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Hyper-spacial ray-tracer

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  Hyper-spacial ray-tracer Rouslan Korneychuk <rouslank@msn.com> - 2013-10-02 17:05 -0400
    Re: Hyper-spacial ray-tracer Tony the Tiger <tony@tiger.invalid> - 2013-10-04 15:23 -0500
      Re: Hyper-spacial ray-tracer Rouslan Korneychuk <rouslank@msn.com> - 2013-10-04 20:17 -0400
        Re: Hyper-spacial ray-tracer Chris Angelico <rosuav@gmail.com> - 2013-10-05 11:41 +1000
          Re: Hyper-spacial ray-tracer Rouslan Korneychuk <rouslank@msn.com> - 2013-10-04 23:00 -0400
        Re: Hyper-spacial ray-tracer 88888 Dihedral <dihedral88888@gmail.com> - 2013-10-04 23:13 -0700
        [OT] Re: Hyper-spacial ray-tracer Peter Pearson <ppearson@nowhere.invalid> - 2013-10-05 15:26 +0000
          Re: [OT] Re: Hyper-spacial ray-tracer Rouslan Korneychuk <rouslank@msn.com> - 2013-10-05 14:14 -0400

#55380 — Hyper-spacial ray-tracer

I have been working on something I thought was interesting and I wanted 
to know what other people think. It's a ray-tracing library than can 
work with any number of spacial dimensions greater than two. It's a 
Python package that uses Pygame.

The project and a screenshot are at: https://github.com/Rouslan/NTracer

For those not familiar with the concept of hyper-space: a simple example 
of a three-dimensional object is a cube. A two-dimensional analogue is a 
square. With one dimension, it would be a line (and with zero 
dimensions, a point). Although our universe only has three spacial 
dimensions (ignore theoretical physics for a moment), there is actually 
no reason why it can't be any other number, and so you can go the other 
way. A four-dimensional analogue of a cube is a tesseract, and when 
generalized for any number of dimensions it's called a hypercube.

Of course, it's really hard to imagine anything with more than three 
dimensions, which is precisely why I wrote this library. The screenshot 
in the link shows a three-dimensional cross-section of a six-dimensional 
hypercube at a particular angle. So far, all the library can draw is a 
scene with one hypercube (although you can position the camera anywhere 
you want), but I'm planning to add support for complex scenes where you 
can put various kinds of shapes with arbitrary transformations and 
materials (color and opacity at least).

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#55493

On Wed, 02 Oct 2013 17:05:32 -0400, Rouslan Korneychuk wrote:

> game

Sorry, but that sounds awful. I hate games.


 /Grrr
-- 
          ___                  ___
 (\_--_/)  | _ ._    _|_|_  _   |o _  _ ._
 ( 9  9 )  |(_)| |\/  |_| |(/_  ||(_|(/_|
 stripes are forever - as overripe ferrets

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#56167

On 10/04/2013 04:23 PM, Tony the Tiger wrote:
> On Wed, 02 Oct 2013 17:05:32 -0400, Rouslan Korneychuk wrote:
>
>> game
>
> Sorry, but that sounds awful. I hate games.
>

This... isn't a game or even related to gaming. Is it because of the use 
of Pygame that you thought it was. I use Pygame because it's a wrapper 
for SDL, which gives you cross-platform graphics, input and even thread 
support, and because the additional drawing and font modules are useful 
for prototyping and implementing user-interfaces for navigating 
higher-dimensional space.

The point of this was to explore the concept of hyperspace, which is a 
mathematical curiosity and also has relevance in theoretical physics.

One idea I had for this was to simulate some sort of 3D scene involving 
physics (probably in another program, such as Blender), take the 
resulting coordinates of the geometry at every time interval and plot it 
as one 4D static scene. Every pair of connected vertexes would be 
extruded from one instant in time, to the next, so each object is a 
continuous 4D extrusion. When viewing with your local XYZ axes aligned 
with the global XYZ axes, you would see one instant of the scene as 
normal. Moving along the fourth axis, which I'll call T, will let you 
see the same, earlier or later in time, but if you rotate parallel to 
the T axis, you will effectively replace one of X, Y or Z with T. In 
essence you will turn the time axis into a spacial axis and the spacial 
axis into a time axis.

Looking at a scene with space and time lumped into one 4D space might 
help in trying to better understand time, why it's different, and its 
relationship with space.

I was also wondering about general relativity. I'm not going to go into 
too much detail, but basically: if an object with synchronized clocks on 
either end of it, passes by a static observer while traveling near the 
speed of light, to the outside observer, the object will appear shorter 
and the clocks will appear desynchronized, and from the object's 
perspective, it is the outside observer that becomes distorted this way. 
I was wondering if this seemingly strange effect is actually the natural 
consequence of a simple geometric transformation, such as rotation into 
the time axis.

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#56168

On Sat, Oct 5, 2013 at 10:17 AM, Rouslan Korneychuk <rouslank@msn.com> wrote:
> The point of this was to explore the concept of hyperspace, which is a
> mathematical curiosity and also has relevance in theoretical physics.

