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Wikipedia:Featured picture candidates/Conway colour coded racetrack

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Conway colour coded racetrack

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Original - A racetrack in which a glider moves around, bouncing off reflectors and spaceships and triggering guns. In the image guns are green, gliders are yellow, spaceships are red, reflectors are violet, gobblers and other live cells are blue.
Reason
Maybe I'm being a bit greedy here as the Conway's Game of Life article already has two featured images (a simple monochrome glider gun and a breeder). This is a racetrack; a macroscopic oscillating pattern in which a glider “races” around the circuit transforming into a LWSS, bouncing off reflectors, cancelling other gliders and LWSSs, triggering a gun and finally returning to its starting position.
I think this should be featured because, more than the others, it allows the behaviour of individual patterns be seen clearly by colour coding them. I chose the colours carefully. Now the movement of LWSSs and gliders stand out and the guns are easy to pick out due to their bright green colouring. I also think it a nice illustration for the paragraph beginning “It is possible for gliders to interact with other objects in interesting ways”.
Articles this image appears in
Conway's Game of Life
Creator
--Simpsons contributor (talk) 18:32, 17 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]
--- edit 2 now. --Simpsons contributor (talk) 12:53, 28 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment It looks fantastic, but I don't suppose you could make a second version at a somewhat larger size: GIF scales reasonably well, but it'd be much clearer on the file information page at, say, three times the horizontal and vertical size. Shoemaker's Holiday (talk) 22:00, 17 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]
If you click on the image you see it's slighlty larger. In this version 1 cell = 1 pixel, I think that gives the best output (like the featured breeder image). --Simpsons contributor (talk) 22:28, 17 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]
It would be nice to have the option of 1 cell = 3x3 pixels, though: With monitors continually increasing in resolution, pixels are getting pretty tiny. Shoemaker's Holiday (talk) 22:32, 17 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

The problem is that I'll have to reprocess all images in the string using a nearest neighbour interpolation algorithm (I make these images using my own Java programs) and recombine them into another animated gif. That might take quite a bit of time to create. --Simpsons contributor (talk) 22:40, 17 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I've found a 2x NNI scaler. Would doubling width and height suffice? That would be relatively easy, although it might take a while to process all images. Since its an NNI scaler it will come out as a series of 2x2 pixel “blocks” rather than smooth and continuous. The blocks are more appropriate for a GoL image, so this isn't a big problem. --Simpsons contributor (talk) 22:59, 17 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]
2x with blocks is fine. Go for it! Shoemaker's Holiday (talk) 23:02, 17 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Done. --Simpsons contributor (talk) 23:48, 17 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Strong support Shoemaker's Holiday (talk) 23:54, 17 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks. I'm sorry about the strange artefacts in the scaled up image; that's the result of the gif quantizer that's based on a neural network. --Simpsons contributor (talk) 00:03, 18 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Honestly, they aren't noticeable unless you're really, really looking. Shoemaker's Holiday (talk) 00:39, 18 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Because those images already exist. --Simpsons contributor (talk) 15:47, 19 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]
It is one big one: the smaller constructions are all interconnected by having a glider interact with them in ways that send it on a track around the board. Watch it carefully. This is the essence of higher-level work on the Game of Life: interactions between the lower-level processes. One of the most interesting things about this racetrack is that the "racer", for lack of a better term, interacts several times with the same type of objects, but because it does so from slightly different positions, has radically different effects. My favourite is the top left, where it destroying another glider results in a glider being released. Shoemaker's Holiday (talk) 21:04, 19 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Took me a while to see what you were talking about- I guess I didn't let the animation run long enough. Support. Spikebrennan (talk) 17:10, 20 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]
 
