Comparative Cartography.

[Arioch]

I certainly can't think of any good way to represent 3d space on a 2d surface for something that is as thick and cluttered as the galactic disk. It's either get a 3d program, or group things into smaller clusters.

I like the way it was done in the old Frontier Elite II game. A perspective view (that you can pan and rotate freely) with tabs going to the reference plane.

You can see that Barnard's Star or Ross 128 are "above" while Lalande 21185 or Epsilon Indi are "below".

That's a useful key, which I use on the tactical displays, but for large maps with a lot of stars it becomes incomprehensible.

[icekatze]

hi hi

There are a lot of ways to do it with a 3d space like Frontier Elite II. If I were to try doing something to improve FE2's map, I would try to include some form of tick mark to denote units of measurement for the Z axis, whether that's a horizontal mark, or bars of alternating bright and dim color. It's also a really small area, being only about 35 light years across, so that helps.

Honestly, it's too bad that humans aren't better at distinguishing exact colors without comparing colors side by side. Being able to color code depth would make things a lot easier.

[Keklas Rekobah]

@ Arioch: Please check your PMs.  I submitted a list of 230 stars within 25.1 LY of Sol in the Galactic {X,Y,Z} format that I assume matches the format you posted.  I hope you find it useful.  -KR-

[Dan Wyatt]

@ Arioch: Please check your PMs.  I submitted a list of 230 stars within 25.1 LY of Sol in the Galactic {X,Y,Z} format that I assume matches the format you posted.  I hope you find it useful.  -KR-

Where did you find the names?
Source?

[Keklas Rekobah]

@ Arioch: Please check your PMs.  I submitted a list of 230 stars within 25.1 LY of Sol in the Galactic {X,Y,Z} format that I assume matches the format you posted.  I hope you find it useful.  -KR-

Where did you find the names? Source?

If you google “Stars Within 25.1 Light Years”, the list I used is likely to be the top response (with the same title). Fields are padded with spaces, so I had to write a QB4.5 program to extract the data, remove the extraneous spaces, and reformat the data with HTAB delimiters. From there, I imported the data into a spreadsheet, and copied only the needed data into another file, which I then “massaged” into the chview format. It took less than two hours.

Sadly, chview simply is not working, so it was a largely wasted effort; but at least I have the data if a substitute utility can be found.

[Cthulhu]

Sadly, chview simply is not working, so it was a largely wasted effort; but at least I have the data if a substitute utility can be found.

There's a commercial program, AstroSynthesis, but it costs 35 bucks. It's from this list, together with chview.

Otherwise, you may try this list of free ones.

[icekatze]

hi hi

I've tried a lot of different programs for 3d star maps, and they're usually pretty clunky. Universe Sandbox had a decent UI at least, but it was pretty limited in a lot of other ways.

I wish I could find a star map program that includes velocity vectors for star systems and the ability to compare relative velocity between two objects. Since my own setting requires knowing the relative velocity in order to determine the jump exclusion zone, and jumping doesn't match velocity with the destination so that has to be done with regular rocket engines. If anyone knows of a program that does this, please let me know.

[Arioch]

The Gaia data release 3 is supposed to have relative velocities in addition to positions.

https://www.cosmos.esa.int/web/gaia/data
https://gea.esac.esa.int/archive/

[Keklas Rekobah]

I was able to get ChView running on an old laptop with a Windows 6 ("Vista") OS.

Maybe WoS's server was upgraded beyond ChView's capabilities ... ?

Sorry if this seems like beating a dead horse.

[icekatze]

hi hi

The Gaia data release 3 is supposed to have relative velocities in addition to positions.

https://www.cosmos.esa.int/web/gaia/data
https://gea.esac.esa.int/archive/

That's awesome, thanks! Last time I looked, getting velocity data was like pulling teeth. And although it's clearly organized for scientists and not very user friendly, I should at least be able to bake some transit tables out of it.

[Arioch]

I was able to get ChView running on an old laptop with a Windows 6 ("Vista") OS.

Maybe WoS's server was upgraded beyond ChView's capabilities ... ?

Sorry if this seems like beating a dead horse.

It's not the server, it's modern browsers. They don't like Java because it's a huge security hole, and most computers these days don't even have Java installed. You can get chview to run on a modern browser if you install Java and disable the security features, but that's not something that's reasonable to ask users to do.

[Keklas Rekobah]

Oh, well ... anyway ...

Using the method described in Classic Traveller's LBB6 "Scouts" rulebook, and some data from Dole & Asimov's "Planets for Man", I have developed a program to automatically generate 3D stellar clusters.

The current model is a lenticular cluster about 200 parsecs across and about 100 parsecs deep.  Base density is currently fixed at 1/3, with the density gradient falling off in inverse proportion to the square-root of the sum of the squares of the X, Y, and (2 x Z) coordinates away from the center.

X, Y, and Z range from -99 to +99 parsecs.  Hyperspace jump distances would then be calculated using standard trig formulae.

Given the above parameters, I end up with more than a million systems containing many worlds and 1, 2, or 3 stars.

For me, this is just an academic exercise; but does anyone think the end-result would be commercially viable in the RPG market, or is that market essentially "dead"?

(PS: That many stars overloads ChView and causes it to throw an error.)

[elorran]

Keklas you could always take a look at things like Starfinder (Pathfinder) or whatever gurps is currently doing with their space settings. Wizards of the Coast also recently renewed the Spelljammer license about 12-18 months ago, so there might be something coming on the D&D front in that regard in the near future.

[Keklas Rekobah]

I have most of the GURPS and other systems' rules related to science-fiction-y gaming; but submitting to von Barner's Addendum to the Crusade Rule is something to be avoided.

Crusade Rule: "You cannot write good science-fiction that will appeal to non science-fiction fans."

von Barner's Addendum: "... without adding a lot of handwavium and fantasy elements."