Re: [Visualpython-users] vpython and ipython

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I apologize for not responding to your earlier question about vectors.
The Visual "vector" is designed to mimic the properties of 3D vectors
used in math and science (add, subtract, magnitude, dot and cross
product, etc.). The numpy module provides a very large number of
structures and operations on arrays, which makes it possible to do
scientific processing in Python where using lists would be unbearably
slow. One uses Visual vectors for describing positions of Visual
objects, and general geometric calculations related to 3D displays. The
VPython example programs gas.py and stars.py are examples of the use of
numpy arrays for doing numerical integrations of motion for many
objects in single array statements. 
 
I've never used ipython and don't know what the problem is (I've only
used IDLE or the more recent VIDLE). I would guess that the problem is
with Visual, not with ipython, but I don't know. If you're willing to
delve into Visual to see what the problem is (and maybe fix it), great! 
 
Bruce Sherwood 
 
Venkat Ramanan wrote:
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 <pre wrap="">Hi all,

Thanks for the visual link. I've previously used VTK using Octaviz,
which is an Octave interface to VTK. Octaviz is very easy to use,
makes good plots. But animations using it is slow, many primitives
like 3D-arrows are limited in functionality and sadly Octaviz is not
being developed anymore, as far as I know. It is not even present in
the 9.10 Ubuntu repositories.

In general, VTK has a lot of options, but needlessly complicated for
me. On the other hand, vpython is simple to setup and fast. It
basically took only a few minutes to get the basics of it.

BTW, regarding issue 1b of my original post, I was stupidly calling
display every time the script was run. If I don't call it, it reuses
the last display and it is fine.

Can someone please comment on the remaining issues?

1. vector() versus numpy array differences? Basically what is better
to use and why?

2. If only I can get ipython to play nice with vpython, I'm basically
all set. Is it something on the ipython side or in vpython?
I can hack something together, if there are some pointers.

Thanks,
Venkat.

PS: I meant to send the reply to the list, but it was mistakenly sent
personally to Guy Kloss.

On Sat, Dec 19, 2009 at 2:52 PM, Guy K. Kloss <a class="moz-txt-link-rfc2396E" href="mailto:g....@ma...">&lt;g....@ma...&gt;</a> wrote:
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    <pre wrap="">On Sun, 20 Dec 2009 04:13:58 James Mueller wrote:
    </pre>
    <blockquote type="cite">
      <pre wrap="">Again, I haven't tried it, so I can't offer any review of it.
      </pre>
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    <pre wrap="">I can somewhat help out there ...

I've tested that Visual module. It's somewhat more geared towards the Visual
3.x API, it's *quite* a bit slower than visual, and it's not as feature rich.
Also there are some draw backs due to bugs/limitations in the traits
implementation limiting the range of usable sizes, etc. Some code also has to
be (slightly) adapted to fit that visual API of Mayavi.

Performance can be somewhat boosted significantly by switching to the Qt4
backend over the default wx windowing backend. Still, performance is not
nearly as good as with Visual Python.

I did a presentation with a paper at the last Kiwi PyCon touching this topic.
The slides are here:

<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://www.slideshare.net/XEmacs/python-data-plotting-and-visualisation">http://www.slideshare.net/XEmacs/python-data-plotting-and-visualisation</a>-
extravaganza

A paper of that is soon to be published under the Python Papers Monograph
Series for that: <a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://pythonpapers.org">http://pythonpapers.org</a>

Guy

--
Guy K. Kloss
Institute of Information and Mathematical Sciences
Te Kura Pūtaiao o Mōhiohio me Pāngarau
Massey University, Albany (North Shore City, Auckland)
473 State Highway 17, Gate 1, Mailroom, Quad B Building
voice: +64 9 414-0800 ext. 9585   fax: +64 9 441-8181
<a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="mailto:G....@ma...">G....@ma...</a> <a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://www.massey.ac.nz/~gkloss">http://www.massey.ac.nz/~gkloss</a>

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Re: [Visualpython-users] vpython and ipython

This project is no longer active. See vpython.org.

Re: [Visualpython-users] vpython and ipython