Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Show HN: I was curious about spherical helix, ended up making this visualization

visualrambling.space

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

121–130 of 140 posts

Re: Show HN: I was curious about spherical helix, ended up making this visualization

#121

Post by damarberlari »

sfink wrote: post #24

Awesome visualizations. The part that I was expecting to see but didn't: how can you move at a constant speed? For the original purpose of positioning objects along a path, it doesn't matter. But when moving, you can see it's moving much more slowly at the beginning and end (mostly determined by the radius). What if I want it to travel at a constant rate? Or even apply an easing function to the speed? I'm sure there'…

thanks!

currently the path is expressed as function of (t), and it's the t that progressed at the constant speed.

so the cube will finished one loop at the same duration, and thats why it moves much slowly at the beginning and end, where distance of one loop is smaller.

I have to admit I made it that way because it's simpler to implement:D. Making it move at constant speed require some more works, but others have provided some solutions here so I think I'll try

Re: Show HN: I was curious about spherical helix, ended up making this visualization

#122

Post by damarberlari »

Keyframe wrote: post #120

Neat! I was curious as well after reading it and here's a quick parametric visualizer to play with what was described in the text (thanks, Claude!): https://codepen.io/CaptainKeyframe/pen/zxvWVNo

wow, that's nice. Thanks!

Re: Show HN: I was curious about spherical helix, ended up making this visualization

#123

Post by damarberlari »

erikerikson wrote: post #44
ghostly_s wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are instructions on the first slide. I think adding a secondary swipe mechanic would be nice tho (although I prefer the tap), as that's how these "card stack" interfaces are usually navigated in social media apps.

Oh, you're right. Small and at the bottom. I guess I tried to scroll before my eyes got there. Thanks for pointing out my error.

ah, yes there is an instruction at the bottom, but probably its too small.

thanks for the feedback!

Re: Show HN: I was curious about spherical helix, ended up making this visualization

#124

Post by jacobolus »

egwor wrote: post #103
jacobolus wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You inspired me to submit one of my 2022 projects https://observablehq.com/@jrus/spheredisksample https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44963521 to fit the trend of the day. People may also enjoy https://observablehq.com/@jrus/sphere-resample

In my early teens I used to try to create something like a equirectangular projection because when drawing it, it looked cool. Obviously I had no idea that it was called this. I was trying to draw reflections of a square window onto a sphere, and then I moved on to trying to cover the sphere in a checkered pattern. This is awesome to see, thank you!

An equirectangular projection just means plotting latitude and longitude in a rectangle.

Do you mean my diagonal grid that I projected back onto the sphere? I'm not sure that has a name.

Re: Show HN: I was curious about spherical helix, ended up making this visualization

#125

Post by damarberlari »

pimlottc wrote: post #12

I was wondering about the “correctness” of the z-axis movement for the spherical helix. You could pick lots of different functions, including simple linear motion (z = c * t). This would obviously affect the thickness and consistency of the “peels”. The equation used creates a visually appealing result but I’m wondering what a good goal would be in terms of consistency in the distance between the spirals, or evenness…

> You could pick lots of different functions, including simple linear motion (z = c * t)

that was also my first intuition when making this, but turned out making the z function linear won't make it a sphere.

to make a sphere, you have to configure it in a way so that it forms a circle with the other axes. In this vis, its the sin(0.02 * πt) and cos(0.02 * πt) part that do this.

someone makes an interactive version here: https://www.desmos.com/3d/t66etxi1y8 (thanks!) so you can try changing the z function for yourself.

Re: Show HN: I was curious about spherical helix, ended up making this visualization

#126

Post by damarberlari »

hailpixel wrote: post #18

I LOVE when people geek out about the most simple mathematical things*, especially discovering the animation power of the trigonometric functions... or any of mathematics underlying modern interactive stuff. It's one thing to know what they do, it's another to understand the power of that tool. * I wrote a similar article around making "blobs" a while back: https://www.hailpixel.com/articles/generative-art-simple-mat…

hi, whoa that's a nice article! simple and easy to follow.

thanks for sharing! definitely an inspiration, I might use it for next project :D

Re: Show HN: I was curious about spherical helix, ended up making this visualization

#127

Post by damarberlari »

mayoff wrote: post #86

You can play with the equations on 3D Desmos here: https://www.desmos.com/3d/t66etxi1y8 Interesting to note that the parametric equations of the spiral are linear in spherical coordinates. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_common_coordinate_tran...

this is nice, thanks!

Re: Show HN: I was curious about spherical helix, ended up making this visualization

#128

Post by damarberlari »

Duanemclemore wrote: post #4

This is excellent. I'm always looking for good things to show my students on coordinate systems and geometry, and this joins the list. Thank you for diving down the rabbit hole and bringing this back for everyone. If you want really great further consideration of creating geometric figures with parametric equations, Joseph Choma's book "Morphing" is an all-timer. https://www.quercusbooks.co.uk/titles/joseph-choma/mor…

oh wow, the book looks nice. thanks for the recommendation!

Re: Show HN: I was curious about spherical helix, ended up making this visualization

#129

Post by sli »

rocmcd wrote: post #27
mystraline wrote: post #25

When I first opened it, its basically a bunch of static pages that made absolutely no sense. My first question was 'why is this garbage being #1 on HN?' Then I realized that, unlike the early web with banners of "best viewed in Netscape navigator", this was an unstated "best viewed in google chrome". Alas. At least please check and validate if the site works in Firefox, or notify appropriately. Because this demonstra…

I use Firefox (dev edition, v142.0b9) and it works great.

I'm using dev edition v143.0b2 and I'm apparently not seeing what everyone else is seeing, because I'm just seeing the axis tags moving around using some pretty simple math. Clearly something isn't working and I'm missing something, based on the comments here. Regression in Firefox?

Re: Show HN: I was curious about spherical helix, ended up making this visualization

#130

Post by patcon »

srean wrote: post #3

These used to be super important in early oceanic navigation. It is easier to maintain a constant bearing throughout the voyage. So that's the plan sailors would try to stick close to. These led to let loxodromic curves or rhumb lines. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhumb_line Mercator maps made it easier to compute what that bearing ought to be. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercator_projection This configuration…

Jeez Erdos. This man was so prolific he was still publishing 4 years after he died :o
Post reply on HN