NDI in Stellarium

[George Timofeev]

 Hi everyone,

 Have you ever launched Stellarium oved NDI?

 I'm trying to send a signal to the dome server, but unfortunately, capture card stopped working. Any advice?

[Georg Zotti]

What is NDI?

[George Timofeev]

Hey George,

NDI is sending a video signal over an ethernet cable. Basically, it's an option to output video not to the existing monitor, but to virtual output. It's a booming format

[Georg Zotti]

If NDI is an output option for Qt5, it may be supported, but I have never heard of that. We are not on the forefront of sending video output elsewhere, this is an interactive simulation. Does NDI support screen interaction or just a passive video signal? For the latter, you may be able to redirect the Spout output into an NDI signal, somehow.

[Bastian Barton]

Hi George

Have you seen there is a Spout option in the Stellarium start menu? You can either use Spout, which is absolutely comparable to NDI

or get a Spout-to-NDI Converter. Try this (haven't tested it, so without any guarantee):

https://leadedge.github.io/

Cheers

Bastian

[George Timofeev]

That's a good hint. Will try this out and get back to share!

[Bastian Barton]

Talking of NDI, dome servers and that kind of stuff, we seem to do pretty much the same stuff.

Our dome is currently closed, so I have time for development. My solution is to control Stellarium by the RC plugin and http requests and capture the Spout output for slicing.

With a UHD screen and Nvidia DSR it's possible to have even 4x4K. Let me know when you're in the mood for some dome geek talk ;-)

Cheers

BB

[Georg Zotti]

It's really funny, talking of "dome" I understood Stellarium use as observing aid in the observatory dome. (My first round of search for NDI returned surveillance cameras...) OK, I understand planetarium dome now.

We could include some application hints for use in planetaria in the User Guide.

[Bastian Barton]

Imagine how funny it is to explain the difference to the visitors, especially if you have two domes for both :D But serious, Stellarium is a great software; not using it for planetaria would be a shame.

Adding some hints to the manual is a good idea. I'm here to share some practical experience if it's a help for you. Even cooler would be to have some (not too many) features added which are very commonly used in presentations (but that's a different thread ;-)

BB

[Georg Zotti]

In the past 13 years or so I think there have been at least 3 forks which spun off to develop special feature for planetaria, and a few more for various other projects making use of Stellarium. Whatever they developed never came back to the main project and is lost for other users. :-(

I did a "skyscape planetarium" installation, 25x4m with 5 projectors, for an exhibition. This was pretty nice. But we (developers) have no experience with dome hardware, so any setup hints or experience notes for the guide may be welcome.

[Bastian Barton]

I'm not a great fan of forks, especially if they are aimed at a very small, special group like people who *run* a planetarium (of course there are way more visitors who also benefit). I think modularization is the keyword.

Stellarium is an image generator. Its task is to render an accurate and beautiful sky and provide ways to interact. It doesn't have to be an animation tool, a fulldome video player, a composer or a slicer. There are dedicated tools for this. This just is where Spout, NDI etc. come in as a way to connect these applications without additional hardware. We already do have a working Spout integration and we have an RC interface; the 'features' I'm talking of are only about interaction itself, like selecting objects, smooth transitions etc. which I think can only be solved in the core.

Stellarium is awsome, and I'll be happy to contribute. I'm sorry C++ is not my strength but I'm good at UI design  and I know how to get things ready for a dome and do a planetarium presentation.