Cmod Political borders model?

[Cham]

The little loop in your fourth image is a surprising exception, though, and looks like a mismatched subseries of line segments. Which three countries are meeting at the central tripoint shown?

Most defects are in Europe. There's only one in Africa, and about two or three in Asia (none found in America). The fourth example shown (small loop in the bottom-right corner, which is the worst case) is around coordinates 23.0225°E ; 47.9925°N. It's involving about two wrong points which shouldn't be in the data. I'm yet unable to locate these two points in the list. The countries involved are : Ukraine, Hungary and Romania.

[ElChristou]

BTW, no datas for the coast lines?

[Cham]

BTW, no datas for the coast lines?

Oh boy ! I have ALL the data for the coastlines, but it's EXTREMELLY heavy ! Just for North America, the data is 17.6 MB, for only Long and Lat coordinates. Cartesian coordinates would be much larger ! It's simply not worth the effort. Sorry.

[granthutchison]

Most defects are in Europe. There's only one in Africa, and about two or three in Asia (none found in America).

Makes sense, since the WVS data get most use in Europe and Asia.

The fourth example shown (small loop in the bottom-right corner, which is the worst case) is around coordinates 23.0225°E ; 47.9925°N. It's involving about two wrong points which shouldn't be in the data. I'm yet unable to locate these two points in the list. The countries involved are : Ukraine, Hungary and Romania.

OK, easy for me to find. I'll fix it and update the europe.zip file. The original data come in many, many short segments, as you'll have noticed, and the ordering is not consistent along any given border. Assembling a single continuous dataset for each international border requires some segments to be reversed relative to others, and it looks like there's a short segment there which has escaped the algorithm, for some reason.

Grant

[Cham]

I'll fix it and update the europe.zip file. ..., and it looks like there's a short segment there which has escaped the algorithm, for some reason.

Ok. When do you think the data set should be fixed, so I can manage my part ?

[ElChristou]

BTW, no datas for the coast lines?

Oh boy ! I have ALL the data for the coastlines, but it's EXTREMELLY heavy ! Just for North America, the data is 17.6 MB, for only Long and Lat coordinates. Cartesian coordinates would be much larger ! It's simply not worth the effort. Sorry.

And no way to simplify a bit, let's say removing 1 on 2 points? Or we need a deprecation system for those data set. That would be excellent...

[Cham]

I don't think we need the costlines anyway. Inland political borders are enough, for me at least.

EDIT : I've corrected the african defect. There were 5 points which shouldn't be there. I compared with GoogleEarth and the match is now very good.

[Cham]

Grant,

I've found a total of 6 defects in Asia. 5 are simply three-lines not joining, while the sixth one is really ugly :

asiadefect.jpg

This loop is located around Long 85.01°E ; Lat 50°N

Don't you think that continent should be reprocessed ?

[Cham]

While waiting for Grant's update to his data, I'm now adding the countries names, properly centered !

countries.jpg

Please Chris, what about my suggestion to add more options to the locations (custom symbols and colors, as for the markers...) ?

[ElChristou]

Nice! (This work should go in a way or another in the official release...)

[chris]

While waiting for Grant's update to his data, I'm now adding the countries names, properly centered !

countries.jpg

Very nice add-on!

Please Chris, what about my suggestion to add more options to the locations (custom symbols and colors, as for the markers...) ?

Possibly in a future release. Before adding more options for locations, I think we need to think about the relationship between markers and labels. In many respects, locations are a lot like persistent markers. I'm concerned about adding unnecessary complexity to the program that might make some sort of marker and location 'unification' more difficult.

--Chris

[Cham]

Possibly in a future release. Before adding more options for locations, I think we need to think about the relationship between markers and labels. In many respects, locations are a lot like persistent markers. I'm concerned about adding unnecessary complexity to the program that might make some sort of marker and location 'unification' more difficult.

At the very least, we need custom colors for the location, since it's becoming a mess.

P-p-p-p-please ? New command Color [...] which overwrites the default, as for any SSC object ?

[granthutchison]

Cham:
The unsightly loops have been fixed in Europe and Asia, and the zip files at the previous download links have been updated.
I doubt if the African problem was due to data that shouldn't have been present: more like it's a reversed segment, as the European and Asian loops proved to be. it would be useful if you could tell me where the loop was before you removed the data: I would then be able to produce a less destructive fix for it.

As for the gappy tripoints: you could tell me where they are, and I'll get around to fixing them; or you could make the CMOD file available with the small gaps still present, and that'll make it easier for me to find them myself and then fix the data in due course.

Grant

[ElChristou]

Possibly in a future release. Before adding more options for locations, I think we need to think about the relationship between markers and labels. In many respects, locations are a lot like persistent markers. I'm concerned about adding unnecessary complexity to the program that might make some sort of marker and location 'unification' more difficult.

At the very least, we need custom colors for the location, since it's becoming a mess.

P-p-p-p-please ? New command Color [...] which overwrites the default, as for any SSC object ?

This should go in a new thread, but why Celestia could not have (like many soft) some kind of GUI custom color panel with all elements listed with a color picker for each? (and the classic "Reset to default button of course")

[Cham]

Grant,

thanks for the updates.

The small african loop defect was really minor. I compared with GoogleEarth, and the difference is really negligible. Don't bother about it.

I'll look out for the small gaps in Europe and Asia later.

[granthutchison]

The small african loop defect was really minor. I compared with GoogleEarth, and the difference is really negligible. Don't bother about it.

I spent a lot of time on this dataset, which I use fairly regularly for a number of purposes, so I'd prefer it if at least my own copy was as clean as possible.
Even if you could tell me which countries were either side of the faulty border, I'll track it down.

Grant

[chris]

Please Chris, what about my suggestion to add more options to the locations (custom symbols and colors, as for the markers...) ?

Actually . . . I really see what you mean here. It would be very nice to have country names shown in the same color as the borders in the cmod file. Ditto for the plates.

--Chris

[Cham]

It would be very nice to have country names shown in the same color as the borders in the cmod file. Ditto for the plates.

That's exactly what I had in mind.


Grant,

I'll check for the other small defects.

[granthutchison]

The africa.zip download has now been updated to get rid of the border loop found by Cham. The download files therefore now contain fixes for all the data errors so far reported.
I'll get around to cosmetic fixes for the tripoints gaps in due course, and will update again once that's completed.

Grant

[Cham]

Thanks Grant,

I'll update the Africa CMOD model today, and will wait for the updates to Europe and Asia.