Dyson rings

Hello all!

I'm new to ProFantasy, and I have about a million small queries about Fractal Terrains, but until I've conquered more of the basics myself I'm just going to ask the most (literally) pivotal question.

Is it possible to make Dyson Ring worlds using Fractal Terrains?
I've had a look through all the documentation, these forums, the program's projection mappings and so on, and I can't find anything at all.

So I'm guessing there's no direct way to support mapping them.
But is there maybe an 'optimal' way to pull it off? A best-case projection method and world settings that I could use to better emulate a dyson ring?
The main issue I suppose is the distortion of north and south poles, since Dyson ring doesn't technically have them, it's all just "flat"

As a side note, if a plugin to add dyson ring mapping was available in the store I would gladly purchase it!

Many thanks,
Sphelx.

Comments

  • I don't know of any. I did think of making a ring world... one rectangle after another. To make up enough for a ring of squares to go around an entire orbit to make a continuos piece of land and water, would require several thousand of these squares.

    I don't know of a home computer that could draw that in one go.

    So, several thousand exports and number them. Put them up on a web site, you have a Dyson ring or Ring World.

    I have a Traveller site with 501 planet maps, so a ring world is another major undertaking.
  • I might recommend a Dyson Cloud & just mapping significant structures.
    Sköl,
    Sven
  • jslaytonjslayton Moderator, ProFantasy Mapmaker
    FT offers a planar mode that treats the equirectangular projection display as a 2:1 width:height area that has no notion of "projection". It's not a true ring because the program doesn't offer wrap left and right in this mode.

    However (there's always a however), FT is rather limited in its editing resolution. For a typical earth-orbit radius ringworld, the circumference is roughly 584 million miles. For a resolution of one mile per pixel, that's a map that's about 584 million pixels wide by however tall you'd like it to be. FT has a maximum editing width of about 8190 samples, which works out to about 71 thousand miles per sample (roughly three earth circumferences). As JimP suggests, using a program like FT to generate such an enormous world would require placing thousands of maps side by side to get a usable resolution.
  • JimPJimP 🖼️ 280 images Cartographer
    edited January 2014
    584 million miles divided by 25000 miles per section is 23360 parts. Wowsers. But that huge number of 'worlds' added into a long strip is the reason I decided not to do it. Yes, I did think of making a Ring World about year ago. But I got better and decided I didn't have the time tto spare.

    A Dyson Sphere would be an even bigger, no pun intended, challenge.
  • 6 days later
  • Thank you all for the suggestions!
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