@kevinjardine@mastodon.social
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kevinjardine

@kevinjardine@mastodon.social

Scientific visualization and virtual reality. Used to post under https://mastodon.social/@galaxy_map. Looking for a job or contract work.

This profile is from a federated server and may be incomplete. Browse more on the original instance.

kevinjardine, to random
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This week I'm working on the scan console for the Virtual Starship. Unlike Star Trek, whose long range scanners extended only to 5.2 parsecs (17 light years), the Virtual Starship scanners go out to a whopping 350 parsecs. Each object discovered has a clickable button on a map, which brings up further information about the object including ... sometimes ... some surprises.

The game system in the Virtual Starship is implemented via the scan console.

kevinjardine,
@kevinjardine@mastodon.social avatar

The entire scan system including the game component is configurable using JSON and image files stored on my web server for easy updates. Which means that I can keep object data current with scientific research and continuously expand the game.

For the first stage of the game I am leaning towards asking the users to discover more about the mysterious alien race that built the wormhole system used by the starship. They seem to have vanished. What happened to them?

ernie, to random
@ernie@writing.exchange avatar

Hard to disagree with this take.

https://www.computerworld.com/article/2117752/google-gemini-ai.html

kevinjardine,
@kevinjardine@mastodon.social avatar

@ernie I liked and used Google+ when it was available and found a longer form blogging platform and alternative to Twitter useful. I still don't get the hostility to it. What I really did not like was Google cancelling it, something which they have done to a great many of their products, to the extent that I do not want to ever count on anything provided by Google anymore.

stux, to China
@stux@mstdn.social avatar

deleted_by_author

    •
    kevinjardine,
    @kevinjardine@mastodon.social avatar

    @stux Surprised to see you parroting anti-China lines from the right wing media. Unfollowing.

    vicgrinberg, to Astro
    @vicgrinberg@mastodon.social avatar

    We are launching the Science Newsletter! It serves the scientific community and welcomes everyone interested in more programmatic and technical news from the Directorate of Science: calls for proposals, announcements of opportunity, research fellowship announcements, calls for memberships, job announcements, major mission updates, conference announcements, etc. for all our missions!

    More infos & subscription link here:

    ▶️ https://cosmos.esa.int/web/scinews

    Space background (and image from the Euclid space telescope) with an overlayed stylized hear animation.

    kevinjardine,
    @kevinjardine@mastodon.social avatar

    @vicgrinberg Subscribed!

    kevinjardine, to random
    @kevinjardine@mastodon.social avatar

    It looks like it's happening. Lego is releasing an official Milky Way kit complete with Gaia spacecraft in May!

    (You would think that Space.com would recognize the iconic Gaia flying top hat.)

    https://www.space.com/lego-artemis-space-launch-system-milky-way-announce?utm_medium=social&utm_content=space.com&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=socialflow

    kevinjardine,
    @kevinjardine@mastodon.social avatar

    I'm excited actually about how close this Lego image is to the two-arm spiral model I often promote. There is one clearly defined Scutum-Centaurus arm coming from the near end of the bar and a more chaotic Perseus arm that splits into multiple pieces coming from the far end.

    In my view whoever created this Lego set did a really good job.

    kevinjardine, to random
    @kevinjardine@mastodon.social avatar

    I finished the Virtual Starship prototype today. After I gave tours to about 20 astronomers at the Gaia meeting in Nice, France, in March, I had a short TO DO list. Last on that list was an info button that provided information and credits for local sky boxes.

    image/jpeg

    kevinjardine, to random
    @kevinjardine@mastodon.social avatar

    I spent the last three days at a Gaia Mission meeting in Nice, France giving individual tours of my virtual starship to about 20 professional astronomers. I had a Quest 2 and Quest 3 headset and the app used the Photon Engine from Exit Games to synchronize avatars / user actions.

    kevinjardine,
    @kevinjardine@mastodon.social avatar

    It was a bit grueling to give the same tour over and over (as I only had one headset for myself and one for an astronomer) but the effort was paid back by the excitement of the astronomers. Many had never used a VR headset before and one who had gave me a memorable experience.

    kevinjardine,
    @kevinjardine@mastodon.social avatar

    Once we had both beamed aboard and I gave him a basic tour, he asked to be taken to the star cluster Messier 67. After we jumped there in the starship, he pointed excitedly to the cluster in the sky. He explained that it is one of the oldest known open star clusters. (Image credit: Sloan Digital Sky Survey)

    kevinjardine,
    @kevinjardine@mastodon.social avatar

    At more than 4 billion years old, Messier 67 would normally have been torn apart by surrounding stars long ago, but it had drifted far above the galactic plane. The starship image from Gaia data showed that the cluster was indeed being pulled apart, just very slowly.

    kevinjardine,
    @kevinjardine@mastodon.social avatar

    I loved this experience because it was exactly what I had created the starship for, so people could travel together to see amazing places with experts that can provide incredible insights. The Milky Way is an amazing place and VR starships allow us to see parts of it up close.

    gerrymcgovern, to random
    @gerrymcgovern@mastodon.green avatar

    Degrowth is the only hope

    Imagine a world where you work three or four days a week. In your free time, you play sports, spend time with loved ones, garden, and engage with local politics. Overnight shipping, advertising, private jets, billionaires and SUVs no longer exist, but health care, education, and clean electricity are free and available to all.

    We must massively reduce our energy and material consumption to have any hope of saving our environment.

    https://grist.org/looking-forward/the-growing-popularity-of-degrowth/

    kevinjardine,
    @kevinjardine@mastodon.social avatar

    @gerrymcgovern This reminds me of Kurt Vonnegut's 1952 novel Player Piano, which basically predicts this future, except:

    the majority of the population is kept busy with poorly paid makework projects and the world is actually run by a small, overworked and technocratic elite.

