A Recreational Physicist : Flightpath

New layout

andy — Sat, 30 Jul 2005 17:27:00 GMT

It’s been a while since I’ve made a post. I’ve been busy with work, they’ve been paying me to take Microsoft certification exams so a lot of my spare time has been spent studying. The other sliver of my time has been taken up with reading The Road to Reality by Roger Penrose. It’s a good book, which is perfect for someone with my background. He goes into a lot of the mathematics required to understand modern physical theories. I’ve found this to be eye opening and has really given me a lot to think about. Both about the nature of reality and where to go with flightpath. Tensor diagrams are really interesting for example. I’ll have a few more posts about what I think about sections of the tome later on.

I’ve been wanting to do a custom skin for the blog since I set it up. I finally got a title image and a layout I was happy with. It’s amazing to me how much a little gradient makes a huge difference. The other big change is the color scheme. It’s dark. I’d never been fond of sites with dark backgrounds, but tying into the image of the logistic bifurcation diagram really called for it. I’ll see how I like it. I’m sure I’ll be making little tweaks here and there, but overall it has a good feel.

Flightpath video updates

andy — Fri, 06 May 2005 04:17:00 GMT

I’ve updated the flightpath app. After adding more realistic lighting, I got the lighting and rendering to work in video mode. Currently creating a video happens in script with calls to create the file, capture a screen and close the file. Ideally this should be handled externally to the model that is being investigated. Once I get objects created for all the display windows and properties, this should be much easier to do. In the mean time I will have to get by.

I’ve created 5 videos that highlight different kinds of interference patterns generated by the same functions superimposed on each other. In the first 2 videos the functions are added and subtracted from each other. In the third they are multiplied, and in the fourth and fifth, the added and subtracted models are squared.

additive interference

subtractive interference

multiplicative interference

additive squared interference

subtractive squared interference

FYI: these videos require a DIVX codec to playback properly.

flightpath updates

andy — Sat, 16 Apr 2005 17:12:00 GMT

Things are finally starting to settle down with the new house and I have more time to work. I’m finishing up the updates to the type system to support objects. I have the garbage collector integrated with the type system and the run-time type of the objects. Now sub-objects are collected along with the objects. I had to separate the globals and functions from the stack, which is something I should have done to begin with. Overall the application is much cleaner now and easier to work with. The next step is making all the display elements objects, this will give the users a lot more power and simplify the code alot.

In the mean time, a Half Price Book store opened up within walking distance from our house. This is going to be a constant drain on our time and money. I just can’t resist cheap books. On the other hand our shelves for the library just got in. We are going to have a whole room dedicated to books and reading, something I’ve wanted for as long as I can remember. How cool is that.

One of the books I’ve picked up, along with books on Python and Haskell, is Digital Lighting & Rendering by Jeremy Birn. I won’t ever need the level of detail that he goes into, to create realistic effects, but the section on basic lighting techniques made a huge difference in appearance. I’ve posted a couple of the better looking results. Three directional lights look so much better then “ambient” lighting, there is no going back.