My little project - a maptool for Honorverse

Joat42 wrote:It seems you created the composite map via image editing, correct?
(And for some reason I missed the map several times when looking for it on Honorverseglossary ).

Yes, I did quite a bit of image editing. I used Gimp to layer the different maps together. It was an interesting process.

I loaded the maps into Gimp and edited layers there. For instance, I used the line of text in the JRMN map to determine the rotation of my scanned image. I also assumed that the circular section was supposed to be a true circle on the original, so I scaled the ratio of x to y to make it a true circle. (You can't guarantee that a printed image retains the exact ratio of x to y.) I also scaled it to match known distances as well as possible. Finding the best fit for scaling took a while. Then on a new layer, I created my own star shapes over each JRMN star, so that I would have a clean base map of my own, with no scan residue from the JRMN map.

Then I applied the other maps in layers over the JRMN map, scaling x and y and rotation of each image until I got as good a match to the JRMN stars as possible. I labeled the JRMN stars that matched stars on the other maps, and added stars to the composite when there wasn't a JRMN star close to the right place.

I had thought at one point about measuring coordinates of all the stars, as you are doing, but I never got around to it. I wish you good luck on your project!

SWM wrote:

Joat42 wrote:It seems you created the composite map via image editing, correct?
(And for some reason I missed the map several times when looking for it on Honorverseglossary ).

Yes, I did quite a bit of image editing. I used Gimp to layer the different maps together. It was an interesting process.

I loaded the maps into Gimp and edited layers there. For instance, I used the line of text in the JRMN map to determine the rotation of my scanned image. I also assumed that the circular section was supposed to be a true circle on the original, so I scaled the ratio of x to y to make it a true circle. (You can't guarantee that a printed image retains the exact ratio of x to y.) I also scaled it to match known distances as well as possible. Finding the best fit for scaling took a while. Then on a new layer, I created my own star shapes over each JRMN star, so that I would have a clean base map of my own, with no scan residue from the JRMN map.

Then I applied the other maps in layers over the JRMN map, scaling x and y and rotation of each image until I got as good a match to the JRMN stars as possible. I labeled the JRMN stars that matched stars on the other maps, and added stars to the composite when there wasn't a JRMN star close to the right place.

I had thought at one point about measuring coordinates of all the stars, as you are doing, but I never got around to it. I wish you good luck on your project!

Using Gimp too, using a layer to blot out the stars I have recorded the position of. Been looking to automate the process but I haven't found a satisfactory solution yet. Gimp has built in scripting but for some reason they decided to use Scheme (a Lisp derivative ).

Joat42 wrote:Using Gimp too, using a layer to blot out the stars I have recorded the position of. Been looking to automate the process but I haven't found a satisfactory solution yet. Gimp has built in scripting but for some reason they decided to use Scheme (a Lisp derivative ).

Oh boy! Fun with parentheses! I remember modifying custom features in the first versions of GNU Emacs. Fortunately, I never had to do Lisp again after that.

The main issue I see with these maps is that the Maya sector isn't even in the SL, I understood it was suppose to be part of the outer protectorate not outside the league. Something's wrong there.

MAD-4A wrote:The main issue I see with these maps is that the Maya sector isn't even in the SL, I understood it was suppose to be part of the outer protectorate not outside the league. Something's wrong there.

If you look at my map, at http://www.gotshifted.com/honorverseglo ... e_v1.0.png, you will see that the Maya Sector is in the Solarian League. Their border is somewhat extended in the direction of Erewhon, which matches what the text says. Note that the borders depicted in that map are taken from the Jaynes books, published years before the Torch books. It's not something I made up.

The circular borders that Sawa used in his composite map come from the drawing David made to show the general arrangement of the Solarian League. It was not intended to be an accurate depiction of the borders, just the general sense of how the League was structured. Since Sawa did not use the Jaynes maps, this general map was the only source he had that showed League borders.

SWM wrote:

Joat42 wrote:Using Gimp too, using a layer to blot out the stars I have recorded the position of. Been looking to automate the process but I haven't found a satisfactory solution yet. Gimp has built in scripting but for some reason they decided to use Scheme (a Lisp derivative ).

Oh boy! Fun with parentheses! I remember modifying custom features in the first versions of GNU Emacs. Fortunately, I never had to do Lisp again after that.

Fortunately I didn't need to work with Gimp scripting!

After fiddling with OpenCV today I managed to detect about 95% of the star-systems location automatically. Now I'm going to take my composite detection and overlay it on your composite to see what didn't get detected (or what extra bits did get detected). A bonus was that it was very easy to write the detected locations into a csv-file. A lot of less work!

The only problem I've had is that no matter how I tweaked the detection parameters it ignored the "unfilled" stars - but they aren't that many so it should go quite quickly to enter them manually.

Joat,

If it would help, I could get you extract the layer containing stars on my composite map. The star names and borders are each on separate layers. That would give you a clean sheet containing only the stars, which might help your automatic detection system.

SWM wrote:Joat,

If it would help, I could get you extract the layer containing stars on my composite map. The star names and borders are each on separate layers. That would give you a clean sheet containing only the stars, which might help your automatic detection system.

If you have it in Gimp format (xcf) I can take that. I'll pm you my mail-addy.

SWM wrote:Note that the borders depicted in that map are taken from the Jaynes books, published years before the Torch books. It's not something I made up.

I was aware of that, I have the same map on my comp & was wondering about it's accuracy.

SWM wrote:The circular borders that Sawa used in his composite map come from the drawing David made to show the general arrangement of the Solarian League.

I was not aware of that, an accurate map would be helpful (especially with a map tool, like your making).

MAD-4A wrote:

SWM wrote:Note that the borders depicted in that map are taken from the Jaynes books, published years before the Torch books. It's not something I made up.

I was aware of that, I have the same map on my comp & was wondering about it's accuracy.

SWM wrote:The circular borders that Sawa used in his composite map come from the drawing David made to show the general arrangement of the Solarian League.

I was not aware of that, an accurate map would be helpful (especially with a map tool, like your making).

Just to be sure there's no misunderstanding--I'm not the one making the map tool. I made a composite map, using the Jaynes map as an original basis (with some rotation and scaling adjustment). Joat is making the map tool and posted the pictures you were commenting on; the circular regions on those pictures are derived from Sawa's composite map. I've made my composite map available to Joat, but I have no idea whether he will be able to use the borders from my map. They're a bit more complicated than simple circles.