Off-forum comments about Stella4D

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robertw
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Off-forum comments about Stella4D

Post by robertw » Fri Feb 08, 2008 5:20 am

I already have a quotes page, containing comments I've received which I have reproduced there with permission.

To get the ball rolling on this forum, I'll quote from the quotes page :wink:

Here are some of George Olshevsky's comments about Stella4D:
  • "Let me tell you, it's a blast. Nobody who's interested in four-dimensional figures should be without this software! If you really want to get a feel for what symmetric polychora - particularly the uniform polychora - look like and how to work with them, this system is the state of the art. Stella4D is - to employ a much overused but nevertheless appropriate cliche - a programming tour de force...

    Sectioning - Here is where Stella4D really shines. Back in the 1960s I could only dream about having an interactive system for viewing polychora sections in real time, in full color, with hidden faces removed. And here it finally is...

    There is no sequence of still pictures that can convey the aesthetic experience of watching the changing sections of a polychoron of interest as it "passes through" our three-space, an experience that only modern computers can provide. I find it amazing that my computer is fast enough to perform the calculations to make a movie out of the sections of an intricate polychoron. When I made movies of the six convex regular polychora back in 1972, the 120-cell and 600-cell movies took nearly an hour of IBM 7094 computer time each.

    Sections in Stella4D are calculated in real time, and you can set them running perpetually using mouse inertia, bouncing from one extreme to the other. You can change the sectioning direction in midstream, and the "movie" just keeps running. You can also set the section tumbling as it's passing through, and/or view it in stereo. This is real luxury compared with what was available when I wrote my MSc thesis on computer polychora sectioning.

    ...I haven't had so much fun with a software package in years."
Note: Any comments about Great Stella (such as in this thread) also apply equally well to the newer Stella4D product.

And now it's over to you to write your own reviews! :)
(Please start a new thread)

Rob.

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