Dear Fabien,
this looks quite impressive already, although there is quite some
difference with the full Stellarium in appearance, features and likely
also in application.
+ It may solve requests from ChromeBook users.
- It does (obviously) not work offline.
On plugins: I joined in 2010 but was unfamiliar with the concept of
dynamic plugins until 2-3 years later. They never (in my time) worked on
Windows, so I never bothered too much. However, I see some useful
applications. The basic Plugin API seems reasonably stable that at most
a recompile should be necessary to get them running again. But there is
no "howto" or crucially important example which makes the process
attractive enough. Some telescope tinkerers develop extensions which are
mostly out of our view. For those, dynamic plugins should be the easiest
solution. Years after the fact, I found that Bogdan had made a joystick
plugin, which might be completed into the demanded "D-Pad control"
thingy. But we would need somebody with the hardware and interest and
programming skills to complete this.
I am not sure about merging these projects, as you say, they seem to
fulfill different use cases. For the casual stargazer, this is a nice
thing, also for mobile application. However, the current desktop version
is an incredibly feature-rich application which has in parts really
unique features. We receive requests and suggestions from various sides.
- Telescope users (those with time to actually spend outside...) have
some demands for extra hardware.
I feel no obligation to develop anything for hardware which I don't
use, but I understand they want to have it.
- 4k stuff and Touch interfaces? 3D mouse or Joystick interface?
- some 3D/VR groups want VR goggle support (Oculus Rift, VIVE, etc.) I
think Guillaume was involved in that project with Edinburgh.
If possible, such support should be integrated as standard plugin, at
least in a basic version, and not all the energy buried in an unknown
external repository.
- Ethnologists use the unique skyculture feature and contribute a
growing number of nice skycultures. Alex and I have been discussing
requirements for better skyculture support for scientific applicability.
Much can be improved here, not only translations and proper referencing,
but a few non-European concepts about constellations, Lunar mansions,
etc. And maybe some more accurate way to link artwork with the stars
(better than 3-point). On the other hand, the increasing number of
skycultures calls for providing those as extra downloads, because most
observers won't need them.
- my own peers, apart from skycultures, need the historical
applicability, loadable accurate landscapes, and 3D sceneries. On the
other hand, the "Western" skyculture is riddled with a collection of
dubious names which also has to be analyzed and IMHO calls for more
careful selection of names. Of course at some point, I (or somebody
else) should re-write the standard Western description.
- Prof. Frischer asked me if it was possible to have a WebGL Stellarium
with 3D landscapes as outreach tool. Of course, that would be fantastic,
but would require adding a mesh renderer to your WebGL solution. The
application would be online demonstration of archaeological structures
in the surrounding landscape model with astronomical orientation and
shadow simulation. This is much beyond my current skills and time,
however currently I am trying to create a demo app for a link between
Unity and Stellarium based on Spout which I developed with his group. I
would like to put a basic link package online later this year.
- Our RemoteControl plugin enabled using Stellarium on a big video wall
(5 projectors, 25x4m) in a museum. In contrast to a preproduced "dead"
movie, occasionally, the automated show was stopped and a guide (well,
myself...) used a tablet to control the software.
- RemoteSync can be used in another situation where you want to show the
same sky apart from slight changes. E.g., show 5 parallel screens with
differing skycultures. Or maybe 5 HiPS surveys?
Local installations have the advantage of being ... local and
self-contained. No need to be online. Stellarium runs from RaspberryPi3
to GeForce multiscreen setups - absolutely what I need in remote
dark-sky sites, minimal educational installations, or installations
which must work 24/7 (OK, maybe 14/6). Therefore I would welcome an
updated star catalog based on GAIA DR2 only if it is again a local
solution. Any work on a new star catalog should make sure to compute
proper motion in spatial 3D, with changing distance&magnitude&speed, not
missing fast stars like Arcturus in remote times when their "parent"
star field is outside screen, keep double stars orbiting each other etc.
(Solve about 50 star catalog bugs!)
Current Stellarium has still a few open points left.