Edit Still example
  • Comment First i would like to say one word : WOW. I've known the GoL for quite a long time but never saw a huge structure like this one. Second, i expanded the summary, because someone might stumble upon the picture without seeing your caption first, and then it would be hard to understand what happens. Third, I'm not entirely sold regarding the nomination. It took me quite a long time to notice the racer, and if you don't know the GoL beforehand, it's quite hard to understand that what is happening here aren't random/separate processes. Therefore, i wonder if we could put some sort of legend at the bottom right which is all black. One way to do it would be to use this space to note when our racer interact with an element : We could put captions in the image such as "Glider + Glider = Spaceship". Moreover, we could go one step further and add a zoomed version (slow-motion ?) of the interaction. Maybe I'm asking too much, especially since others picture in the article don't have any sort of legend whatsoever. However, theses focus on one tiny/medium structure so you can understand right away that this represent one integrated structure whereas in this nomination it isn't obvious from the get go. Ksempac (talk) 08:51, 20 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]
What about a yellow circle around the glider starting position with "glider" written next to it in the first opening frames?
That would be the minimum to do IMHO (although i would prefer to write "racer" rather than "glider" since the caption keep talking about the racer, and the racer itself change shape). On this one, i ask the advises of others wikipedians as to what is the best combination of "EV + readibility VS difficulty" (moreover i probably won't be there for the next few days, so i won't be able to comment on possible solutions). Last thing : I noticed you changed the summary and removed indigo, so you should remove it from the caption. Moreover, what is a gobbler ? it isn't described in the GoL article. I gather that's the 2 structures that "eat" the line of spaceships but it would be nice to explain it in the summary. Ksempac (talk) 11:34, 20 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I like to keep the captions as short and simple as possible. I think I can add a moving circle that follow the glider along the start of the racetrack. I will add a moving label too. I'll upload this image separately so we can keep the original image and compare which one looks best. --Simpsons contributor (talk) 15:24, 20 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I think tracing the glider racer is going to be a bit too tricky and time consuming for a custom made Java applet. How about the simpler version with this still attached to every image? I haven't processed it into an animated gif yet because I'm having some trouble with the alpha channel during bulk processing of the images. --Simpsons contributor (talk) 20:51, 20 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

 
Edit1 Channel example

The colours might need changing (problem with the gif quantizer) but is this an improvement? (Simpsons contributor, 20 May)

I'm not really a huge fan of scribbling on it. Shoemaker's Holiday (talk) 21:54, 20 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Nor am I; I think it would be better just to stick to the original. --Simpsons contributor (talk) 00:10, 21 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]
What if you could make the racer a different color from everything else? Yes, you'd lose the consistency with showing when it's a glider and when it's a space ship, but it would be easy to identify.--HereToHelp (talk to me) 00:25, 22 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I think that would make it more confusing. Maybe we could use some blinkers to trace out the path? It wouldn't be so distracting if it was real GoL objects. Shoemaker's Holiday (talk) 00:35, 22 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

The colour-coded animated gif exists as a string of images that has been processed many times (to highlight the different patterns, the original GoL string was black/white) just adding an array of non-oscillating still life patterns in exactly the right place on every image won't be a trivial task. I'll give it a try though. I'll colour them blue, in accordance with the present colour coding scheme.--Simpsons contributor (talk) 11:22, 22 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Actually, it's probably not actually necessary. If it's that much work, skip it. Shoemaker's Holiday (talk) 11:29, 22 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks. I think it may make the pattern look cluttered and messy too. The reason I chose the “racetrack” pattern was because it supplemented the paragraph describing the interesting interaction between gliders and other patterns and yet was small and relatively simple to colour code. Other patterns (like a 36,549 cell Turing machine) truly highlighted interesting glider interactions but would be far too large and complex. --Simpsons contributor (talk) 11:39, 22 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]
On the other hand, the Turing machine would be REALLY FREAKING COOL. Shoemaker'sHoliday (talk) 12:15, 22 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]
 
Edit2 A racetrack in which a glider moves around, bouncing off reflectors, spaceships, and triggering guns. Still life blocks mark out the path of the racer. In this image guns are green, gliders are yellow, spaceships are red, and reflectors are violet. Eaters and other live cells are blue.


Hows about this? I myself think this is an improvement: it shows the racetrack path, the colour code isn't compromised and it's a fully valid GoL pattern even with the track laid out. --Simpsons contributor (talk) 21:06, 22 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Not bad, and yes, still lives are certainly better than extraneous markings. Just say what they are in the caption.--HereToHelp (talk to me) 23:41, 22 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]
See the GoL page caption. I've already changed it. --Simpsons contributor (talk) 10:05, 23 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Oh yeah, better change that! --Simpsons contributor (talk) 13:31, 26 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Can I just change the name directly and leave all links to it intact? --Simpsons contributor (talk) 13:31, 26 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I had no idea so i did a quick search, and it doesn't seem you can rename file. You have to re-upload under a new name and ask an admin to delete the old file. Ksempac (talk) 14:19, 26 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Done. --Simpsons contributor (talk) 16:11, 26 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I switched files for this nomination. Pls ask an admin for the deletion of the old file (Olor coded racetrack large channel.gif) Ksempac (talk) 19:24, 26 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Added speedy deletion tag to old image. --Simpsons contributor (talk) 23:13, 26 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Promoted File:Color coded racetrack large channel.gif --Ksempac (talk) 07:57, 31 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

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