Results 1 to 5 of 5

Thread: Animation of NASA image in thinBASIC

  1. #1
    Super Moderator Petr Schreiber's Avatar
    Join Date
    Aug 2005
    Location
    Brno - Czech Republic
    Posts
    7,128
    Rep Power
    732

    Animation of NASA image in thinBASIC

    Dear users,

    in the past month I learned how much can be gained when you try to push limits of your solution.


    I was given a very interesting task by my friend Ruja, to prepare an animation for his public talk about Mars. The goal of the animation was to allow everyone to experience the wast resolution of the NASA Mars images, to take the viewers to a different world for a few minutes.

    While I was originally prepared to achieve this with DaVinci Resolve and simple animation, I quickly realised the huge dimension of source data - 88797x22958 pixels - is something beyond capabilities of the software.


    So I had to think how to approach it and decided to go thinBASIC & TBGL route. This way was also not easy, because my quite good GPU had two important limits - top texture size (32k x 32k) and memory ("just" 4GB). As a bonus, I decided to make the animation realtime, controllable via XBox controller, as I thought it could spice up the presenation further. While this aspect was not used in the end, it allowed me to explore the image better in real-time - and now I can say I know every rock on that image and every panorama-stitching error made by NASA team as well


    The road to the solution was a bit bumpy, but it allowed me to learn (and re-learn) some concepts which will be part of TBGL in the next releases. From GPU limits across texture compression to thoughts how fast pan is a still smooth camera pan, given the framerate & how to not make everyone dizzy watching this on a large screen.


    Also - working with large data sets is ideal opportunity to check for memory leaks, as they are more pronounced. I think I found one in TImage library and will work on addressing that as well for next versions.


    To not end up on the QA note - I was really happy to see I was able to overcome all obstacles on quite tight schedule and once again thinBASIC helped me with a task I would not be able to achieve with other tools I had at the disposal. This is also a good opportunity to thank to Eros for the incredible work on the interpreter and also Michael Hartlef for his excellent TBDI module, thanks to which I could implement XBox One controller support easily . Too bad the recording of the talk itself was forbidden, it was really great!



    Enjoy the result for now & don't forget to switch YouTube to 1080p!




    Learn 3D graphics with ThinBASIC, learn TBGL!
    Windows 10 64bit - Intel Core i5-3350P @ 3.1GHz - 16 GB RAM - NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1050 Ti 4GB

  2. #2
    thinBasic author ErosOlmi's Avatar
    Join Date
    Sep 2004
    Location
    Milan - Italy
    Age
    57
    Posts
    8,777
    Rep Power
    10
    Incredible Petr.
    Really huge image

    I cannot image how many programming "tricks" you used in the script
    Is the original image public somewhere?
    www.thinbasic.com | www.thinbasic.com/community/ | help.thinbasic.com
    Windows 10 Pro for Workstations 64bit - 32 GB - Intel(R) Xeon(R) W-10855M CPU @ 2.80GHz - NVIDIA Quadro RTX 3000

  3. #3
    Member
    Join Date
    May 2012
    Location
    Predappio
    Age
    51
    Posts
    34
    Rep Power
    15

    Awesome!

    Petr, I would have liked a joystick!

  4. #4
    Thanks Petr
    i have downloaded only the image of 74.7 MB resolution version
    there are images for the 82 MB resolution version
    and the highest resolution version (2.43 GB)
    amazing an image can be (2.43 GB) i'm hesitating to download it
    the images are here:
    https://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA23623
    the first one is the (2.43 GB) version so right click and save

  5. #5
    Super Moderator Petr Schreiber's Avatar
    Join Date
    Aug 2005
    Location
    Brno - Czech Republic
    Posts
    7,128
    Rep Power
    732
    Oscar - joystick is no longer in my posession but the analog stick on XBox basically behaves like one. TBDI works great with both Xbox One controller and any other DirectInput recognised devices.

    Primo correctly referred to the image - it is this one: https://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA23623

    Regarding tricks - some of them are already in TBGL, such as:
    - TBGL_SetTextureRepeatMode(<textureIndex>, %TBGL_CLAMP_TO_EDGE)

    ...some of them I am thinking how to introduce with current syntax - for example compressed textures.


    Petr
    Learn 3D graphics with ThinBASIC, learn TBGL!
    Windows 10 64bit - Intel Core i5-3350P @ 3.1GHz - 16 GB RAM - NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1050 Ti 4GB

Similar Threads

  1. NASA Software ... for free
    By ErosOlmi in forum Software discussion
    Replies: 0
    Last Post: 06-03-2017, 23:29
  2. Creative Photography :) NASA Studios
    By Charles Pegge in forum Shout Box Area
    Replies: 4
    Last Post: 12-03-2014, 22:05
  3. NASA: http://code.nasa.gov/
    By ErosOlmi in forum Development
    Replies: 0
    Last Post: 16-01-2012, 17:04
  4. Nasa Satellite 'To Hit Earth Within Hours'
    By Charles Pegge in forum Shout Box Area
    Replies: 1
    Last Post: 23-09-2011, 11:37
  5. GM and NASA: Robonaut 2
    By ErosOlmi in forum Technology
    Replies: 4
    Last Post: 21-02-2010, 10:34

Members who have read this thread: 2

Posting Permissions

  • You may not post new threads
  • You may not post replies
  • You may not post attachments
  • You may not edit your posts
  •