Is Jump Space flat?

[Wizard]

One thing that has always bugged me is that real space is 3D, but in Traveller the star maps are 2D. After much pondering a thought popped in "What if Jump Space is flat?". Basically when entering Jump Space the actual distances between stars is not as it would be in normal space, they are related, but morphed by a Jump Space phenomenon into a flat 2D model where distances between stars are more of a threshold kind of thing rather than real distance. This sort of gels well with me with the concept that time in Jump Space is independent of distance travelled.

Shortly after coming up with this thought, I searched the internet and found the following article: http://www.freelancetraveller.com/features/culture/reference/jump.html

The article also explains why distance on a Jump Space map is referred to as parsecs, excerpt follows:
The fact that a "jump distance" is generally called a "parsec" is a matter of history: Two jump distances equal about 2 parsecs (6.6 LY) between Sol and Barnard's Star if you make one jump-2 (or two jumps-1 etc.) there (and only there). When the Solomani encountered and later conquered the Vilani empire, they substituted the old Vilani expression for "one jump distance" with an expression they were familiar with: Parsec.

So thank you Ingo , you have helped me accept that Jump Space is flat.

 

[mancerbear]

That article gives a great reasoning for by Traveller star charts are flat, as good as any other I have read.

 

[phavoc]

Or the maps represent 2d because printing 3D ones would be a pain in the ass!

Some games have come out with z coordinates to indicate location above or below the galaxy elliptic, but jump folds space between stars to just time, and the game simplifies so much about astrogation already that adding in the z coordinate doesn't do much.

It worked for kirk because it was a movie, but if khan was thinking only in 2 dimensions, why would he have adjusted his altitude by 10,000 killicams, er, meters?

Sometimes the simplest explanation is the way to go, unless you wanted to introduce more complexity into jump travel. Then it would be ok.

 

[Tenacious-Techhunter]

There are some great examples of practical 3d maps implemented in 2d over at Atomic Rockets.

Suggestions for doing proper 3d maps in 2d in short:
Gridless; it’s just noise in 3d
Colorize paths between destinations according to length/travel time, with longer distances fading into the background, and post the length/time numbers; that way, people can lean toward one end of the color spectrum for short trips, and have an intuitive understanding of how much longer one path is than the other without having to find the number
Additionally, the closest “n” planets should have an additional path color (with “n” being around 2-4, to reduce map noise), to highlight local route relevance
Finally, any groups whose “closest ‘n’ planets” paths leave it completely closed off should have an additional path color with the “m” shortest paths to the nearest group.

 

[ShawnDriscoll]

http://shawndriscollrpg.blogspot.com/2016/02/3d-traveller-subsector-maps.html

 

[Tenacious-Techhunter]

Truncated Octahedrons are a fine tesselation of space, and may indeed be the voxel of the future for the Minecraft set and other voxel based computer games, but as something printable, it's garbage. If I had thought for a moment it would make good 2D maps, I would have said so myself. And they are by no means "hexes" of any sort.

 

[Wizard]

I was contemplating of going 3D, but with all the Traveller books and resources out there (http://travellermap.com/) using 2D maps I want to use them ‘as is’.

So by saying that "the galaxy is flat in Jump Space" it gives me the story element I need to keep using all those wonderful 2D resources. And saves me a lot of time .

 

[Tenacious-Techhunter]

The correct word to describe the elements of a honeycomb that tessellates space is "cell".

There is much to recommend the truncated octahedron for tessellating space. It is easily represented in computer memory as two overlapping fields of standard cubic voxels, with the centers of one field's cubes centered on the corners of the other field's cubes, and vice-versa. It has the most cleavage planes (among the tessellations of space I'm aware of), which would make it great for Minecraft-like applications, where you care more about how curvature is aliased.

But, the distances between cells adjacent through the hexes are not the same as the distances between cells adjacent through the squares; the difference is exactly equivalent to the difference between the height of a cube, and the distance from one corner of that cube through the center to the opposite corner. So it's only "the same" if you're from the D&D4E set.

A more appropriate tessellation of space for starmaps is the Rhombic Dodecahedral Honeycomb; All the adjacent cells are the same distance away, and is thus much more hex-like. What you give up is that, if your Rhombic Dodecahedrons are arranged to allow travel directly along the perpendicular axes of the XY plane, you can't travel directly along the Z axis... Sort of like if your hexes are arranged for direct movement along the X axis, you can't move directly along the Y axis. In my opinion, this is not much to give up for all cells being the exact same distance away. Computationally, this can be represented with two overlapping cube voxel fields as well, but in this case, the Z axes of both fields have to be stretched to account for the vertical distance through the Rhombic Dodecahedron's vertices, which is a small loss, all things considered.

