Random thoughts on the Gaia Sky scripting system
Gaia Sky has a quite powerful Python scripting system which has gotten a revamp lately. The system exposes an API which can be used from Python scripts to interact with an instance of Gaia Sky running in the same machine (so far). But to understand where we are, we need to know where do we come from.
Gaia Sky gets keyframe-based camera paths
During the last months I have been working on a QOL improvement for Gaia Sky video production. Currently, Gaia Sky offers a couple of ways to persist and reproduce camera behaviours: scripting and camera paths. Scripting offers a high level API which allows for the interaction and manipulation of the internal state. Conceptually, a running script is no different from a regular user. A script runs in its own thread and, like a user, interacts with Gaia Sky’s core through the event manager, a message-passing entity which encapsulates the core functionality.
In light of the new GitHub acquisition by Microsoft
I’ll shortly be moving the Gaia Sky repository from GitHub to GitLab (link here) due to the former being acquired by Microsoft. If you have cloned the repository and wonder how to update your remote reference, here’s what to do: $ cd path/to/gaiasky $ git remote set-url origin https://gitlab.com/langurmonkey/gaiasky That’s all it takes. All pulls from now on should be directed to the gitlab repo.
Jumbo release 1.5.0 brings lots of new features and improvements
This time around we’ve had a slightly longer development cycle so Gaia Sky 1.5.0 ‘Jumbo Summer Release’ is here with a ton of new features, enhancements and bug fixes. Most importantly, we have essentially refactored the way star catalogs are handled, so that we can now stream data from disk when it is needed. Also, we’ve been working hard to make better use of the GPU and we are proud to announce that we’ve increased the performance fourfold while being able to display many more objects on screen at once.
Version 1.0.2 brings spacecraft mode, lens glow, 360° and lots of bugfixes
Gaia Sky is here again with a brand new release packed with new features and bug fixes. Here are the most important:
Personal website and portfolio
I am a Software Engineer interested in astrophysics and scientific visualisation. I live in Heidelberg (Germany) and struggle to learn the language and comprehend German culture. I'm currently working on CU3/CU9/Gaia at ARI/ZAH@Uni-Heidelberg and I'm also a Ph.D. candidate at the viscomp group, IWR@Uni-Heidelberg.