Accurate Starmap

[Theodidactus (OP)]

This took me a while. A starmap where every system yet discovered is rendered accurately according to how far apart these stars are from one another. Remember that this map is necessarily distorted due to the difficulties inherent in rendering a 3d starmap in 2d. I found this was the most faithful perspective by equally balancing three criteria
- fidelity of distance
- fidelity of relative position
- not lumping all my systems into one indiscernible cluster

You can envision the threedimensionality by imagining that you are staring down into the map from the perspective of somwhere near the "southeast" around beta hydri. Positions closer to you are then lengthened, and farther from you, they're more squelched up. From sol, the map extends about 30ly to the "north" and "west"  and 20 LY to the "south" and "east"

Some stars, particularly very small ones that don't show up on any of my charts, were just slotted in randomly because I didn't want to bother finding out where they were.

Keep in mind this was done by hand so it's hardly exact.

[Starmantle]

Very impressive.

I'm also very impressed by the degree to which links follow relative position.

[TheDeadlyShoe]

That's really impressive! 

I wish this was coded into Real Stars. It looks cool.

It's also impressive that the links managed to follow real positions vaguely generall, or did you futz that? xD

[HaliRyan]

I... I think I just had a tiny orgasm.

This is amazing, great stuff!

[Theodidactus (OP)]

the best online version of a map like this is here: http://www.atlasoftheuniverse.com/50lys.html though it has much better fidelity than mine because it renders in 3d. My map is the same as this map if you grabbed the top, screwed it from left to right by about an eighth-turn, and then stood a little higher than it and looked in. on my map the galactic center corresponds almost exactly to "due east of sol" On theirs it is more like "south southeast"

[Theodidactus (OP)]

That's really impressive!  

I wish this was coded into Real Stars. It looks cool.

The problem is that it only looks cool because of the angle I picked by consulting 3d and some book star charts and then mentally estimating how perspective would change. If you hard-coded something in, it would almost always either
- scruntch systems that were in fact, very far apart, in uncomfortably close proximity
or
- make systems that are really close appear very far away
in much the same way that this 2d painting of a 3d scene makes a waiter appear much closer to a coffee machine than we "know" he "actually is". This distortion in my map is visible in making, say, near stars in Ophiuchius look father away from near stars in cygnus than they actually are. The best example is the hyperlane between me and the brown aliens. It takes you through the neutral system of van mannen's star, then into alien controlled groombridge 34...the map makes it seem like groombridge is farther away, but van mannen's star is actually farther (by about the distance of alpha centauri) from our sun than groombridge is.

 you'd need the human element to make it "look good" or even sensabl. In this case it looks especially "good" because tactically, that's how the galaxy is laid out, with me in between two alien species one of whom is based out of 36-ophiuchi and one of whom is based out of eta cassiopoea.

this also answers your question

It's also impressive that the links managed to follow real positions vaguely generall, or did you futz that? xD

The answer is "Yes and no". This system represents 115 years of natural space exploration with some artificial selection. When I jump to a new system and the system's name is Gilese X, or whatever, I have a tendency to reload and make the jump again, simply because I find tiny red dwarfs boring and I want to lead great expeditions to altair or whatever.

The futzing came in picking the angle. I used the near stars map I linked you to above, as well as google's 100,000 stars (http://workshop.chromeexperiments.com/stars/) and some astronomy books. Mess around with 100,000 stars and you'll get the general idea: depending on how you look at things, you can make sirius appear a long way away, right on top of sol, ect. The position I picked was based on making my most commonly used hyperlanes and systems not mushed into one place. I then distorted the perspective I picked based on how far I knew certain stars to actually be from sol. 100,000 stars isn't great because it doesn't capture most of the stars you'll get in a given game of aurora.

I should also mention there's significant "fudging" with the small stars. I have absolutely no clue where kuiper 75 is, so I just put it where it worked for everything else. this is true of nearly every faint star.

[Theodidactus (OP)]

this map was mostly created because in my campaign both the humans and a hostile alien race have territories demarcated by distance from their home star...and because I am often interested in knowing which of my captains holds the "human altitude record" for farthest distance traveled from Sol.

[Theodidactus (OP)]

New starmap which better reflects the political situation. I might need to go the more conventional route, as the map has increasingly eccentric jump routes.

[Garfunkel]

Dude, you are nuts. My kinds of nuts, though  *applauds*

[Theodidactus (OP)]

"Theodidactus: Garfunkle's kind of crazy"

I'll make that my new brand strategy. In library school they tell us to build our own brand.

[Steve Walmsley]

Very impressive.

I'm also very impressed by the degree to which links follow relative position.

Aurora knows the position of all real stars in three dimensions and the chance of connecting a link is based on distance, with the closest star having the best chance.

[Theodidactus (OP)]

Hey steve: Is there any way you could tell us where you found the raw data to do that? I gave up trying to make my starmap accurate because I had no good way to compute where some of these weird minor stars are relative to each other.

[Theodidactus (OP)]

Hey steve: Is there any way you could tell us where you found the raw data to do that? I gave up trying to make my starmap accurate because I had no good way to compute where some of these weird minor stars are relative to each other.

I'm pretty sure he used this:
http://www.stellar-database.com/

I used several astronomy books but I've sense learned that I've been looking at them wrong, my previous map had quite a few mistakes. I will try to make another map tonight.

[Steve Walmsley]

Hey steve: Is there any way you could tell us where you found the raw data to do that? I gave up trying to make my starmap accurate because I had no good way to compute where some of these weird minor stars are relative to each other.

http://www.astronexus.com/hyg

There is a lot of information in the database, although I needed to spend a lot of time cleaning it for use with Aurora because of the completely different format and requirements.

[bitbucket]

I. . . I do this too.  I can't not do it.  It is my shame, my sin, my joy.

This is my current game's map.  Much exploring happened.  There were a couple of NPRs.  They're gone now.  We don't talk about them.  Or the ruins on the planets they definitely didn't live on; yes, that's right.

This perspective is basically just looking "down" on the galactic plane from high above and ignoring the z-axis.  "Up" is coreward toward the galactic center and "left" is spinward.  This gives a false impression of proximity in some cases, but there will always be sacrifices made in portraying a three-dimensional volume in a two-dimensional area.

In this game, I've been homeruling a maximum distance on jumps between stars by their mass: 8 light years for <0. 5 M_sol red dwarfs, 10 light years between solar-type stars, and 15 light years between the giant luminaries.  Between disparate masses I take the average.  Binaries count as extra mass.  Basically I'm picking where the jump points go by SM.  If a system has X number of new jump points, they go to the X nearest/largest stars.  I will make an occasional exception for relatively isolated stars (less gravitational interference allowing longer links and other such handwavium).

It just keeps growing.  For every new system, I look up where it is and tack it into place.  It's a mess at first glance, but after looking at it so long. . . it makes sense to me.