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very geeky question about Eve's coordinate system

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virm pasuul
Imperial Academy
Amarr Empire
#1 - 2014-12-15 12:10:02 UTC  |  Edited by: virm pasuul
Sorry for the utter geekyness of this question, but what coordinate system does Eve use to represent space?

I'm assuming Eve space is a polar coordinate system as opposed to cartesian, based off the 'centre' of each star system. I'm guessing this because of the billiard ball nature of objects in Eve, and developer head banging and throwing TVs out of the window over storage if it was cartesian.
Doesn't this generate lots of annoyingly dependent on accuracy and messy trigonometric floating point math to deal with and store?
Steve Ronuken
Fuzzwork Enterprises
Vote Steve Ronuken for CSM
#2 - 2014-12-15 12:19:48 UTC
Actually, it's all cartesian coordinates, as evidenced by the SDE.

So we have the position of all the stars in new eden (down to the meter) (mapSolarSystems)

We also have the position of all the celestials (mapDenormalize) in relation to their star.

Woo! CSM XI!

Fuzzwork Enterprises

Twitter: @fuzzysteve on Twitter
virm pasuul
Imperial Academy
Amarr Empire
#3 - 2014-12-15 12:25:04 UTC
Humm thanks. Could you link to that info please?

If it's cartesian that means it would be much easier to represent large objects e.g. titans not just as spheres but as meaningful shapes. Imagine ships so large you could fly in and around their features instead of bouncing off the invisible bubble.
Primary This Rifter
Mutual Fund of the Something
#4 - 2014-12-15 12:27:17 UTC
virm pasuul wrote:
Sorry for the utter geekyness of this question, but what coordinate system does Eve use to represent space?

I'm assuming Eve space is a polar coordinate system as opposed to cartesian

Polar would be two dimensional. Did you mean spherical coordinates, or cylindrical?
virm pasuul
Imperial Academy
Amarr Empire
#5 - 2014-12-15 12:27:52 UTC
The physics of Eve makes much more sense if viewed through polar coordinate glasses. I assumed this was down to the underlying choice of coordinate system.
virm pasuul
Imperial Academy
Amarr Empire
#6 - 2014-12-15 12:29:18 UTC
Primary This Rifter wrote:
virm pasuul wrote:
Sorry for the utter geekyness of this question, but what coordinate system does Eve use to represent space?

I'm assuming Eve space is a polar coordinate system as opposed to cartesian

Polar would be two dimensional. Did you mean spherical coordinates, or cylindrical?


Polar is 2d or 3d, whichever you want. If you did polar at at school it may have been 2d because it's easier to draw on 2d paper, but polar can quite happily cope with 3d also.
Primary This Rifter
Mutual Fund of the Something
#7 - 2014-12-15 12:29:46 UTC
Clearly ships in EVE use 3-axis gimbals since they can't continue rotating past vertical.
virm pasuul
Imperial Academy
Amarr Empire
#8 - 2014-12-15 12:31:54 UTC  |  Edited by: virm pasuul
care to elaborate on that last post?

PS looked up the polar spherical thing - I guess you are right, 3d polar appears to be called spherical.
Primary This Rifter
Mutual Fund of the Something
#9 - 2014-12-15 12:33:51 UTC  |  Edited by: Primary This Rifter
virm pasuul wrote:
Polar is 2d or 3d, whichever you want. If you did polar at at school it may have been 2d because it's easier to draw on 2d paper, but polar can quite happily cope with 3d also.

No, it can't. What you're thinking of as 3D polar coordinates would have either been cylindrical or spherical coordinates, since there are two ways that you can extend the polar system into 3 dimensions (either by adding a second angular parameter as with spherical coordinates, or by adding a second distance parameter as with cylindrical coordinates).

My previous post was a joke about gimbal lock which may not actually be too far off in explaining why we can't rotate our ships past vertical (depending upon how the source code treats the angular states of ships).
Primary This Rifter
Mutual Fund of the Something
#10 - 2014-12-15 12:44:06 UTC  |  Edited by: Primary This Rifter
Actually, doing some more reading, it would seem that EVE uses Euler angles for ship and camera orientations. They're much easier to code, but they lead to problems like the aforementioned gimbal lock. If we wanted the ability to rotate our ships or camera past vertical then CCP would need to use quaternions instead, which are a bit more complicated to code.

