Re: Star Maps

> Phillip Pournelle wrote:
> I'm very impressed by the work done by the gentleman who built the
star maps
> for the GZG universe.
> The impression I get is that the gathering of a number of stars is
based on
> their 3-D positioning.  While a group of stars apear to be so far
apart as to
> denigh any sense of contiguency, in a three D view they actually do.
> 
>     Unfortunately, the three D view is not effective for a campaign
map.  Is
> it possible to generate a 2D map, perhaps on a hex sheet, where there
are
> distortions of the star's actual position,  but positioned to create a
sense
> of how far apart they would be for  a strategic view?

	Yes, I'm the person in question who made the maps
	(and I am also a big fan of your father's novels, BTW).

	I used my homemade program to make the maps, available at
	http://www.clark.net/pub/nyrath/smapx.html
	for Win95/98.  It will make flat maps, but will also
	display in rotating 3-D.  I did try to make things so
	stars were close in 3-D, even though they look odd on
	a flat map.

	Alas, it is rather difficult to do what you ask, flattening
	the map to a 2-D equivalent.

	Mr Joel H. Crook <joel@invbank.com> suggested using something
	called Kohonen mapping in an attempt to preserve the
	distance information when flattening a map.
	http://odur.let.rug.nl/~kleiweg/kohonen/kohonen.html

	I haven't had a chance to try this yet.
	The data I used to make the starmaps is available at
	http://www.clark.net/pub/nyrath/ft/ftmap1.html
	in *.txt file format, and as an Excel spreadsheet.