Quick Start. Choose and render a scene (see #1a and #1b below). Then explore the scene by clicking "Start Y" (see #6 below) or "Start X" (see #7 below).
1a and 1b. Choose and Render a New Scene. First click the drop down list (#1a) to select a Galaxies3D datafile. Then press the "Render" button (#2) to display or "render" the scene.
Notes on Rendering:
- Most of the Galaxies3D datafiles include no more than a hundred or so objects to "render", and the rendering or painting will take a few seconds. A few datafiles however include several thousand objects ("Galaxies Within 75 Mly", and "Galaxies Within 57 Mly" for example) and these large datafiles can take a couple minutes to render. Clicking the "Render" will appear to do nothing, and it will take a couple minutes for the new scene to appear.
- The program is primarily intended for datafiles containing a few hundred or fewer objects, but currently allows datafiles containing up to 5,800 objects.
2. Manual Zoom. Dragging the track bar marker right and left zooms the rendered scene in and out.
3. Animated Zoom. Click on "+" to start / stop an animated zoom in. Click on "-" to start / stop an animated zoom out.
4. Manual Raise/Lower the grid. Dragging the track bar marker right and left lowers and raises the rendered scene.
5. Animated Raising / Lowering of the grid. Click on "+" to start / stop an animated raising of the rendered scene. Click on "-" to start / stop an animated lowering of rendered scene.
6. Animated "Y" Rotation. Clicking "Start Y" starts / pauses an animation in which the grid and the objects anchored to it rotate around the vertical or "Y" axis. Click "End Y" to end the animation and return to the initial view before the start of the Y animation.
7. Animated "X" Rotation. Clicking "Start X" starts / pauses an animation in which the grid and the objects anchored to it "rock" between a partially edge-on view to an overhead view (that is, the grid and the objects anchored to it rotate back and forth about the horizontal or "X" axis). Click "End X" to end the animation and return to the initial view before the start of the X animation.<
Notes on Animations:
- X and Y animations cannot run simultaneously. X Animation buttons are disabled while a Y Animation is running, and visa versa.
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- Imagine as you look at the computer screen in front of you an XY plane parallel to and just behind your computer screen, the X-axis going from left to right, the Y-axis going from bottom to top. A Y-animation is a rotation of the scene around the XY plane's Y-axis. An X-animation is a rotation of a scene around the XY plane's X axis. You can also imagine a Z-axis going in and out of the screen, along the direction of your line of sight. There is no "Z-animation", but you can manually rotate the scene around the Z-axis if desired (see immediately below).
8. Manual Rotations. You can manually change the perspective and view angles of a scene by dragging the markers along the "Rotate about X trackbar", the "Rotate about Y trackbar, or the "Rotate about Z trackbar", manually rotating the scene along the X, Y, and Z axes. Note however that after manually changing a scene:
- the Y and X animations (see #6 and #7 above) will likely no longer work as expected.
- If a new dataset is loaded, its initial position will also be altered by the manual changes and label positions may be skewed
Close and restart the programs if these are problems.
9. Animation Speed. The speed of the "X" and "Y" animations, the "zoom in/out" animation (see #2 above), and the "raise/lower grid" animation (see #4 above) can be slowed. Default speed is "1". Click on "0.4", "0.2", "0.1", ".05", ".02" or ".01" to slow the speed by factors of "0.4", "0.2", "0.1", ".05", ".02" or ".01".
10. ON-OFF Increase-Decrease Buttons:
- Labels ON-OFF Increase-Decrease. Clicking these buttons will toggle labels on-off, and increase ("+" button), or decrease ("-" button) label size.
- Lines ON-OFF Increase-Decrease. Clicking these buttons will toggle lines (the lines anchoring each sphere to the base grid) on-off, and increase ("+" button), or decrease ("-" button) line size.
- Sphere Increase-Decrease. Clicking these buttons will increase ("+" button), or decrease ("-" button) the sphere size.
- Legend ON-OFF. Clicking this button will toggle the Legend on-off (in this example scene, it would toggle the heading "Nearby Superclusters ..." and the color-coded list of superclusters on-off).
- 2nd Grid ON-OFF. Clicking this button will toggle on-off a "second" grid representing the actual position of the equatorial, or galactic, or supergalactic plane, (depending on the coordinate system of the scene.)
- Bitmap ON-OFF. Clicking this button will toggle on-off any bitmap painted on the base grid on-off.
11. About button. Toggles a form with program name and the link to the website.
