I would LOVE to see the Idea No2!
But the other would be great too!
Is there a need to help you with this extension?

i would also like number 2... i would like from time to time "see" what i'm helping with in a format that make sence to "average Joe".

I like option 2 the best, but I also share the same GPU concerns - maybe it will give me a reason to SLI hehe.

I also really like Bruce's idea (Message 36515) of highlighting our solar system somehow.

Rather than showing anything in realtime, how about having a slide show of calculated work?

That way it is a pretty dumb screen saver, but it does at least show what has been done rather than what is currently going on.

Regards,

Richard.

P.S. Just completed my first few units!

Thanks for all the input guys - I've been silent for a little while but it's all very useful. We have meetings today and tomorrow at which I'm going to pin down the details on this, and I'll let you know what's decided. It'll be an iterative process, of course, and intermediate releases will come out whenever possible.

We've gotten some emails asking about a visualization - there currently is nothing, hence this thread. Sit tight, there'll be something out. I'm an undergrad/grad student (long story, just search "coterminal degree rpi" on google) and so am doing this in addition to a full class load - it won't be coming out as quickly as if I was working 40 hours/week, since I won't be.

I would LOVE to see the Idea No2!
But the other would be great too!
Is there a need to help you with this extension?

We always love your help :) I need to consult with the rest of the guys to get details on how they handle this usually.

I like Idea 3 because it sounds less processor intensive to have a constant view instead of zooming in and out of the galaxy all the time. Raw data from Idea 1 should be on the side in LCARS interface or whatever. I prefer raw data than too much eye candy.

Here are some details on the visualization:

Zoomed out view: This view will show the spiral of the Milk Way galaxy along with highlighted wedges which are currently computing. I'm not sure how much each of you understand regarding the science, but the wedges are very large and easily visible from a galaxy-wide view. My initial post in this thread mentioned showing the "best current model" of the galaxy - I didn't word that very well, as, truthfully, in a zoomed out view where you could (potentially) see over a million stars, a perfectly accurate scientific view is visually indiscernible from a randomly generated star field. Not to mention, theres no need to require more computation or data transfer than is necessary. The overall view won't be based on specific data points from the project, BUT, the wedges will be accurate to the project data.

Zoomed in view: This is the more interesting view, which will show the current work being done. The screen will zoom into a wedge, and you can think of a wedge as a pizza slice - they have a large surface area along one plane, but are very thin. As such, this view will be orthogonal to the face of the main plane (the top of the pizza slice). As each star in the wedge is processed, it will be shown in the wedge. Thus, visually, you will see the wedge filling up with stars.

Now, in reality, there are 100,000 stars in a wedge and showing each one individually would just lead to a mess of color. As such, a sort of heat map will be shown, where red may indicate a high density of stars and blue indicates a low density. After these computations are finished, we then determine what stars are part of the background and which are part of the star stream. At this point, the background will fade and the stream will be shown in a brighter color in the foreground.

That's the basic gist of things - I didn't go into deep deep detail, e.g. there can be multiple streams per wedge which would be dealt with by coloring each stream differently. Hopefully this gives you a good idea of where the visualization is headed.

Sounds like it'll be very interesting! Do you intend to show us screenshots or video clips during development, so we can give more specific feedback?

Hi I like option 2 maybe the big picture with shaded areas showing looks of current work done and in progress on an overlay of the generalized structure with the location of the solar system and the option to turn it off and on when checking it. Maybe to have a one level zoom with the processed data (not the high resolution but like a thumbnail version)the brightest. That should be simple enough but get the data expressed quickly. Use like a snapshot process maybe once a day. Hope this helps. I think most of us just want a basic view of the progress. Have the more intensive stuff on the website page as an option later.

Hope I helped!

John

I think that #2 is the best idea, except #3 would most likely consume the least CPU or GPU time, because it is not constantly switching between modes. I think that the user should possibly have a choice between different screen savers, depending on their wants and needs.

I personally like the idea of having a visualization about what we are doing. I like it as a recruiting tool as well. Folding@home has one that I can show my friend and that alone has peaked a bit of interest in my less tech oriented friends. Gotta sell it to a certain degree. Having a graphic that incorporates the galaxy view and a interval of zooming in to the wedge that we are working on. The galaxy should spin as well then fast spin and zoom to the wedge. Also having the specific graphics on hand to tell us what is actually happening would be nice. Of course this could be set as a screen saver but I would prefer that the default be off so we aren't using to many extra cycles when we don't want to.

It shouldn't be difficult to deactivate processing for the graphic altogether when it's not currently on-screen. This should be something nice to study once in a while, and maybe as a screensaver to interest others for PCs that don't contribute using their GPUs anyway - serious crunchers will always keep these things off.

Hi gang,
The potential screensaver work has encouraged me to re connect to the project. I would be happy with anything that displays the progress that has been made. Feedback is worth its weight in gold, other projects should take note.

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Ivor
My Webpage

The first thing I have to say is "THANK-YOU" for the screen-saver work!!

I don't understand how the project actually works so I can't contribute much on to how to show the progress. Is there a "Milkyway@Home for Dummys" primer?

I am guessing (WAG) position refinement occurs by taking views from different positions of earth's orbit and measuring the miniscule shift of closer stars against more distant stars? Then modeling the expected movement within the galaxy and comparing to subsequent observations?

I think shifting the .scr from the galaxy big picture to the wedge should happen slowly and only once, discarding the processing needed to "semi-render" the full galaxy. And since the wedge itself still has too many stars to render, zoom in to 200 - 300 of the closest neighbor stars of the current target and blink the target(s) being refined, maybe showing an alternate blink of the previously computed position if an adjustment is made.

My suggestions are obviously out of ignorance, so please excuse my lame opinions.

p.s. As much as I love SciFi and Star Trek, please don't cheapen the project by imatating the LCARS. Again, IMHO.

Idea 2 sounds great. Showing everyone the big picture helps people grasp what this is all about. Then showing a detail is equally interesting. The juxtaposition of both is definitely what we need.

I think I like the second idea the best, unless there is an idea 1.5 or something.
-Zeke Becker, musician

1 vote for Idea 2.

Idea number 2 sounds great to me.

No personal vested interest here since I run Linux and I must assume u r talking about a Windoze screensaver.

What's the purpose of a screen saver... eye candy. Maybe actually causing someone to ask what it is and get some interest in crunching. It seems to me the option that fulfills that best is #3.

So, to fulfill it's function #3

Welcome aboard Eric!
I like the idea of what we see now, then zoom out to an outside view of the milkyway/galaxy, point where we are, location that's currently getting calculated.

Try to avoid static pictures since that defeats the purpose of a screensaver.

You could have a table of major markers (similar to Einstien's globe), and the whole thing fits in a fractional integer table. Fractional integer math is not that labour intensive for a CPU (for people all concerned about taking-away crunching from their GPUs). ...besides, the point is to attract people into the project since the many will still do more than the few with fast GPUs).

If you're up to the challenge of getting a linux screensaver up, that would be excellent (you'd probably need to base it on the older X-screensavers to be cross-compatible across different desktops). I think I also saw some basic KDE examples somewhere too.

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http://www.joescat.com/boinc/