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WOW! Great work, Masao. The way you've color-coded depth is brilliant. An elegant solution. Winchell is the bomb, yo. Definitely one of the nerdiest/coolest sites out there.
I had the idea to do this a couple years back, but gave up in frustration due to the intractable problems of deciphering canon locations/distances. I decided that my own SF show would make the map ahead of time and so I got to work. Should you want it, I've got the Hipparchos dataset (with calculated cartesian coords) into an Excel file. It's a big file, though.
Registered: Sep 2000
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I used to have a Celestia script with a number of core Trek worlds marked out, but sadly I lost it during some re-install. I did start making some 2D maps from those, but that was all part of my abandoned (frozen?) Kzinti War stuff.
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Winchell's site has a nice data set in CSV format that he boiled down from Hipparchos. He has subsets for various distances out from earth and for habitable systems. The data is in galactic coordinates in parsecs. His data leans toward gaming, so focuses on interstellar distances rather than actual locations. He has what he calls 2 1/2-D maps which dispense with stellar positions and focus completely on connections.
Mapping the real stars is not the hard part, of course. The hard part is reconciling Trek stars with real stars. It's no easier than trying to come up with a Trek Chronology that every agrees with. I barely started with that.
-------------------- When you're in the Sol system, come visit the Starfleet Museum
Registered: Oct 1999
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Especially with contradicting info from different shows and different eras. You've got a terrific start, though. It really gives a sense of which system is where. I can't remember, are you an Adobe Illustrator kind of guy (and if so, ever mess with Dimensions? )? Please, elaborate on your process if you feel like sharing.
It is a lot cleaner without the as/de-cenders. Nice touch droping the "negative" vertical systems and routes behind the grey-shadow map. Slick as snot. It'd probably make a huge mess, but it'd be super awesome to have semi-transparent meta-blobies for the different territories.
So when is someone going to develop a 3-D star-maping program where we graphic designer snobs can tweak the colors/positions/typefaces/size/texturemaps of all objects within a fully customizable interface that will output movie files as well as high-res renders? Also this software should be totally free. What? I don't think I'm asking too much.
Registered: Sep 2000
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Whoa I just tried Celestia and that was the most nausiating, most nerve racking thing I've I tried. Andrew if they ever made holographic star maps,I think I'd pass out if I tried to use one.
Oh and Masao where can I get Mandell's star charts.
Registered: Feb 2005
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I did this all in Freehand. I didn't use anything special except the 3-D rotate tool to give the original 2-D map a bit of perspective. After that it was just elevating the stars to their proper heights.
I have Star Trek Maps but haven't been able to figure them out! I remember Geoff Mandel saying once that he didn't know anything about galactic coordinates when he did those.
-------------------- When you're in the Sol system, come visit the Starfleet Museum
Registered: Oct 1999
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No wonder Pocket blames the lackluster sales of such specialty books (justifing the cancellation of the Unseen Frontier book) on us fans, after they went to the trouble to hire an expert like that....
-------------------- Justice inclines her scales so that wisdom comes at the price of suffering. -Aeschylus, Agamemnon
Registered: Aug 2002
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I bet no one bought it because of it not having an accurate galactic coordinate system because all Star Trek fans have the NGC tattooed on their spine, and also that the differences between Star Trek Maps and the modern version were nonexistent despite them being seperated by nearly twenty years.
Registered: Mar 1999
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Don't get Star Trek Maps mixed up Star Trek Star Charts. Star Charts relied heavily on work done by Christian R�hl for his ST Dimension site with input from our very own Timo (he's from Iceland, isn't he?). This book uses galactic coords, so is pretty accurate, in an astronomic sense.
-------------------- When you're in the Sol system, come visit the Starfleet Museum
Registered: Oct 1999
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Or no one bought it because it's not really something the fans wanted or asked for...unlike that other book. YOu know, the one that we all aited years for that they decided not to make in favor of Star Charts and the (incredible!) Starship Spotter.
Griping about Mandell not knowing anything about galactic coordinates is just my venting and haeping all the ills of the Trek franchise onto his shoulders. It makes me feel better.
I'd be inttrested in seeing what sales goals Pocket had for that book though.
[ August 21, 2005, 09:57 PM: Message edited by: Jason Abbadon ]
-------------------- Justice inclines her scales so that wisdom comes at the price of suffering. -Aeschylus, Agamemnon
Registered: Aug 2002
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quote:Originally posted by Masao: Don't get Star Trek Maps mixed up Star Trek Star Charts. Star Charts relied heavily on work done by Christian R�hl for his ST Dimension site with input from our very own Timo (he's from Iceland, isn't he?). This book uses galactic coords, so is pretty accurate, in an astronomic sense.
And I think FLARE itself needed a credit there because I RECKON that Christian would have had a long read of all our MAP threads from 1997 onwards.
Registered: Mar 1999
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![[Wink]](wink.gif)
Oh and all as a hologram. Is that asking too much? ![[Smile]](smile.gif)
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