As asked, ive produced a small tutorial explaining how to create 3d stsr maps like the one i used in a map i made:
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As asked, ive produced a small tutorial explaining how to create 3d stsr maps like the one i used in a map i made:
That's cool.
You know what would be awesome, if you had a table of distances between each star. Unless you have teleportation (in which case they probably don't care about a 3D map anyway), then travel distance is a factor even for FTL.
It'd be even awesomer if you could represent those distances between the star points themselves, even better than a separate table. But it'd get cluttered quick, huh. Maybe just the major routes?
Well thats fairly easy to do, i can sow how to do it, but its just using pytagoras if you know the distance to the star you want in X and the height from x for y.
A table would be the best option IMHO, otherwise theyd be too many lines (specially if its a large map), though you could provide the y distance and the x distance to reference next to each star plus the equation in the map key.
Does anybody have the formula handy for Δx Δy Δz?
you mean x2-x1, y2-y1, z2-z1?
Distance in 3D works the same as in 2D, you just tack the Z in on the end of Pythagorean to get the distance. Rather than Sqrt( (dX)^2 + (dY)^2) you get Sqrt( (dX)^2 + (dY)^2 (dZ)^2)
Cool. So write a star database in Flash and have it place all the points like zhar2 did in his tute, and then draw distance-labelled routes. w00t!
... edit ... sorry, I was in coding mode ... I get coding & cartography confused sometimes ...
Well something in doce for flash is a bit beyond me lol.
Are you folks aware of Celestia?
It's a free 3D astronomy program which includes a database of about 100,000 nearby stars.
http://www.shatters.net/celestia/
When your viewpoint is at one star, one of its menus shows the distances to other stars.
http://www.lepp.cornell.edu/~seb/cel...distances.jpeg
It can draw lines between stars (in 3D), either by (mis)using its constellation file (shown above) or by creating an appropriate model, as I did to show the traderoutes of C.J.Cherryh's Alliance-Union stories.
http://www.lepp.cornell.edu/~seb/cel...de_routes.jpeg
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But of course, Zhar2 knows all about Celestia :)
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