yt development: HEALpix and Contour Tree
This week there was not very much yt development. However, a few notes may be of interest. SamS has updated the HEALPix camera to support ordered projections; what this means is that you can now make volume renderings using a standard color transfer function, or even the Planck transfer function, that cover 4pi of the sky. I am still working on integrating a method for creating images easily, but for now the scripts from last week should work.
The idea of selection of astrophysical objects, rather than geometric objects, has been on my mind lately, and I committed a first pass at an API for this sort of selection. I hope to have more information about that in the near future, but I anticipate those development efforts to ramp up around the end of March.
I worked a bit on improving the speed of the contour tree, but I am growing to suspect that a full new algorithm will have to be implemented. I have researching this, and I believe that the best method will require a "union merge" data structure. Hopefully I will have something to report on this shortly. As of now, the contouring algorithm should be a factor of 10%-50% faster than it was a week ago, depending on the dataset characteristics.
The idea of selection of astrophysical objects, rather than geometric objects, has been on my mind lately, and I committed a first pass at an API for this sort of selection. I hope to have more information about that in the near future, but I anticipate those development efforts to ramp up around the end of March.
