VPython and Russian meteor

[Bruce Sherwood]

Maybe you heard about a group at the University of Antioquia determining the orbit of the Russian meteor by using time-stamped amateur and surveillance videos. I just learned from 

http://astronomia.udea.edu.co/chelyabinsk-meteoroid 

that they used VPython to visualize the orbit, which is delightful to know. I wrote to them and learned that they felt these visualizations greatly increased the impact of their work internationally, and that moreover the VPython visualizations were crucial to them in guiding their research. I am really pleased to hear about this, because we've always wanted for VPython to be useful in research as well as in education.

They also plan to make a GlowScript (glowscript.org) version so that people can see their animations live (they posted video captures of their VPython animations).

Related news: In combination with the recent important release of VPython 6, there is a new Google group for VPython users:

https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups&hl=en#!forum/vpython-users

[Chuck Baldwin]

Bruce, you mentioned in an earlier post that Python outputs .mov video. Is that via the ffmpg encoder or is that achieved in some other manner?

-Charles

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[Bruce Sherwood]

No, Python doesn't produce .mov files, nor does VPython ( which is Python plus a real-time 3D module). VPython displays 3D animations in an OpenGL canvas. A simple way to make a movie is to use a video screen capture program, of which there are many.

With VPython there's another option. Ruth Chabay created a module to which others have contributed which when imported can output a VPython scene as a Pov-ray scene description file. Pov-ray is a free raytracer program which can produce much better images than a real-time renderer can. You can feed Pov-ray a set of descriptions of VPython scenes and output a movie file.

Bruce

[Arlo Barnes]

Mostly off-topic, but I recently saw a car with the license plate 'OPENGL'. Anyone here, or anyone that someone here knows?
-Arlo James Barnes
In Soviet Russia, Space Explore You.

[Edward Angel]

It's mine. Royalties from my OpenGL texts bought the car so it got the license.

Ed

__________

Ed Angel

Founding Director, Art, Research, Technology and Science Laboratory (ARTS Lab)
Professor Emeritus of Computer Science, University of New Mexico

1017 Sierra Pinon

Santa Fe, NM 87501
505-984-0136 (home)   an...@cs.unm.edu

505-453-4944 (cell)  http://www.cs.unm.edu/~angel

[Owen Densmore]

And as a student of Ed's I gotta say the book is abs fab.  

Stay tuned for the next edition! (Spoiler: Ed's learning JavaScript)

   -- Owen