SoCiS/2016/Ideas - KDE Community Wiki

Marble Virtual Globe

Marble is a Virtual Globe based on Qt technology and is a part of the KDE Edu Suite (http://edu.kde.org). The Marble webpage is at http://edu.kde.org/marble and the developers' mailing list is at https://mail.kde.org/mailman/listinfo/marble-devel. If you want to apply for one of these projects please check out the student application form on the ESA Summer of Code in Space 2016 (ESA SoCiS) website! Deadline for the application is April 30th, 2015!

Project: A new hires satellite layer for Marble based on the ESA Sentinel missions

Brief explanation: This project would build on top of last year's ESA SoCiS Marble project: ESA Sentinel is a series of next-generation Earth observation missions on behalf of a joint ESA/European Commission initiative. Each mission will focus on a different aspect of Earth observation; Atmospheric, Oceanic, and Land monitoring. Sentinel-1 performs Radar imaging. Sentinel-2 has started to provide high-resolution optical imagery. Later missions will focus on marine and atmospheric observations. Marble provides extensive support for visualizing spacial data. And the Sentinel missions will provide a range of data that would improve Marble user experience a lot if it was integrated with Marble. This project will be about exploring and implementing different ways to integrate Sentinel-1 data into Marble. The resulting integration of the data should allow regular Marble users to view the Sentinel data during regular use. Possible tasks might cover: - Research regarding the possible set up of a server for providing satellite imagery in Marble - Creation of a new satellite Map theme - Integration of Sentinel 2 Data. - Deployment on a KDE server. - Improving the KML file format support to allow for viewing the KML files provided via the Sentinel website

Ressources: https://sentinel.esa.int/web/sentinel/home

Project: Marble: Bringing Marble into the Planetarium

Brief explanation: Marble is a great educational tool for desktops and mobile devices. It has extensive support for projections. As such it could be easily used to provide the view in a format that can be used for single projector digital planetariums. This could be developed further into a solution that can be used with multiple projectors and multiple servers. The initial challenge would be to provide Marble's view in a projection that can be used by a single projector. This approach should be fully implemented during the project's timeline. Possibly Marble's OpenGL mode could be extended to provide a richer feature set. Later on the challenge would be to distribute Marble's view across multiple projectors and ensure proper synchronization. This step is certainly a lot harder to accomplish but it would be nice already if the result of this project would provide a simple prototype.

Ressources: Stellarium already does provide a similar feature. However Stellarium only features a minor subset of the capabilities Marble provides. See

http://paulbourke.net/dome/stellarium/

http://www.stellarium.org/wiki/index.php/Fisheye_Projection_System

We are also in touch with some planetarium people who would be able to provide some input (and maybe ressources).

Expected results: Marble is used to display the starry sky, earth and planets inside a digital planetarium dome.

Knowledge Prerequisite: A good grasp over C++ and object-oriented programming, and Qt; writing test cases with Qt; should quickly learn how to write libraries; have a lot of patience; ability to solve software design problems.

Math skills are needed, familiarity with celestial mechanics is a plus!

Mentor: Torsten Rahn <rahn AT kde DOT org>, Rene Kuettner <rene AT bitkanal DOT net>

Contact

IRC channel: #marble on Freenode
Mailinglist: [email protected] See http://kde.org/mailinglists/ for details
Website: http://edu.kde.org/marble

KStars

KStars is a very powerful tool for anyone interested in astronomy. It is part of the KDE Edu suite.

Project: Improve generation of printed finder charts and logging forms

Brief explanation: The aim of this project is to extend functionality of printing tools in KStars and improve quality of printed finder charts (make them vector) and observation logging forms. The exact scope of the project is to be discussed with interested students.

Knowledge Prerequisite: C++, Qt, good UI design skills

Mentor: Rafal Kulaga (rl.kulaga - at - gmail.com, IRC: rkulaga)

Project: Sky guides feature in KStars

Brief explanation: This feature is targeted particularly at beginners in the field of amateur astronomy. The idea is to create XML file format that will enable anybody to create guides which can be then published in the same way as custom star catalogs are. In the longer perspective, a feature that will enable creation and editing of such guides directly from KStars (without the need to manually edit XML files) should be implemented.

On the technical side, sky guides could be implemented as a neat QML-based side panel of the KStars' main window. Mockups are welcome in project applications.

This feature has been partly developed as a part of SOCIS 2011 project and then continued in SOCIS 2015.

Knowledge Prerequisite:

Good knowledge of C++, Qt and KDE libs.
Basic knowledge in astronomy would be a plus.

Mentor: Rafal Kulaga (rl.kulaga - at - gmail.com, IRC: rkulaga)

Project: Propose your own project

Brief explanation: If you have some interesting ideas about KStars that can be implemented within the GSoC timeframe, you are very welcome to propose them, because we seem to have run out of ideas.

You can also take a look at our GSoC 2016 ideas [1].