One more globe

On Thu, 18 Mar 1999, Jan Wieck wrote:

Jan Wieck wrote:

Why not - where do you have height information of the entire
earth?

I have no idea where you'd get that info. I was just
joking, you are going way beyond the call of duty.
It's cool.

:) clark

That's no joke!

Well - you wanted mountains - there they are (Example 2).
But please don't tell me next you want planes in the air,
smog over NY and dolphins in the sea :-)

I love it...

Can ya really do the dolphins though? :)

Marc G. Fournier ICQ#7615664 IRC Nick: Scrappy
Systems Administrator @ hub.org
primary: scrappy@hub.org secondary: scrappy@{freebsd|postgresql}.org

Jan Wieck wrote:

Why not - where do you have height information of the entire
earth?

I have no idea where you'd get that info. I was just
joking, you are going way beyond the call of duty.
It's cool.

:) clark

That's no joke!

Well - you wanted mountains - there they are (Example 2).
But please don't tell me next you want planes in the air,
smog over NY and dolphins in the sea :-)

Jan, is there no limit to what you can do?

-- 
  Bruce Momjian                        |  http://www.op.net/~candle
  maillist@candle.pha.pa.us            |  (610) 853-3000
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Bruce Momjian wrote:

Well - you wanted mountains - there they are (Example 2).
But please don't tell me next you want planes in the air,
smog over NY and dolphins in the sea :-)

Jan, is there no limit to what you can do?

Rayshade has no wireframe objects like POVray. A wireframe is
an elegant way to describe complex things like e.g. screws.
In rayshade you have only some primitves like sphere, box,
cone, cylinder and some flat things like triangle, disc and
polygon. The problem with missing wireframes is that things
like characters are really hard to define.

Anything to build must be described as combinations of such
primitive objects. This process is called Constructive Solid
Geometry (CSG). For example to make a hole in a wall you take
a box and scale it to 5.0, 0.2, 3.0 (x,y,z). Now you take
another box, scale it to 1.0, 0.21, 0.5 move it into the
center and subtract it from the wall. There is now the hole
where you can put in the window. If you build four walls
don't forget the hole for the door :-)

Another powerful primitive is the heightfield (what I've used
to build the mountains on the map). It uses a special file of
raw floating point values that describe the altitude of a
point on a square plane. I've used the etopo5 topography data
(altitudes in meters for every 5 minutes of the earth,
4320x2160 points though) and converted that into such a
heightfield plus a color image ranging from deep blue at
ocean bottom to white on the altitude of the himalaya.

Look here for some other examples what's possible with these
few features:

http://www-graphics.stanford.edu/~cek/rayshade/gallery/gallery.html

My favorites are Chem, Trees, Magic Chain and of course the
scenes from Nathan Obrien! The final PostgreSQL developers
globe might be another candidate for the gallery :-)

Jan

--

#======================================================================#
# It's easier to get forgiveness for being wrong than for being right. #
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#======================================== jwieck@debis.com (Jan Wieck) #

Bruce Momjian wrote:

Well - you wanted mountains - there they are (Example 2).
But please don't tell me next you want planes in the air,
smog over NY and dolphins in the sea :-)

Jan, is there no limit to what you can do?

I think the major problem I have with globe #3 is the white shaft of the
pins. It is the first thing I see when I look at the image. Can the
shafts be silver, black, grey, or red. They maybe they would not stick
out. The eye should be drawn to the map, and the pin heads.

-- 
  Bruce Momjian                        |  http://www.op.net/~candle
  maillist@candle.pha.pa.us            |  (610) 853-3000
  +  If your life is a hard drive,     |  830 Blythe Avenue
  +  Christ can be your backup.        |  Drexel Hill, Pennsylvania 19026

On 20-Mar-99 Bruce Momjian wrote:

The eye should be drawn to the map, and the pin heads.

*giggle*

Vince.
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On 20-Mar-99 Bruce Momjian wrote:

The eye should be drawn to the map, and the pin heads.

*giggle*

I knew I was going to get a giggle on this.

-- 
  Bruce Momjian                        |  http://www.op.net/~candle
  maillist@candle.pha.pa.us            |  (610) 853-3000
  +  If your life is a hard drive,     |  830 Blythe Avenue
  +  Christ can be your backup.        |  Drexel Hill, Pennsylvania 19026