Discussion What is the most efficient way to crowdsource the 3D system coordinates

wolverine2710

Tutorial & Guide Writer
wolverine2710
When I was AWOL last week and after returning I've noticed that CMDR Club has been resurrected by Peter Powers. Stupidly forgot to update the OP. Added the following to the "List of third party tools using star systems (coordinates)." spoiler tag.

Peter Powers. CMDR Club. Webbased routeplanner. Website.

I've added it to my "Complete list of all third party tools, spreadsheets, manuals and other data sources"

Now lets see what more cool stuff I've missed ;-(
 
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wolverine2710

Tutorial & Guide Writer
wolverine2710
Athan said:
Well, they must have an API for market data now else I don't see how the iOS app is working. Whether/when they'll that up to general access is another matter.
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You are right!! It sounds logical that they have an API (so that network protocol changes don't affect the iOS app). It could however be less clean and just sending a network request directly to the FD servers and parsing the network stream which comes back. One can debate if that is not an API as well. This was done by a commander to get real time prices for what ever station he needed. He just faked the ED client protocols. Anyway you did give me an idea. Going to ask Michael Brookes in a PM about this.....

Edit: Have send a PM to Michael Brookes. Fingers crossed.
 
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wolverine2710

Tutorial & Guide Writer
wolverine2710
Send the following PM to Michael Brookes. As nearly always I got a promptly reply.

wolverine2710 said:
Hello Mr Brookes,

When the data access policy changed you wrote that FD is CONSIDERING a web-api for after release. Now with Gamma there is a iOS app to get market data and more. Does that app use a web-api? If so are their plan to open this up so that third party tools can connect to it. So that for example a commander using such a tool can get the market data in the same way as the iOS app.

That would solve a lot of problems, for for example trading tools. Even if it would only be opened/acessible for tool authors like Slopey, Thrudd with have their own website that would be great/awesome.

With kind regards,
Jan aka cmdr Wolverine.
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His response.

Michael Brookes said:
It's not using anything suitable or designed for third party use. An external API is still on our wish list, but there's no schedule for that yet.

Michael
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I was a bit afraid of that. I'm sure we could certainly figure out how to use the calls and interpret the network stream/results coming back. NOT seeing a problem there. But I also think that stuff like authentication is not something which is clearly defined now by an API or is not something they wants us to use.

Well the good news is, its still on their wishlist. Simply dumping info in an XML file would also suffice. No web-api needed, when you open the market, data is received from the FD servers, its displayed and it could be saved in an XML file. Could be done for other data as well. Imagine what that would do for third party tools. IMAGINE ;-)
 
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Elgar

E
To quote myself from my own thread here:

Elgar said:
being an app developer myself, i took a look out of curiosity at the companion app for ios, to see how it got its data. Using Fiddler i was able to see that the communication with the webserver is ssl secured (as i expected it to be), so i couldn't take a look at the data what is exchanged. But it showed me the url the app connects to.

I tried that url in my browser, and a login page came up. And even better, it accepted my credentials. After that, you get just a blank page. I tried several additions to the url and found two urls that give me the market and shipyard data as nice json strings. As far as i can see the json string just gives me the current data for the station i am docked at, but i have to verify this.

Now my question to the developers is: is it ok to use this json string as input for market tools like Slopeys or TradeDangerous? Or would this fall under the "Don't use data directly from the game" policy?
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wolverine2710

Tutorial & Guide Writer
wolverine2710
WOW. That was fast!!! Nice findings ;-)

I commented on it in your thread. Conclusion: So there IS a way to cleanly login and there IS a way to get data in a very usable format (JSON).
 

RedWizzard

RedWizzard
wolverine2710 said:
That is possible. When wtbw extracted the coordinates for SB2 (it were all NOT PG ones) he got them from the ED program iirc. So at that time they were in. Things can have changed though. When FD wants to ease the burden of the FD servers (cpu,bandwidth) it sounds logical to me to have those in the client though. Same as with all the descriptions of a star system. There is of course only one way to find out for sure.....
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Thinking about it further, maybe it is there. The galaxy map would need that data and while it could be getting it from the server it's pretty quick and smooth.
 

CMDR Generic EventHandler

CMDR Generic EventHandler
I've just read through a few hundred posts from Beta3 post. But I saw no mention of anyone verifying the beta3 co-ords against the gamma co-ords, has anyone verified them or do I need to set sail for i bootis?
 

wolverine2710

Tutorial & Guide Writer
wolverine2710
Michael Brookes said:
As I've said in the other other thread - this is not something we can allow at the moment.

I've also attached a spreadsheet with some of the gamma systems.

Michael
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Thanks a lot Michael. You work FAST. This morning you wrote in a PM "I've not had chance to look at this yet." and NOW we have a list. COOL.

OK commanders. Did briefly check the excel sheet. It looks as if we have 19842 coordinates AND with 5dp goodness!!
Sol 49985 40985 24105. It looks as if we have transform the data again, as with SB3.
 
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donpost

D
No idea if this helps or not but I notice that the figures after the decimal point are fractions of 32. i.e. the decimal of the first co-ordinate of Baker is .59375 which is 19/32. etc etc So while it shows 5d.p. it's not really 5d.p. worth of accuracy if you see what I mean?


MASSIVE thanks to all that are involved in this thread and creating community apps!
 

Athan

Athan
donpost said:
No idea if this helps or not but I notice that the figures after the decimal point are fractions of 32. i.e. the decimal of the first co-ordinate of Baker is .59375 which is 19/32. etc etc So while it shows 5d.p. it's not really 5d.p. worth of accuracy if you see what I mean?
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Yes, we figured that out months ago ;). It's probably a consequence of FD using single-precision floating point for the co-ordinates in such a way as to only have 5 binary bits of precision after the binary point.
 

louks

louks
Michael Brookes said:
As I've said in the other other thread - this is not something we can allow at the moment.

I've also attached a spreadsheet with some of the gamma systems.

Michael
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Wow! This is a non-trivial number of systems! Cheers, Michael!

(I'll be playing with this for a while...)
 

wolverine2710

Tutorial & Guide Writer
wolverine2710
TornSoul said:
OMG - Much much more than I would have hoped for.

Hats of to you Michael - You know how to please!
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EXTREMELY COOL. This is something we can work with!!!
Gonna double check with Michael Brookes if it are again systems with an economy.
 
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