    How do we avoid that?

    kevinjardine, to random
    @kevinjardine@mastodon.social avatar

    Lots of posts today on Mark Zuckerberg's comments on the Apple Vision Pro.

    My view:

    a. Apple currently has a technical advantage because it is using expensive first generation 4K-per-eye displays from Sony. That advantage will evaporate in the next year or two when those displays become more affordable and more widely available. Meta will inevitably introduce its own device with similar displays. (1/3)

    kevinjardine,
    @kevinjardine@mastodon.social avatar

    b. It is great that Apple is encouraging XR developers to develop UI that better incorporates eye and hand tracking. Other devices will also get better in those areas. However, not supplying hand controllers with the Vision Pro is an own goal and will restrict the availability of games and other 3D immersive experiences. (2/3)

    kevinjardine,
    @kevinjardine@mastodon.social avatar

    c. There are too many posts using bad historical parallels. This is not an iPhone vs. BlackBerry competition. Meta is betting most of the company on VR and AR headsets and has years of market leadership. It is going to be much harder for Apple to compete in the VR market than it was for mobile phones. (3/3)

    rolle, to fediverse
    @rolle@mementomori.social avatar

    User aaronrosspower at Threads:

    ”When Musk bought Twitter and there was that initial wave of people fleeing, Mastodon could've kept that momentum, and probably won out as the next big thing, if it'd (1) opened mastodon.social to registrations as the default server and (2) added quote posts. I'm convinced Bluesky's success was entirely because Mastodon didn't do (1) and (2), and while the Fediverse will still likely be the main decentralized network, once Threads federates, the process was significantly slowed and fractured.”

    When will people understand that Mastodon or any other Fediverse app will not need to ”success” and be mainstream? I think we are not driven by profit and corporate gain. I think we will exist as long as there are people running their web services.

    Please note: This is just my opinion. I have to state this, because I’ve been blocked for less. Comment if you agree/disagree.

    kevinjardine,
    @kevinjardine@mastodon.social avatar

    @rolle At least Mastodon does recommend a server now I believe?

    I don't understand why it is taking so long to implement quote posts as they are on the development list. Perhaps the Mastodon lead developers do not understand how important those are? Threads, Bluesky and X-Twitter all have them and their lack on Mastodon stands out like a sore thumb.

    And yes I do believe that Mastodon as a whole is (and should be) competing with those sites for users.

    astro_jcm, to science
    @astro_jcm@mastodon.online avatar

    I'm tired of sitting through #science talks where all plots are properly credited but artist's impressions and photographs aren't.

    As a researcher and astrophotographer who works with super talented artists, this attitude really bothers me.

    You study galaxies at the dawn of time. You look for biomarkers in the atmospheres of distant planets. You can most definitely find who made that cool image you just pasted in your slides.

    To those who do credit #art : you're awesome 🤗

    kevinjardine,
    @kevinjardine@mastodon.social avatar

    @astro_jcm I know that this problem tends to reinforce itself as scientists often use uncredited images from other talks or something they found on the Internet

    But often a few minutes with TinEye will identify the creator.

    https://tineye.com/

    kevinjardine, to random
    @kevinjardine@mastodon.social avatar

    I've been invited to give Virtual Starship tours at the next Gaia Data Processing and Analysis Consortium meeting, which gives me a practical deadline for completing the navigation console of 18 March 2024.

    Here are screenshots of the galactic navigation (a. zoom and b. target).

    image/jpeg

    kevinjardine,
    @kevinjardine@mastodon.social avatar

    Every starship navigator needs an Engage button. My goal this week is to get that button working for all 45 locations on the virtual starship Gaia 3 kpc map.

    kevinjardine,
    @kevinjardine@mastodon.social avatar

    Spent the day working on top down navigation maps for the Virtual Starship. There'll be one map for each of the 45 Milky Way locations you can travel to.

    kevinjardine,
    @kevinjardine@mastodon.social avatar

    Each navigation map has a radius of 350 parsecs (1100 light-years) from the central wormhole location. Currently you can only travel from wormhole to wormhole but down the road I'll look into some kind of warp drive so that you can reach and orbit individual stars, brown dwarfs and exoplanets on the individual maps.

    nyrath, to random
    @nyrath@spacey.space avatar

    James Cameron Loves Apple's Vision Pro. But Will It Be Addictive?

    https://m.slashdot.org/story/424498

    kevinjardine,
    @kevinjardine@mastodon.social avatar

    @nyrath Often these stories neglect to mention that the Apple Vision Pro high resolution microLED displays are produced by Sony, which has announced its own headset using the same or similar displays and that several other manufacturers are working on them. So the most impressive part of the Vision Pro is not from Apple and they will lose their temporary monopoly on it very soon.

    nyrath, to random
    @nyrath@spacey.space avatar

    Ofsted inspectors ‘make up evidence’ about a school’s performance when IT fails

    Inspector tells Observer investigation that top officials are aware that computer system crashes can wipe out data

    https://www.theguardian.com/education/2024/feb/03/ofsted-inspectors-make-up-evidence-about-a-schools-performance-when-it-fails

    kevinjardine,
    @kevinjardine@mastodon.social avatar

    @nyrath I love the idea of a school inspectorate like Ofsted and I wish we had something like that in Canada. Obviously many school teachers don't like being evaluated and they complain to the Guardian about scandals that may or may not be real. But I think the end result is surely better schools.

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