ED Astrometrics: Maps and Visualizations
- Thread starter Orvidius
- Start date
Would that small white blip SW of SagA happen to be in the ZUNOU sector?
First off, thanks for making these!
And even looking at that 50 systems minimum, it still paints an image different than I expected. I thought the Sol - Sgr A* line would be thicker. I suppose by the time EDSM got more popular and thus got more updates, Colonia was already in swing enough that people would go there first, then on to the center.
So, even with that small a cut-off, it's basically the triangle, DW2, and small area surveys all over the galaxy. Little lights in the dark. Really quite different than the full map image that's often brought up. Say, will you be including this on the Maps, Charts and Graphs page?
Why not make an AI and sic it on the task?
Sorry, just kidding
The banding is quite interesting though. (But it actually looks pretty good!) Do you suppose it could have something to do with the grid of system clumps that the Forge somehow made? Although even then, it should be vertical as well as horizontal. But these bands look to align with sectors, no?
Yeah, I'm still not 100% sure what's going on with the banding. I'm using the same logic that I wrote for the "missing coordinates" map to estimate locations based on the name. The missing systems in the number sequences seem to fall into strange patterns.
So now instead, I'm tracking boxel extents by the existing systems, and this is generating much better results. Between the logic changes, and the fact that the server isn't running map/spreadsheets/database updates today, the test run was considerably faster.
(I may change the labeling such that black is both unexplored and barely explored)
Check this out:
So now instead, I'm tracking boxel extents by the existing systems, and this is generating much better results. Between the logic changes, and the fact that the server isn't running map/spreadsheets/database updates today, the test run was considerably faster.
(I may change the labeling such that black is both unexplored and barely explored)
Check this out:
Yeah, that looks both much better and quite plausible. The Zurara stuff, the remote bases around the bubble all show up quite nicely. Colonia and the highway there both vanish into the high star density, but I guess that can always be expected.
And yeah, "unexplored" for black is somewhat misleading. Maybe change them to "Barely Explored / Lightly Explored / Moderately Explored / Heavily Explored / Why are you even here?". Or "Mostly explored" for a less fun version, I guess.
And yeah, "unexplored" for black is somewhat misleading. Maybe change them to "Barely Explored / Lightly Explored / Moderately Explored / Heavily Explored / Why are you even here?". Or "Mostly explored" for a less fun version, I guess.
Is SagA on your map really gargantuan or why can't I seem to find it (or Colonia) ?Yeah, I'm still not 100% sure what's going on with the banding. I'm using the same logic that I wrote for the "missing coordinates" map to estimate locations based on the name. The missing systems in the number sequences seem to fall into strange patterns.
So now instead, I'm tracking boxel extents by the existing systems, and this is generating much better results. Between the logic changes, and the fact that the server isn't running map/spreadsheets/database updates today, the test run was considerably faster.
(I may change the labeling such that black is both unexplored and barely explored)
Check this out:
We've visited a lot of systems around Sgr A* and Colonia, but given the star density in the core that "lot" is still a tiny fraction of the available stars so the whole core is coming out as Barely Explored.
Ah, that explains it (on the second map Orvidius posted it's quite obivous where Colonia and SagA are, but not on the one I quoted)
Lovely charts, thanks @Orvidius!
I like how you can see everyone bumping into the permit locked sphere at around Z=55k
Something that is both hilarious and disappointing is that the reason the script got faster was because I overlooked something. Determining the size of a boxel based on coordinate extents of the systems works great. However if only one system has been submitted for a boxel, its size is effectively zero (or one pixel, since that was the minimum). Bah. I added some code to account for this and force boxel sizes, but water-down the quantity proportionately in an attempt to approximately account for unknown other boxels in that space. I'm running another test but it looks like it's going to be back to 5 hours. Yay...
Once I'm satisfied with how it looks, I'll add it to the website. I'm thinking I may have the server update this one weekly.
EDIT: And adjusting these things completely throws off the color distribution, which is fine mostly, but now I'm tweaking the colors and the legend/key again too. So I'm not calling it "done" yet. And of course, "done" is in quotes because programs are never really done, merely abandoned.
Once I'm satisfied with how it looks, I'll add it to the website. I'm thinking I may have the server update this one weekly.
EDIT: And adjusting these things completely throws off the color distribution, which is fine mostly, but now I'm tweaking the colors and the legend/key again too. So I'm not calling it "done" yet. And of course, "done" is in quotes because programs are never really done, merely abandoned.
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More quantitatively, using the VisitedStarsCache method one can see that the space around Sag A* is almost fully explored ... out to about 40 LY from the black hole. Beyond that it rapidly drops off due to the enormous star density and it's effectively virgin territory by 60-80 LY from the center. So when you integrate over the full 6000 LY column height at the center, that explored bubble gets averaged down to nothing.
So the funny thing about going down these rabbit holes in coding, is that sometimes it's completely unnecessary. Trying to force the underrepresented boxels upward in size not only slows the program down a lot, but also has no meaningful impact on the resulting image. So.... I compromised and only enlarge those zero-size boxels a tiny bit.
Anyway, I have both the cutoff map, and the exploration saturation map added to the website. The saturation map is also in the interactive map now too. When people want to know where to go to find lots of unexplored space, we can just tell them to avoid the large red areas.
Here's how the saturation map is looking now:
(click to zoom, large version this time, 9000x9000):
Anyway, I have both the cutoff map, and the exploration saturation map added to the website. The saturation map is also in the interactive map now too. When people want to know where to go to find lots of unexplored space, we can just tell them to avoid the large red areas.
Here's how the saturation map is looking now:
(click to zoom, large version this time, 9000x9000):
Something else I noticed is that there's less red in the bubble and its immediate surroundings than I expected. I think those spherical sector name overrides trick my algorithm a little, since some of the apparent "missing" systems probably just appear with a different sector name. Both sector names will show gaps that are opposite each other. I can leave it this way, or try to fudge something. I don't know that it's worth setting up some complex logic to try to figure out which names correspond to each other, etc. Instead maybe I should assume exploration is 100% at Sol, and average in a gradient from there, fading out to zero effect at around 600 ly or so. Everything within 500ly seems pretty reliably tagged these days.
Just put a big "you are here" pin over that area
Yeah, it's really simple actually. I'm working out the combination of boxel system number sequences and looking for gaps. For instance, if we know of system numbers up to 100 within a given boxel (of whatever size/masscode), I can scan from 0-100 and see how many of those names are missing, and give an approximate percentage that way. It's not perfect of course, since there's no way to estimate how many more stars may have numbering higher than those that are known. But I figure that will mostly average out, and I just need a ballpark estimate of how thoroughly explored each area is.
Where this completely breaks down is in the sectors where only a handful of people passed through. We don't have data on most of the boxels there, and this results in very "grainy" (noisy) results in the map. There are many arm gaps that look this way. It will improve over time as more people explore out there.
EDIT: So it's not a separate "density" calculation at all. Rather it automatically takes that into account by estimating a percentage of exploration, unlike the other maps that just plot a direct count of systems known.
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