Do you think it would be possible to make it so you could add live models to the pages that could be rotated and inspected by readers? I assumed that this was too complicated and that is why it never got done, but what do you think? A-Frame may be useful here
This Aframe?
https://aframe.io/docs/1.7.0/introduction/models.html
Sure there’s probably some viewing tools that could be found. I would question how often such a tool is needed for most models ? But maybe there’s a few out there worth viewing from every angle and zoom
Yeah that A-Frame.
I imagine this functionality would be
really useful for maps within the EG!
My dream would be to have a 3d map of the entire Terragen Sphere in every article which describes a particular location, which would automatically zoom in when you click on it. I've seen something similar elsewhere.
But it would be a lot of work, and require a lot of data, so it would be a long-term goal (for a tech-savvy volunteer). There are a billion stars in the Terragen Sphere, and thousands of interesting objects and locations - someone would have to input all that data from somewhere.
Another problem is that many of the locations of stars and objects in the Orion Spur and surrounding area are not yet known very accurately, so we would need to be updating the data all the time. This sort of thing has already happened several times in the twenty-five years of the project's existence; even the Gaia satellite data has fairly large error bars once you get a few hundred light years away.
That would be really nice!
But why not just feed the entire website (or at least its articles on star systems) into an LLM to make programmatic data files, take an existing star catalog, combine the two together, and then edit the result. Idk honestly
Maybe one day this will be a possibility. Currently the closest to a 3D map we have is the Celestia universe display program, and we have made a lot of add-ons for the Celestia program to display several locations in the OA universe. But these models are of very variable age and quality. Some of the oldest ones are very low-resolution, and often depict locations which have been drastically revised over the last quarter century in line with recent astronomical discoveries.
On the other hand some of the more recent add-ons are quite large and require a lot of data, which means it is not really practical to upload them all to the internet.
Since this is a collaborative project, I'm quite happy to turn over all the files I have to help make an updated version, but this would still be a very long task (and would probably become out of date quite quickly).
Still, I think we could add a simple 3D View to the EG, loading an OBJ and MTL file from the website store. Imagine how cool it would be for readers to be able to inspect spaceships, or habitats, or what else!
let's wait and see
(05-27-2025, 10:28 AM)DSPE Wrote: [ -> ]Still, I think we could add a simple 3D View to the EG, loading an OBJ and MTL file from the website store. Imagine how cool it would be for readers to be able to inspect spaceships, or habitats, or what else!
let's wait and see
Who is 'we' in this context? Are you volunteering to do the necessary coding and such to create this capability?
Todd
(05-27-2025, 10:15 PM)Drashner1 Wrote: [ -> ]Are you volunteering to do the necessary coding and such to create this capability?
alright I'll try to do using Three.JS. should I just post the code here if I do make it?
Sure you should post the code file here too
But if you can post a link to the code functioning on some web based platform that is helpful too