Gerbil94 wrote:So "hobby coders" let us see who knows how the elements of a general rotation matrix are related to the 3+1 = 4 arguments in a Quaternion??
Is such specific knowledge essential for coders? Presumably Celestia has something like a quaternion class that provides functions to convert between the two; all the coder has to know is that they want to convert a quaternion into a rotation matrix or vice versa.
Certainly, there is a quaternion class. Since all rotations in Celestia are realized via quaternions a thorough understanding --far beyond superficial WEBsite introductions-- is indeed essential. Remember: The example with quaternions came up via Christophe's "harmless" proposal that somebody might attempt e.g. to write an
alt-az readout patch.
We certainly would not want to specialize code on merely alt-az readout, as I pointed out. Rather we need a flexible universal framework for coordinate systems, grids and projections. For that purpose the coder needs precise knowledge of all the
standardized astronomical sign conventions, some Celesltia pecularities and the subtle sign conventions inherent in the use of our quaternion class...
Now if it is really true that our "hidden" hobby coders can handle that sort of stuff easily, we can get to business right away....
It is true, of course, that people with some
3d training or practical experience will surely have encountered quaternions before. But my impression was that (except 'dirkpitt') there are'nt many 3d guys around??
I agree it is probably the rarest thing. But is this really what's limiting progress, especially in the particular case of atmosphere rendering bugs?
The point with atmospheres is that Chris had planned since long to do a more or less complete recoding of atmospheres in Celestia. So, trying to fix the worst bugs that bother us at present, might well be a sensible workaround for the time being. But for sure, Chris will not be content with such fixes in the long run.
I don't believe it can ever be limiting if the coders talk to the astrophysicists as per your suggestions. Having people who "speak both languages" is helpful, but surely not essential (and over time, such people will develop anyway through cooperative work).
But here you confirm precisely what I was advocating further up: we got to form working groups containing the various needed experts for a given task. And then the experts got to communicate!
As to myself, I will certainly be uninterested in any other approach, notably the "patch competition idea". By the way: in my opinion, the previous "image competition" was also quite a failure. The rather few contributed images where not very original in subject, not exceeding in their quality and the enthusiasm was more than moderate...
The second round seems to have died half-way...
While I am not exactly a beginner in such matters, other people surely have a different opinion about this
Bye Fridger
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I was not clear enough. The last rule of my proposal has not to be intended literarily. The executable must NOT be cross platform. The patch can be for a specific version of Celestia such KDE, Windows or Mac OS. The only request is that it must be executable. So everybody can easily rename the original Celestia and use temporarirly the patched version instead.
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I fogot again that Celestia is a serious thing for serious professionals. Having not graduated hobbyists that are patching this software gem won't be a good reference. Enlarge the development team to dogs and pigs won't be a good advertising. To share the honor of being in the list of official developers is not a thing for everybody.