anyone has input on what button controls would be good, let me know. Here's what I'm thinking of:

zoom in, zoom out, recenter, pause, next viewpoint, previous viewpoint

[SEDShead]

The Earth viewpoints look good. I didn't get anything for the lunar phase (because it is new moon?). Is it possible to track a point on the Earth and follow it, like a geo-sync satellite?

Keep up the great work!

Not that I have time, but regarding the WebDAV server -- have you done much work with WebDAV? I've tried to set it up a few times, but I'm never convinced that I have it set up right.

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Yeah, for some reason on the lunar phase view it pops you waay over to the far side....

Geosync. Hmmm. It's certainly possible to simulate it by making a co-rotating viewpoint (and then maybe adding some figure-8 motion on top of that). Is that what you had in mind?

Regarding WebDAV, I just compiled mod_dav into apache 1.3.27, setup the Location, and verified that I could browse it in KDE (webdav:// URL), open and save files. I know "Web Folders" in Win* will work as well, and OS X is said to have support built in. Also, on *nix you can mount it with davfs2.

Now, I don't think you get versioning and other advanced features unless the client supports it. You should get file locking at least (I hope).

[neubjr]

This all looks awesome. You might be interested in contacting Elhanan Gazit gazit@post.tau.ac.il He is a student at Tel Aviv University in Israel interested in educating students about the solar system. He has been working on their Virtual Solar System Project, and doing some analysis of how students learn best about space through such tool kits as the one he put together, which is similar to what you have here. I think that you guys might be good to exchange some ideas.

Joshua.

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FWIW, the viewpoint select demo I posted yesterday somehow used some Java 2 stuff, so doesn't work on IE & Netscape 4.

Don't know how that got in there!

I'll probably start using a Java 1.1 compiler to produce these things, just to make sure...

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Originally posted by smiley


I'll probably start using a Java 1.1 compiler to produce these things, just to make sure...

Updated to work in Java 1.1.it (http://guymcarthur.com/projects/vplanets/earth.html)

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What I'm shooting for is to have a "bare minimum" site ready by Thanksgiving (11/28 I think). It will have at least 1 model for each major planet / moon, and one or two spacecraft models. It will have some text and reference data on each body.

The initial site will be hosted on astronomica.org, but we'' encourage mirrors. I think I'd like to place everything under a Free License, with the exception of course of the Shout3D applet, and any compiled binaries based on it.

The Shout3D license is more restrictive than I'd like--it does not allow for redistribution. So mirror sites would have to purchase a license for it seperately.

Our source code, text, models, etc, can be placed under a seperate license. All of the texture files and images will be credited to various individuals and institutions....

[Impalaplaya]

This stuff is pretty cool a lil low tech but still effective

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However I've made a page outlining where this is headed (http://guymcarthur.com/projects/vplanets/) , setup a webDAV repository, and should have a mailing list soon, if anyone is interested, please reply.