Jim Blinn & The History of the JPL Computer Graphics Lab project

[ILikeSaturn]

Recently Jim Blinn released some of his textures from those old Voyager animations (they're 512x256 pixels in size because they're painted in a very old machine). You can get the maps here: jimblinn.com/magrathea.
Or get it in a list:
Jupiter
Io
Europa
Ganymede
Callisto
If you want to (try) to convert it back to its original, convert it to 8 bit (256 colors) and offset by half of its width.

Also I now have several reasons on why Jim Blinn took so long. I removed the older ones that didn't make sense:

1. Trying to search for his old computers (which takes him a long time to get it back) and recovering the data/files from it.
2. He books a flight every week to visit his workstation and collect the texture data, and then book a flight again to go back to his home. He stated that when he was working at JPL he booked a flight from Utah to California and then back to Utah. Due to the pandemic it takes longer for him to visit his workstation. (This one is the most reasonable one of all.)

And here's what the maps of Saturn and Uranus could look like when Jim Blinn releases them soon (it's a very rough draft):

Added after 7 hours 34 minutes:
I don't want to send him too much emails about the textures even if it takes a month for him to respond.

Added after 19 hours 38 minutes:
...aand Jim Blinn's site is down. Hope it's temporary.
Anyway he takes a minimum of 9 days to respond.

[ILikeSaturn]

I also used these textures for recreating the Voyager animations. Here's the Jupiter flyby movie I recreated in Celestia. (This one is still a rough draft and some parts are offset from the original video. It's also badly recorded in Celestia's built-in recorder.):

Voyager 2 Jupiter animation recreation.zip

(1.23 MiB) Downloaded 362 times

(I recommend you view the zipped video above in VLC because it doesn't play in the default video player.)
You can also view it in google drive: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1rdwlFTAydXpb7ZjKIYiZaysTS_Zgwg0b/view

The Ganymede texture map was from a video Jim Blinn made recently. I resized it back to 512x256.
Once Jim Blinn finds the other texture maps next month, especially Saturn and Uranus, I might recreate the Saturn and Uranus flyby animations in Celestia. Right now they're replaced with placeholder textures.

[ILikeSaturn]

Recreated Saturn's texture map again but with better coloring. I don't want you to use this map because the seam blending is pretty bad.

saturn map recreation.png (6.52 KiB) Viewed 16175 times

saturn recreation texture map.PNG (17.87 KiB) Viewed 16175 times

This is what the map looks like. You can find the map on my website but the seam blending is very bad. I also contacted Julian Gomez since he worked in the Voyager & Pioneer animations with Jim Blinn, but no response yet. He updated his website 1 week ago so he could be active but takes a while to respond.

Added after 12 minutes 1 second:
Not a texture map but this is the actual one made by Don Davis. It's cut almost halfway through and the screen is very dirty so it has these dust particles on it. I contrasted it to see the details better. There is a seam when you offset it but it's because of the picture being taken on a computer screen. The picture is from Jim Blinn's "How To Make a Planet" video.

(I removed this part because it provides no use and I don't want Jim to get spam emails.)

[ILikeSaturn]

Here's a rough estimate of what the actual colors could look like:

I compared it to another render of Saturn and used Jupiter's map as a reference. Saturn's texture map appears brighter than Jupiter's so I might post a better one.

Added after 29 minutes 10 seconds:
Here's a better one:

[ILikeSaturn]

I contacted Julian Gomez, who worked in the Voyager animations, and he told me this:

The texture map files didn't contain image data and were in some "sensible form". The "History of the JPL Graphics Lab" project that he worked in is planning to reopen this summer and he might recover even more texture maps. You can watch the project here.

Added after 7 days 13 hours:
A new reply from him:

He says that he is unsure the Computer History Museum will recover the Voyager animation tapes, and he will still need to decode some type of data. (Could be the texture map data.)

Added after 14 days 15 hours:
Another new reply from him:

He's recovering the data/tapes as of right now, which are encoded by DEC Utility Software. (You can find it here, Ctrl+F and search "Digital Equipment Corporation".)
The texture maps and other decoded data might be released this Summer, and you don't have to worry about the decoding since he said that there are enough old DEC engineers in the area.

I attached the reconverted maps that Jim recovered for now below. Again, Jim exported it to JPEG, which changed some of the image's quality.

[ILikeSaturn]

Some unfortunate news...

The decoded data will not be released for an indefinite time, due to financial problems.
They have the tapes with the data, but they can't decode it because there is no funding for the tape reads.
I think we will have to wait until next year.

[ILikeSaturn]

Another bad news... (and maybe some good news?...)

So I decided to email Julian again for an update on the tape reads.
Apparently, one of the tapes that was sent to prepare it for tape reading was destroyed on accident. Of course, the tapes are old and possibly in bad condition. Luckily, Jim Blinn has a bunch of floppy disks which have some of the data inside. But I don't know if reading the floppy disks are much cheaper than tape reads. I also don't know if the floppy disks contains the pre-Voyager texture maps, and if they're in good condition.

Added after 10 days 17 hours:
Another email from him..