- Code Documentation. :-| Some parts are really hard to understand. I
admit C++ was a foreign language when I started, and things like
template syntax was new to me. Some higher-level structures are still
underdocumented, and not free from bugs.
E.g.
https://bugs.launchpad.net/stellarium/+bug/1026263,
https://bugs.launchpad.net/stellarium/+bug/1716168,
https://bugs.launchpad.net/stellarium/+bug/1174892, ...
- Aberration. I would have liked to work on that this year, but some
other tasks had to be pushed forward. It causes a slight push of
positions (typically under 1 arcminute), and will require a similar
vertex coordinate bending solution like refraction. I hope with this
final refinement, season beginnings will finally be accurate to the
minute, and solar eclipses will also be more accurate.
- Planet axes. Somehow I messed this up in some misunderstanding of the
undocumented Planet::computeTransMatrix(). Should not be as hard as it
appears to me. Again, no time to dive in ATM.
- I may have introduced a little bug
https://bugs.launchpad.net/stellarium/+bug/1723896, must think through
observer position on an ellipsoid planet surface again.
- Scenery3D does not correct for Earth curvature. For huge landscapes
(mountain peaks in 150km distance or so), this should be corrected.
Optimally, this can be computed in the vertex shader program.
- "Skycultures 2.0", the cultural aspects mentioned above.
- I am pretty sure some computations could/should be implemented in
shader code for a big speed gain. (Think of 100.000 asteroid dots on
Kepler orbits visible from the Solar System Observer?) But I am no
expert in GPGPU.
- The sky brightness/color code and all dependencies (star RCmag
"voodoo") is one of the original great features which makes Stellarium's
sky rendition so realistic. Now many GPUs could do much more in shader
code, e.g. real-time twilight effects. And scientific demands ask for
accurate determination of visibility. So also this part "could be"
improved, time permitting. Of course, each shader code improvement from
one project can (hopefully) be re-used in the other.
- QtScript has been declared deprecated. I understand there is a
replacement system, though. This means we should be prepared.
- QML GUI "may" replace the current GUI. Sounds like a huge rewrite,
requires learning new parts of Qt. If GUI loads faster, it may still be
worth investigating.
- You want some better online manual (HTML version). And we still keep
answering the same support questions because people not even read the
FAQ, regardless how many copies there are. Some don't even read the bug
report instructions in the bug report they are filling in.
- The old wiki still has not been moved. It appears I have no editing
rights in many parts of the old wiki. I see issues regarding a
move/rework of the downloadable landscapes. Some have also vanished over
the years. Some repository with extra landscapes, 3D sceneries and
skycultures should be created.
With 2-4 developers, maintaining even one such huge project is not easy,
and time is always short. So, while I say "cool", Stellarium Web is not
something I feel I can involve myself currently in any depth beyond as
casual user/tester. I already put my weekends into my R&D. What I would
find important to say however, is to not sacrifice already existing
accuracy for slight speedup. Refraction, extinction and accurate horizon
panoramas are necessities for cultural astronomy.
One usage scenario which I immediately see and which likely many users
will find great: Is it possible to add at least "my own horizon" into
the foreground? (load a spherical pano, or even old_style? Or the
smartphone cam's panorama? Or at least a polygon file compatible to
CdC.) Then you will read demands to support satellites, Iridium, ...
(maybe direct link to heavens-above?) ... ideas are again unlimited.
Best regards,
Georg
Am 11.06.2018 15:53, schrieb Fabien Chéreau:
> Hi!
>
> Guillaume and I have been spending some time working on a prototype
> web-based version of Stellarium. You can try it there:
>
https://noctuasky.org [1]
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> Links:
> ------
> [1]
https://noctuasky.org/
> [2]
>
https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/stellarium/CAFxD46FJQhwA12KN5YyQH%2BMeAmu%2BJUE3fButPYjKD2dbO-zz3A%40mail.gmail.com?utm_medium=email&utm_source=footer
--
Dipl.-Ing. Dr. Georg Zotti
Ludwig Boltzmann Institute for
Archaeological Prospection and
Virtual Archaeology
(LBI ArchPro)
Hohe Warte 38
A-1190 Wien