Iteration 7 - 2.24.2003
Plan

This Iteration developed the home animation. It shows the origin of the gaussian power curve that SETI@home software looks for. POV-Ray was chosen as the visualization tool because the animation does not depend on user input.

Design

The representational format used in the last POV-Ray product (strategy) reappears here. Cones represent telescope view. The blue dot represents a signal source. The intensity recorded by the telescope at any given time is shown by the brightness of the dot.

Coding

home.pov is the POV-Ray source for this product. In order to streamline the animation process, an auxiliary C++ program anim.cpp was used. It turns a single call to itself into multiple povray calls, each of which renders a single frame in the animation.

Click here to see the animation