Release notes for version 1.0

June 15, 2000

The features included in Version 1.0 are described extensively in the User Guide.

In comparison to the the release alpha (April 12, 2000) we have made following improvements:

Coordinate system: GEI coordinates added to the list of world coordinates. We considered also implementation of corrected magnetic coordinates for the footprints, but found this incompatible with the OVT-2 philosophy of instantaneous adjustment of all objects (actors) on the graphical scene to the chosen coordinate system. Namely, corrected magnetic coordinates do not represent an orthogonal transformation matrix and therefore cannot be included in automatic world transformations.

Magnetopause clipping: An option is introduced to the magnetopause model which controls clipping of the magnetic field lines during tracing. When clipping is on, the terrestrial magnetic field lines that go outside the model magnetopause (more than 0.5 Re) are dropped. A spline smoothing of the magnetic field lines is introduced.

Satellite attitude: The orientation of satellite spin axis is included to the display parameters. It requires presence of a .spin file which contains information on the orientation of the spin axis in GEI coordinates. The attitude data is used to show the actual orientation of the satellite in the selected word coordinates. The satellite is represented then as an arrowhead instead of a sphere.

Orbit monitor: Angles of the spin axis with respect to the model magnetic field, satellite velocity, and the sun direction are shown in the orbit monitor.

Dumping of orbit data is now possible to a specified file.

Cluster configuration: we compute and display a number of parameters that determine completely the tetrahedron configuration. These are (1) three axes of the ellipsoid that confines the four spacecraft, (2) a rectangular box in the current world coordinates that confines all spacecraft, and (3) a rectangular box in the local field-aligned coordinates that contains four spacecraft.

Graphic window resize: we included a possibility to change the size of the graphics window under Win98 (in all other systems the windows are fully resizable).

 

 OVT2 was tested on FreeBSD, Linux, Solaris x86 and Sparc, and Windows 98, 2000, NT.

Submission of bugs and possible improvements is welcome. Please send e-mail to ovt-team@nest.irfu.se