I realize this thread is about coordinate systems for position and not orientation, but I'm geeking out a bit myself on this so please forgive me for the tangent.
Sol Project
Shitt Outta Luck - GANKING4GOOD
#11 - 2014-12-15 12:45:47 UTC  |  Edited by: Sol Project
The first time I rotated the camera, back in 2009 ...

"Oh, gimbal lock!"

Still wondering why they don't use quaternions.

Ladies of New Eden YC 117 by Indahmawar Fazmarai

Warning: NSFW! Barely legal girls in underwear!

Diana Kim > AND THIS IS WHY THE FEDERATION MUST BE DESTROYED!!
Gillia Winddancer
Aliastra
Gallente Federation
#12 - 2014-12-15 13:00:06 UTC
Just want to chip in and say that the gimbal lock has always been a bit of a pet peeve for me in EVE. It is not a huge deal but still would be nice to see it changed into a true free-form.
Steve Ronuken
Fuzzwork Enterprises
Vote Steve Ronuken for CSM
#13 - 2014-12-15 13:27:11 UTC  |  Edited by: Steve Ronuken
The collision system represents ships as a collection of spheres, which mostly cover the model. It's done to simplify collision mechanics. It's not a single sphere, hence why you can get closer to an avatar on the side, than if it was a single sphere.


Nothing to do with the coordinates system.


The universe data can be grabbed from https://developers.eveonline.com/resource/static-data-export (it's the sqlite file)

Or you can get individual exports from https://www.fuzzwork.co.uk/dump/latest/

Woo! CSM XI!

Fuzzwork Enterprises

Twitter: @fuzzysteve on Twitter
Josef Djugashvilis
#14 - 2014-12-15 13:48:15 UTC
What does any of the above mean in English? :)

This is not a signature.
CCP Falcon
#15 - 2014-12-15 13:49:47 UTC
Josef Djugashvilis wrote:
What does any of the above mean in English? :)


There be twinkly bits. There be black bits. There be shiny bits. There be spaces between them.

CCP Falcon || EVE Universe Community Manager || @CCP_Falcon

Happy Birthday To FAWLTY7! <3
virm pasuul
Imperial Academy
Amarr Empire
#16 - 2014-12-15 13:55:39 UTC
where be the dragons?
virm pasuul
Imperial Academy
Amarr Empire
#17 - 2014-12-15 13:58:13 UTC
Josef Djugashvilis wrote:
What does any of the above mean in English? :)


We are talking about the "laws of nature" of Eve. What Eve is built upon and how those bits fit together.
More, but very mathy info here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coordinate_system
Ned Thomas
Sebiestor Tribe
Minmatar Republic
#18 - 2014-12-15 14:01:02 UTC
CCP Falcon wrote:


There be twinkly bits.



I read that as "Twinkie bits" and now I want a Twinkie.
Highfield
Vanishing Point.
The Initiative.
#19 - 2014-12-15 16:09:03 UTC
Steve Ronuken wrote:
Actually, it's all cartesian coordinates, as evidenced by the SDE.

So we have the position of all the stars in new eden (down to the meter) (mapSolarSystems)

We also have the position of all the celestials (mapDenormalize) in relation to their star.




The question that arises is ofcourse what the origin of the cartesian coordinate system is. From a lore perspective, the EVE gate comes to mind, but is that truth?
Sol Project
Shitt Outta Luck - GANKING4GOOD
#20 - 2014-12-15 16:48:02 UTC
This thread reminds me of Korinne, who complained that there is an "arbitrary up".

Ladies of New Eden YC 117 by Indahmawar Fazmarai

Warning: NSFW! Barely legal girls in underwear!

Diana Kim > AND THIS IS WHY THE FEDERATION MUST BE DESTROYED!!
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