Like I predicted before, the floppy disks are cheaper to read, but have smaller data than the tapes, which means there are many of them. He doesn't know where to host the decoded data, and he can't host them on the CHM's website. Since Jim is working on decoding on one of the floppies he might host some of the data on his website. He is also checking with NASA if the data can be published publicly.

Added after 2 months 7 days:
Some news from him...

jegquickupdate.PNG (11.33 KiB) Viewed 14373 times

If you don't know, he recently had a garage sale so he can access his old carton of magtapes. He hadn't heard from Jim Blinn and there was a tiny bit of success on extracting David Em's images. Since it was a quick update from him, nothing important happened for now.

I am done for uploading every email response on this post, so I will just host all of the emails from Julian and Jim Blinn on my website.

[ILikeSaturn]

I've decided to come back to this thread to post an update, but since my last post was almost 2 years ago, I will summarize the emails that were about the JPL Computer Graphics Lab project in order:

1. In April 2023, the Computer History Museum found some money. However, this wasn't enough to fund the tape reads.
2. The project is likely going to be hosted at the CHM instead of a SIGGRAPH panel, as it is planning an exhibit on the graphics lab.
3. As of July 2023, according to someone working at the CHM that Julian encountered, the equipment currently used for the tape reads is in Oregon, which apparently does good work but costs more. Julian is in charge of the history effort for SIGGRAPH 2024, where he will ensure the graphics lab plays a role in the exhibit. I'm guessing the exhibit is planned to be shown at that conference.

[ILikeSaturn]

Okay, this isn't an update, but it's mostly around the texture maps.
I propose a theory that Jim Blinn may have a copy of the texture maps and other data stored in a pile of floppy disks somewhere. Here's some evidence:

1. Since 1989, the JPL Computer Graphics Lab switched to PCs to render frames quickly and on demand, rather than using a stop motion camera to take a picture of the screen per frame. I think some frames can be saved in floppy disks.
2. Floppy disks were used for storing source code and other small files from the 80s to the 90s.
3. Jim has some backups of data stored in floppy disks.
4. The copy of Jim's SPACE software (source code and texture maps) when it was obtained by David Seal for the JPL Solar System Simulator was probably in a floppy disk.

Also, here's an interesting fact about a texture map used in the graphics lab:

This is a texture map of Earth, created by Tom Brown for Caltech's the Mechanical Universe, a series that was animated by Jim Blinn and Sylvie Rueff.

Supposedly, this texture map made it into the JPL Solar System Simulator's maps of the Earth page in 1999, under the filename ear0xxs1. However, when you click on it, it brings you into a 404 page. I found the .JPG version by reverse searching it on Google Images. There was also a .TIF file, but I cannot find it. The map is also featured in Jim's video about his history at the lab.

And now, I've found another one from another website that seems to be from the early 2000s:

earthmap.jpg (17.14 KiB) Viewed 9323 times

The only difference is that the clouds have been slightly altered.
If you look closely at Earth in the Mechanical Universe's intro, you can see it uses that version. Here's a comparison:

earth map comparison.png (25.06 KiB) Viewed 9323 times

Left is the map that I found from another website, center is a crop of the Earth from the intro, and the right is the map seen in the JPL simulator's Earth maps page.

This means that the map seen in the JPL simulator's Earth maps page is a preliminary version of the map. It could also be a newer version, although it's highly unlikely.

This also means 3 things:

1. The texture maps (and maybe other data) were released in some obscure website.
2. This texture map is a screenshot from a video. I don't recall seeing this Earth map when I was watching the Mechanical Universe in YouTube.
3. This texture map was obtained by contacting one of the creators of the Mechanical Universe series.

I also reuploaded some of the Voyager & Pioneer flyby animations to Archive.org. These were originally uploaded by Ian Regan on YouTube. The reason why I reuploaded them to Archive.org was that his channel was terminated for unknown reasons in 2021, before getting restored sometime earlier in 2023. You can find them in my Archive.org profile: https://archive.org/details/@ilikesaturn

[ILikeSaturn]

Not an update again sadly, but here is more evidence to back up my theory:

1. According to this website, the website's owner met with Jim Blinn, who was organizing some old files. It turns out the files were from a research paper he wrote in the 70s. The files were later uploaded to the website in .GIF format.
2. And from this Microsoft article about Jim Blinn, he started using personal computers in 1988. This could be the reason why the Saturn image featured in his website is in a higher resolution. He used PCs to re-render it in a higher resolution and saved it in an image format rather than taking a photo of the screen. The image was made in 1994, so he must have used PCs.

From these two sources, this could mean that Jim Blinn probably transferred or copied his files (source code, textures, etc.) to several floppy disks, while retaining their original format. If Jim has access to some of the floppy disks, he could recover the data from those and probably save time recovering data from the tape reads, assuming the data is the same.

Anyway, I am planning to create a page about Jim Blinn on my website and add some information that I've gathered from his old websites and articles about him. If I have more time, I might compile a more detailed biography from these sources and retype some of his papers.

As for Project VEAR, I'm pausing it for now since I've discovered a paper by Jim that is about the camera movement in the Voyager animations, which involves converting between screen coordinates to world coordinates, and vice versa. It's quite complicated and I'm afraid it might be more computationally expensive than locking the roll axis, especially if I need to interpolate it.