MilkyWay@home Visualization/Screensaver Work

[Free-DC]

Hey everyone, I've joined the MilkyWay@Home project for the semester and have heard some rumblings of people wanting some sort of visualization, or screen saver, dare I say :-). We've come up with a few ideas and would like input on which sounds the most appealing to you. The ideas are ordered from showing the most scientific data to the least. In other words, Idea 1 will give a very clear visualization of what the work units are doing, whereas Idea 3 is more eye candy with fewer details on the science. I want to know which end of the nitty-gritty/eye candy spectrum you prefer. Idea 1: A zoomed in view of a wedge, displaying the streams being computed for the wedge with indications of progress so far, color-coding to indicate what stars are in what stream, etc. A very good view of what really is being computed, but not much of an overall picture. Idea 2: An alternating view of the galaxy that starts zoomed out (showing the current best model of the galaxy), followed by a zoom or similar transfer to showing the currently computing wedge. These views would alternate at some specified time interval. Idea 3: A constant zoomed out view of the galaxy with maybe some small pictures on the sides showing a currently computing wedge and some sort of progress indicator for current work units. Obviously it would be ideal to incorporate aspects of all different views, but given time constraints, I'd like to focus my efforts on the most popular idea. I encourage you to throw out your own modifications on the ideas and we'll hash through this. Let 'em rip -Eric

More... (http://milkyway.cs.rpi.edu/milkyway/forum_thread.php?id=1554)