penemue Posted September 30, 2008 Report Share Posted September 30, 2008 http://www.cthulhurising.co.uk/astro-cartography.php Looks interesting. I had no idea this even existed. I was looking for 3D star charts. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nyrath Posted October 1, 2008 Report Share Posted October 1, 2008 Re: 3D Astrocartography... I have found that maps like that are showy, but not useful to a game master. If you are actually trying to find the distances between star A and star B, they are not much help. The high-powered way to deal with this problem is to spend the money for AstroSynthesis I've got a few maps that might prove useful. http://www.projectrho.com/smap12.html#winch Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
austenandrews Posted October 2, 2008 Report Share Posted October 2, 2008 Re: 3D Astrocartography... They look pretty cool for visualization purposes, though. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cancer Posted October 2, 2008 Report Share Posted October 2, 2008 Re: 3D Astrocartography... Yeah, what you really need for that kind of stuff is a true 3-D display unit, the classic holotank or some such. With very sparse charts like star maps, you don't have enough information for your subconscious perspective-vision processor to kick in. I looked at trying to make charts like that about 10-12 years back when the HIPPARCOS data became available, and never found anything I liked, so I settled for just doing flat map star charts drawn for different points in space. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nyrath Posted October 2, 2008 Report Share Posted October 2, 2008 Re: 3D Astrocartography... The good thing about AstroSynthesis is that you can rotate the map with your computer mouse. You can also filter by distance or several other attributes. You can even make a fly-through movie and save it as an AVI file. So it isn't a holographic unit, but it's not a static map either. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nolgroth Posted October 2, 2008 Report Share Posted October 2, 2008 Re: 3D Astrocartography... Another (free) program is It's Full of Stars. Probably not as outright useful as Astrosynthesis, but I like it. And other is ChView. A little more colorful than IFOS, but I find it overall less useful. Both of these programs are fairly old, but they do what I want them to. Always looking for low cost alternatives whenever possible. I would like to actually use Astrosynthesis, but right now it would have limited use to my game. For the price, it is just not worth it as a game aid. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
austenandrews Posted October 2, 2008 Report Share Posted October 2, 2008 Re: 3D Astrocartography... 3D glasses. It's the only way to be sure. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
penemue Posted October 3, 2008 Author Report Share Posted October 3, 2008 Re: 3D Astrocartography... I like the pretty maps. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Adventus Posted October 5, 2008 Report Share Posted October 5, 2008 Re: 3D Astrocartography... Here is a free Program that lets zoom from a galatic view to a space shuttle without losing detail. Celestia. This thing is awesome. Make sure you check out the add ons! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
penemue Posted October 5, 2008 Author Report Share Posted October 5, 2008 Re: 3D Astrocartography... Celestia is fun to play with. Thanks.. repped. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nolgroth Posted October 5, 2008 Report Share Posted October 5, 2008 Re: 3D Astrocartography... Here is a free Program that lets zoom from a galatic view to a space shuttle without losing detail. Celestia. This thing is awesome. Make sure you check out the add ons! Celestia is awesome. I've played with it a great deal. My only "complaint" is that I cannot create a "sector" (or something) on the fly. I believe that it is possible to manually edit some sort of data file, but that gets boring quick. So says Captain Attention Spa....what was I saying? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kraven Kor Posted October 10, 2008 Report Share Posted October 10, 2008 Re: 3D Astrocartography... Heh, I remember the last time I looked into this here, Nyrath had used a graphing program to create his own star maps I still have the maps he sent me. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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