I don't have any actual use-case for what you've done, but it sure
sounds cool! Having worked with 3D ray-tracing (with POV-Ray), I'm
slightly in awe of the possibility of going to ten dimensions... yup,
cool!

ChrisA

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#56169

On 10/04/2013 09:41 PM, Chris Angelico wrote:
> On Sat, Oct 5, 2013 at 10:17 AM, Rouslan Korneychuk <rouslank@msn.com> wrote:
>> The point of this was to explore the concept of hyperspace, which is a
>> mathematical curiosity and also has relevance in theoretical physics.
>
> I don't have any actual use-case for what you've done, but it sure
> sounds cool! Having worked with 3D ray-tracing (with POV-Ray), I'm
> slightly in awe of the possibility of going to ten dimensions... yup,
> cool!
>

Thanks. For a while, I was worried nobody else thought it was interesting.

It's funny that you say that about ten dimensions, considering I was 
thinking I should add scroll bars to the example script so the controls 
don't get cut off when going to 100 dimensions.

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#56170

On Saturday, October 5, 2013 8:17:52 AM UTC+8, Rouslan Korneychuk wrote:
> On 10/04/2013 04:23 PM, Tony the Tiger wrote:
> 
> > On Wed, 02 Oct 2013 17:05:32 -0400, Rouslan Korneychuk wrote:
> 
> >
> 
> >> game
> 
> >
> 
> > Sorry, but that sounds awful. I hate games.
> 
> >
> 
> 
> 
> This... isn't a game or even related to gaming. Is it because of the use 
> 
> of Pygame that you thought it was. I use Pygame because it's a wrapper 
> 
> for SDL, which gives you cross-platform graphics, input and even thread 
> 
> support, and because the additional drawing and font modules are useful 
> 
> for prototyping and implementing user-interfaces for navigating 
> 
> higher-dimensional space.
> 
> 
> 
> The point of this was to explore the concept of hyperspace, which is a 
> 
> mathematical curiosity and also has relevance in theoretical physics.
> 
> 
> 
> One idea I had for this was to simulate some sort of 3D scene involving 
> 
> physics (probably in another program, such as Blender), take the 
> 
> resulting coordinates of the geometry at every time interval and plot it 
> 
> as one 4D static scene. Every pair of connected vertexes would be 
> 
> extruded from one instant in time, to the next, so each object is a 
> 
> continuous 4D extrusion. When viewing with your local XYZ axes aligned 
> 
> with the global XYZ axes, you would see one instant of the scene as 
> 
> normal. Moving along the fourth axis, which I'll call T, will let you 
> 
> see the same, earlier or later in time, but if you rotate parallel to 
> 
> the T axis, you will effectively replace one of X, Y or Z with T. In 
> 
> essence you will turn the time axis into a spacial axis and the spacial 
> 
> axis into a time axis.
> 
> 
> 
> Looking at a scene with space and time lumped into one 4D space might 
> 
> help in trying to better understand time, why it's different, and its 
> 
> relationship with space.
> 
> 
> 
> I was also wondering about general relativity. I'm not going to go into 
> 
> too much detail, but basically: if an object with synchronized clocks on 
> 
> either end of it, passes by a static observer while traveling near the 
> 
> speed of light, to the outside observer, the object will appear shorter 
> 
> and the clocks will appear desynchronized, and from the object's 
> 
> perspective, it is the outside observer that becomes distorted this way. 
> 
> I was wondering if this seemingly strange effect is actually the natural 
> 
> consequence of a simple geometric transformation, such as rotation into 
> 
> the time axis.

Use the synchronous digital logics 
with a globbal clock by iterators of 
various actions for this kind of
projects in Python.

Please check myHDL and Python.
auto-

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#56195 — [OT] Re: Hyper-spacial ray-tracer

On Fri, 04 Oct 2013 20:17:52 -0400, Rouslan Korneychuk <rouslank@msn.com> wrote:
[snip]
> I was also wondering about general relativity. I'm not going to go into 
> too much detail, but basically: if an object with synchronized clocks on 
> either end of it, passes by a static observer while traveling near the 
> speed of light, to the outside observer, the object will appear shorter 
[snip]

That's special relativity, not general relativity.  Python is
very sensitive to that distinction.

-- 
To email me, substitute nowhere->spamcop, invalid->net.

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#56212 — Re: [OT] Re: Hyper-spacial ray-tracer

On 10/05/2013 11:26 AM, Peter Pearson wrote:
> On Fri, 04 Oct 2013 20:17:52 -0400, Rouslan Korneychuk <rouslank@msn.com> wrote:
> [snip]
>> I was also wondering about general relativity. I'm not going to go into
>> too much detail, but basically: if an object with synchronized clocks on
>> either end of it, passes by a static observer while traveling near the
>> speed of light, to the outside observer, the object will appear shorter
> [snip]
>
> That's special relativity, not general relativity.  Python is
> very sensitive to that distinction.
>

whoops

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