 

[Askold]

Adding a third dimension to the map makes things a lot more complex without really giving much extra value.

Honestly, you can make it work on computer but printing the maps would become difficult so in my opinion a flat map is "close enough" and you can assume that the "real" maps they use are floaty holograms.

 

[ShawnDriscoll]

Adding a third dimension to the map makes things a lot more complex without really giving much extra value.

Honestly, you can make it work on computer but printing the maps would become difficult so in my opinion a flat map is "close enough" and you can assume that the "real" maps they use are floaty holograms.

True. One would not print them. One would display them.

 

[Askold]

Adding a third dimension to the map makes things a lot more complex without really giving much extra value.

Honestly, you can make it work on computer but printing the maps would become difficult so in my opinion a flat map is "close enough" and you can assume that the "real" maps they use are floaty holograms.

True. One would not print them. One would display them.

An actual jump map would contain so much information that it has to be in a digital form. And when it's on a computer you can display it in any form you wish.

If for some reason you wish to print a map on paper it would be some extremely simplified visual guide rather than a map you can actually use for piloting a ship.

 

[Rikki Tikki Traveller]

A Subway map connecting the systems with a representation of the Jump Number between them would also work. I am pretty sure there are computer programs that can convert a 3D map (such as 2300AD) into a subway map without much work. Astrosynthesis does it I believe,

 

[Tenacious-Techhunter]

I’m pretty sure the discussion here is about maps viable for use in campaigns, not how to make neat computerized visual baubles. While admittedly more players are using their computer at the tabletop these days, that doesn’t mean they have a useful way of presenting that information to other players. Such a map containing useful 3D information is not implausible, as the Atomic Rockets maps clearly show.

 

[Condottiere]

When tablets are integrated into the gameplay.

Actual three dimensional mapping will allow greater use of interior communication lines, and probably an additional eight parsecs above and below that you can travel to.

 

[Tenacious-Techhunter]

Yeah, tablets are a thing, aren't they? I'd rather buy a new desktop and a cheap netbook than ever buy a tablet, but that's just me, I guess.

Regardless, practical 2D maps of 3D space are doable, and shouldn't be discounted so readily.


But honestly, if you're really going to go with 3D cell maps, you might as well ditch the Third Imperium and start with the Habcat data, building a new universe around that.

 

[AndrewW]

Yeah, tablets are a thing, aren't they? I'd rather buy a new desktop and a cheap netbook than ever buy a tablet, but that's just me, I guess.

Not really, no tablet, smartphone or netbook here and no interest in getting any of those.

 

[Condottiere]

I'm using tablet as a convenient reference.

I rather doubt that larger than six and a half inch smart phones will come into general usage, and most will likely be around five to five and a half, barring screens that fold and not just bend.

Perhaps a three dee projector would be a better facilitator for a revised star map, but until either product becomes viable, a handheld tablet would allow the player a better appreciation of the galactic lines of communication.

 

[ShawnDriscoll]

Adding a third dimension to the map makes things a lot more complex without really giving much extra value.

Honestly, you can make it work on computer but printing the maps would become difficult so in my opinion a flat map is "close enough" and you can assume that the "real" maps they use are floaty holograms.

True. One would not print them. One would display them.

An actual jump map would contain so much information that it has to be in a digital form. And when it's on a computer you can display it in any form you wish.

If for some reason you wish to print a map on paper it would be some extremely simplified visual guide rather than a map you can actually use for piloting a ship.

The best you can do with a hologram is take a snapshot of it. But no one would bother printing out one. Best to just copy the data and display it whenever/wherever.

 

[Tom Kalbfus]

Or the maps represent 2d because printing 3D ones would be a pain in the ass!

Some games have come out with z coordinates to indicate location above or below the galaxy elliptic, but jump folds space between stars to just time, and the game simplifies so much about astrogation already that adding in the z coordinate doesn't do much.

It worked for kirk because it was a movie, but if khan was thinking only in 2 dimensions, why would he have adjusted his altitude by 10,000 killicams, er, meters?

Sometimes the simplest explanation is the way to go, unless you wanted to introduce more complexity into jump travel. Then it would be ok.

There are 3d printers, I just don't know how you could get one to print a 3d star map.

 

[Tenacious-Techhunter]

Laser-cut acrylic on standoffs between layers would be cheap, shippable, and easy to assemble; but how the honeycomb would shape up would be lost, making counting out-of-plane distances a bit awkward. For the most part, it’s easier to mount marble-like planets on posts.

Translucent and nearly transparent filaments are available; you would have to print system tags in a solid color, print the honeycomb one honeycomb layer at a time, and stick the tags in the honeycomb. Also, it may not be unreasonable to print the edges of the honeycomb, and not the faces, with some mount for system tags, and just use a lot of low-density support material.