Spherical stipple field

[Hai-Etlik]

This is a 100,000 point hierarchical Poisson Disc distribution on a sphere (Poisson cap distribution?) as an ESRI shapefile for use in GIS software.

To get a less dense field, take the first n points (as ordered by the fid attribute) and they will still be evenly distributed.

world-stipple.png

Mollweide projection to show that the points have a constant density.

[Larb]

It's err nice, but I don't understand much of that.

So I was thinking do we need a separate sub forum for GIS stuff, with some kind of sticky post or posts that introduce it to the layman, and have links and stuff?

I have seen quite a few people on the cartographers guild that know this field, but I suspect to many it is very alien. It is to me for example. I sort of feel if you all pooled your knowledge and explained the basics on a sub forum it might help.

Sorry to hijack your post in this way! I just want as many people to be able to appreciate this kind of thing as possible.

[Hai-Etlik]

It's err nice, but I don't understand much of that.

Well in this case it's points that are evenly distributed on a sphere, but without a regular grid pattern. It's also set up so the points are placed in a specific order and if you place them in that order, you can stop at any point, and it will still be evenly distributed so you can get any density you want up to the maximum. It's the kind of thing that would be useful for placing population centres automatically but computationally intensive to generate from scratch. (This took over night to generate)

So I was thinking do we need a separate sub forum for GIS stuff, with some kind of sticky post or posts that introduce it to the layman, and have links and stuff?

I have seen quite a few people on the cartographers guild that know this field, but I suspect to many it is very alien. It is to me for example. I sort of feel if you all pooled your knowledge and explained the basics on a sub forum it might help.

Sorry to hijack your post in this way! I just want as many people to be able to appreciate this kind of thing as possible.

I have been meaning to finish off my tutorial thread on QuantumGIS, and maybe do one on some basic theory, and maybe try to write a conworld oriented desktop GIS (Provisionally named "Magrathea"), but I have a lot of things I'd like to get to, and limited free time.