Celestia Forums

I'm about to release a new location file, showing ALL the Earth's volcanoes according to the Smithsonian Institution (1528 volcanic sites). Pretty cool, with an high resolution texture of the Earth without the oceans :


I just need to tweak the overlapping labels, and check for any errors (none yet).

When do you sleep my friend?

Tangentially related: perhaps it would be good to have an Earth seafloor texture as an AltSurface in the default distribution?

Very nice add-on. It looks like you're marking the volcanoes as squares (volcanic center?) instead of triangles (mountains.)

ajtribick wrote:Tangentially related: perhaps it would be good to have an Earth seafloor texture as an AltSurface in the default distribution?

I think that this would be a good idea. It would increase the size of the package, but we can always create a reduced package for people with limited bandwidth. Martin: what's the source of the texture in your screenshot?

--Chris

chris wrote:Martin: what's the source of the texture in your screenshot?

It's a 8K DDS called "earth-8k-shelf&seafloor.dds". Really, I don't know where I found it. I have it since a pretty long time now.

By the way Chris, there's no checkboxes in the preferences window to turn ON/OFF the volcanoes ? We need one ! And as I asked you by email some times ago, we need a custom symbol and color to be defined, in an location SSC. We should be able to overwrite the default by adding a symbol/color definition in the SSC, as we already can do it for the markers.

And in your opinion, what would be the best way to define the volcanoes "Size" (to prevent the labels overlapping), having only the volcanoes altitude ?

Also, apparently, there's a bug with the "Mare" checkbox : it's reverted ! (checking IN the box turns OFF the feature labels).

Here's a preliminary version of the volcanoes list :

Preferably, the addon should be used in conjunction with some high resolution texture map.

I'm not sure yet that the labels behavior is the most suitable. I need some opinions about this.

Please, report any errors here.

Cham wrote:Here's a preliminary version of the volcanoes list :

volcanoes.ssc.zip

Preferably, the addon should be used in conjunction with some high resolution texture map.

I'm not sure yet that the labels behavior is the most suitable. I need some opinions about this.

Please, report any errors here.

Martin,

Downloaded and tested on my machine with almost perfect results being displayed. I actually prefer the labels in order to locate these features.
I randomly picked some from the SSC file, and then used the ENTER-TYPE NAME-ENTER method in order to go to the locations on the surface of the Earth.
I am also using my 64K VT (courtesy of Dr. Schrempp's tutorial on the Celestia Matters Forum) and the locations are displayed very nicely and - more importantly - in an extremely accurate fashion.

If need be, I can post some screen shots?
Just FYI...
Thanks, Bob

BobHegwood wrote:If need be, I can post some screen shots?

Yes Bob, please post some pictures of the addon with your high res VT texture.

Ask, and ye shall receive...



Click on each image for very high-resolution views.

Thanks, Bob

Pretty impressive, Bob . Thanks !

Cham wrote:Pretty impressive, Bob . Thanks !

No, as always... Thank YOU!

Cham wrote:And in your opinion, what would be the best way to define the volcanoes "Size" (to prevent the labels overlapping), having only the volcanoes altitude ?

Some measure of the level of activity, either frequency and/or size of eruptions and/or time of last eruption. (perhaps some formula based on the combination of these measures). ie. More recent larger active volcanoes would be given a larger "size" than dormant or extinct smaller volcanoes.

Pinotabu I think is the "largest" recent volcano. I guess Krakatoa was the largest in kilotons, but less recent than Pinotabu. How much weight you give to each measure I suppose would determine which of these came out as the "largest" (in labeling terms).

IMO this would be more meaningful than altitude.

JM2CW

I'd suggest using topographic prominence rather than altitude as the value from which to derive the importance of the volcanoes.

--Chris

Cham wrote:

chris wrote:Martin: what's the source of the texture in your screenshot?

It's a 8K DDS called "earth-8k-shelf&seafloor.dds". Really, I don't know where I found it. I have it since a pretty long time now.

By the way Chris, there's no checkboxes in the preferences window to turn ON/OFF the volcanoes ? We need one ! And as I asked you by email some times ago, we need a custom symbol and color to be defined, in an location SSC. We should be able to overwrite the default by adding a symbol/color definition in the SSC, as we already can do it for the markers.

And in your opinion, what would be the best way to define the volcanoes "Size" (to prevent the labels overlapping), having only the volcanoes altitude ?

Also, apparently, there's a bug with the "Mare" checkbox : it's reverted ! (checking IN the box turns OFF the feature labels).

Custom symbol/Color is something for on the roadmap, Chris?

Now that there is a surfacefeature, modmakers are going to begin to make more addons on surfaces and want to have a special marker just for their class.
(Support for svg would make it possible for making scalable symbols and still keep the file size down)

Over on the Tectonic Plates thread (http://www.shatters.net/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=12669&start=30#p106456) Andrea was asking about a volcanoes list without names which could be used with Cham's tectonic plates add-on. Cham stripped out the names easily enough, but I got to thinking about using the technique he had used for Earth craters, where he supplied a circle CMOD to mark the craters independently from the locations marker (see http://www.shatters.net/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=12561).

So I renamed my volcanoes.ssc file to volcanoes_locs.ssc, and created a new volcanoes.ssc from the old one. Then I altered the entries to be surface features using the circle.cmod mesh, just like the earth_craters.ssc entries. I arbitrarily chose a radius that would show up well without being TOO large (Radius 10.0), and set all circles to be at an altitude of (nearly) zero.

If you're using Vincent's script for toggling the craters, it will also simultaneously toggle the volcanoes. And when you turn on the location labels, which are positioned at the volcano peaks, you can clearly see the altitude against the red circles at the volcano bases.

Using Cham's layers scheme (http://www.shatters.net/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=12702), I set up my start.celx so that toggling the tectonic plates also toggles the surface features (volcanoes and craters). I also experimented with changing the location types so the location labels could be displayed independently - currently I'm using Type "MO" (montes) for the volcanoes, Type "TA" (terrae) for the plates, and Type "AA" (craters) for the craters.

So thanks, Cham, for all the wonderful add-ons! And for giving me an excuse to start learning Lua.

If anyone would like (and with Cham's permission - it's really all his work), I can post the altered volcanoes file for download.

BillC wrote:If anyone would like (and with Cham's permission - it's really all his work), I can post the altered volcanoes file for download.

Not only you do have my permission (!), but please, publish all good modifications you can do too, so all users here can benefit from them ! There may be a kind of evolutive effect, in the addon section, and this could be a great thing for Celestia.

OK, here goes . . .

I'll rename my volcanoes.ssc to volcano_bases.ssc to avoid confusion. This is the file that defines a circle for each volcano:



And here are a couple of screenshots (sorry about my low-res Earth - ancient computer!):





And here is the relevant celx code:

Certainly a neat add-on.

In case the respective data base contains date info about last eruptions of the volcanos (didn't check!), I suggest the displayed volcanos are color-coded depending on the last eruption date.

Either, one only distinguishes a 2 state coloration:

active <--> sleeping state

or one might use a whole color range, say,

between e.g. pale rose and dark red,

if there is detailed date info about last eruptions.

The proposed mods should be quite trivial yet VERY instructive, provided the info is available in the data base.

Fridger

Incidentally, I know there are also VERY detailed maps/data bases about ongoing and past earth quake activities on Earth, notably along the "ring of fire"! Hence, a "quake layer" may be another closely related instructive display... The last quakes could be made flashing, for example, the Richter scale magnitude could also be implemented via a color code

Fridger

Not a bad idea!