SaVi satellite constellation visualizer savi-dev
Earth orbits and satellite coverage display in 3D on your laptop.
Brought to you by:
lloydwood
README for SaVi - SATELLITE CONSTELLATION SIMULATION AND VISUALIZATION ====================================================================== $Id$ This README supplied with the SaVi satellite visualization software contains the following sections: 1. Introduction to SaVi - SaVi is described and places to obtain the latest SaVi are given. 2. Requirements for SaVi - Optional packages enhancing SaVi are also described. 3. SaVi and Geomview - SaVi's optional use of Geomview for 3D rendering is outlined. 4. Installation instructions for SaVi - how to compile SaVi from source. Read and follow this section. 5. Running the SaVi software - how to launch SaVi, with or without Geomview. Read this section. 6. Command-line switches for SaVi - things that can be selected when launching SaVi. 7. Contributing to SaVi - notes for programmers. 8. Version history of SaVi - a brief overview of major developments in SaVi. 9. Acknowledgements for SaVi - a list of contributors to the SaVi project. 1. INTRODUCTION TO SAVI ======================= SaVi is software written to facilitate the visualization and analysis of satellite constellations. This software is freely and publically available. We require that use of any images produced by this software credits SaVi and The Geometry Center. A webpage user manual for SaVi is in the manual/ directory. Lloyd Wood, the current SaVi maintainer, welcomes suggestions, patches and improvements to SaVi. Lloyd can be contacted at: lloydwood@users.sourceforge.net See the SaVi webpages: http://savi.sourceforge.net/ http://lloydwood.users.sourceforge.net/Personal/L.Wood/software/SaVi/ http://www.geom.uiuc.edu/projects/visualization/savi.html Support for SaVi is provided via the savi-users mailing list: https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/savi-users SaVi is not a completely polished or finished product. SaVi is not guaranteed to be fit for any purpose. Bugs in the SaVi software are still being discovered and addressed. Users of SaVi are responsible for verifying for themselves that their simulations are sufficiently accurate to be useful for their purposes. Known bugs and possible future features of SaVi are discussed in the textfile BUGS. Please report problems with your use of SaVi to the savi-users mailing list. SaVi is originally Copyright (c) 1995-1997 by The Geometry Center. SaVi is also Copyright (c) 2001-2023 by Lloyd Wood. See the textfile COPYRIGHT for full details. 2. REQUIREMENTS FOR SAVI ======================== SaVi requires: - an ANSI C compiler, e.g. gcc from http://gcc.gnu.org/ - most recently tested and built with gcc 11.2, 8.3, 7.5 and 6.4. previously tested with gcc 5.4, 4.9 back to 4.0, 3.4 to 3.2, and 2.95. or clang from http://clang.llvm.org/ - tested and builds with Apple LLVM 9.0.0 / clang-900. previously tested with clang 3.1. - Tcl and Tk, from http://www.tcl.tk/ - most recently tested with Tcl/Tk 8.6 releases and ActiveTcl 8.6.4. Use of the Http package for loading TLEs from the web demands a minimum of Tcl/Tk 8.0. Use of the Tk color picker and load/save file dialogs demands a minimum of Tcl/Tk 7.6/4.2. Tcl/Tk 8.x gives increased performance, and is recommended. If an existing installation of Tcl does not include header files, e.g. /usr/include/tcl.h, you should be able to add these by installing the tk-devel and tcl-devel packages (Red Hat, Fedora) or the tcl-dev and tk-dev packages (Debian, Ubuntu). The savi wrapper script in this directory, and the Makefile_defs_ files in the src/ directory, assume that Tcl/Tk 8.5 are available, and will need to be edited if other versions are used. On RedHat/Fedora/CentOS etc. try: sudo yum install tk-devel On Ubuntu/Debian etc. try: sudo apt-get install tk-dev SaVi can optionally use, and is far more useful with, these recommended packages: - Geomview, discussed below, for three-dimensional animations. - most recently tested with Geomview 1.9.5. On Ubuntu/Debian etc. try: sudo apt-get install geomview - gifsicle, from http://lcdf.org/gifsicle/ for saving animations of satellite coverage. - most recently tested with LCDF Gifsicle 1.92. On Ubuntu/Debian etc. try: sudo apt-get install gifsicle - lynx, from https://lynx.browser.org/ for handling https or other downloads of TLEs (elsets) - most recently tested with lynx 2.9.0 On Ubuntu/Debian etc. try: sudo apt-get install lynx SaVi may also optionally use, but does not in any way require: - the jpegtopnm utility, from the netpbm package available at http://netpbm.sourceforge.net/ for Geomview to uncompress and display the detailed Earth map that is included with SaVi. On RedHat/Fedora/CentOS etc. try: sudo yum install netpbm On Ubuntu/Debian etc. try: sudo apt-get install netpbm - the zlib compression library, from http://www.zlib.net/ for compressing texturemap images sent to Geomview. - most recently tested with zlib 1.2.11. zlib is most useful with Geomview. To build with zlib to compress dynamic texturemaps that are sent to Geomview, edit src/Makefile to remove the -DNO_ZLIB flag. On RedHat/Fedora/CentOS etc. try: sudo yum install zlib-devel On Ubuntu/Debian etc. try: sudo apt-get install zlib1g-dev SaVi has been successfully compiled and run on the following architectures and unix-like operating systems: - Intel x86 and PowerPC / Macintosh OS X (10.12.6, 10.11.6, 10.9.5, 10.7.2, 10.6.8, 10.5.8, 10.4.11) Mac users - you must read the BUGS file! A section there discusses Mac-specific problems and workarounds for those problems. - Intel x86 / Windows running Cygwin (most recently tested with 3.3.5, previously Cygwin 3.0.7, 2.9.0, 1.7.10 to .29 and 1.5.9-1 to .25-11) Cygwin users - Insight Tcl/Tk 8.4 was replaced by a more conventional unix port of 8.5 in October 2011. If you are still using Insight and haven't updated, build with: make ARCH=cygwin84 instead of cygwin. - Intel x86 / Windows 10 Anniversary Update Install Windows Subsystem for Linux from the Microsoft Store, then install Ubuntu. For X display you can install and run the Xming web server from http://xming.sf.net/ and then launch bash and type: sudo apt-get install savi sudo apt-get install geomview set DISPLAY=:0 geomview -run savi - Intel x86 / Linux (Ubuntu 20 back to 8; CentOS 6.5, Fedora 12; Red Hat 6.x, 7.x and Enterprise 3.0; Mandrake 9.0; Mandriva One 2010) - Intel x86 / FreeBSD (6.0, 8.1) - Sun SPARC / Solaris (2.4 and later, 10) - SGI / Irix5 SaVi is 64-bit clean. 3. SAVI AND GEOMVIEW ==================== SaVi can optionally use Geomview for 3D rendering of Earth and satellites. Geomview requires a unix-like operating system and an X Window display. SaVi can be run either as a stand-alone program, or as an "external module" for the Geomview program. The latter mode enables three-dimensional visualization of the satellite constellations, but also requires Geomview. Geomview is available from: http://www.geomview.org/ http://geomview.sourceforge.net/ On Ubuntu/Debian etc., where these packages are maintained: sudo apt-get install geomview sudo apt-get install savi geomview -run savi will save you the effort of compiling Geomview or SaVi. SaVi was most recently tested with Geomview 1.9.5. SaVi supports 3D texturemapping of the Earth sphere to Geomview, if OpenGL is supported. If this is not viewable, due to graphics drivers or other problems, try turning off OpenGL use with: geomview -noopengl -run savi OpenGL and texturemapping are discussed in further detail in README-COVERAGE-TEXTUREMAPPING, also accessible from SaVi's Help menu. Discussion of maintaining and building Geomview on various platforms can be found in the geomview-users mailing list archives: http://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/geomview-users Instructions for building Geomview under Microsoft Windows with Cygwin are available from: http://savi.sourceforge.net/install/ Geomview, like SaVi, was originally available from the Geometry Center: http://www.geom.uiuc.edu/software/download/geomview.html The Geometry Center was at the University of Minnesota (umn), and its webserver content is now hosted at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (uiuc). Contracted work with Geomview can be undertaken by Geometry Technologies: http://www.geomtech.com/ 4. INSTALLATION INSTRUCTIONS FOR SAVI ===================================== For the remainder of this file, we shall refer to the directory originally containing this README file, the root of the SaVi tree, as $SAVI. That is, if you are a user and have unpacked SaVi in your home directory, then $SAVI would be the topmost SaVi directory ~user/saviX.Y.Z that contains this README file that you are now reading. This is a shorthand; $SAVI is determined by the $SAVI/savi script that launches SaVi. 1.) In $SAVI/src/Makefile_defs_ARCH (where ARCH is linux, cygwin, macosx, sun, freebsd, irix or ubuntu) you may need to edit some variables to suit your system. If your system is current with recent versions of Tcl and Tk installed, and everything is in its usual place, the generic definitions file, called "Makefile_defs_", may work perfectly, and typing 'make' in SaVi's topmost directory may be sufficient to compile the C files in src/ and index the Tcl files in tcl/. If not, choose the Makefile_defs_ file most suitable for your system and: - ensure that the variables are set to give the locations and correct versions of the Tcl/Tk libraries and header include files. - ensure that the CC variable is set to an available ANSI C compiler, e.g. gcc 2.) Return to the topmost SaVi directory $SAVI. Once in that directory, type e.g. 'make ARCH=linux' (or cygwin, or macosx, or sun, or freebsd, or irix, or ubuntu) in the topmost $SAVI directory. Typing just 'make' in the topmost directory will use the default Makefile_defs_ file. 3.) You may also need to edit the locations of the Tcl and Tk libraries in $SAVI/savi at the TCL_LIBRARY and TK_LIBRARY lines when linking dynamically. If running the savi script to launch SaVi generates Tcl or Tk errors, it is often because either the TCL_LIBRARY or TK_LIBRARY lines need to be corrected in that shell wrapper, or because make was not done using the top-level Makefile in the $SAVI directory. SaVi needs $SAVI/tcl/tclIndex to run. That tcl/tclIndex file must be generated by the tcl/Makefile that, like all other subdirectory Makefiles, is called by the top-level master Makefile in the same directory as this README file. 4.) SaVi allows binaries for multiple architectures to co-exist on a shared filesystem, by running the appropriately-named binary: bin/SaVi-$ARCH.bin The most recently compiled executable is also available as: bin/SaVi To save disk space on filesystems used by only one architecture and avoid messages saying which binary copy was selected to be run, you can rm bin/SaVi-*.bin, leaving the single bin/SaVi executable. This has the advantage of displaying just 'SaVi' as the process name. This is very useful for Mac OS X, where that name is shown in the menubar. 5. RUNNING THE SAVI SOFTWARE ============================ As in the previous section, we refer to the directory containing this README file as $SAVI. Always launch SaVi using the savi script in this directory. Do not run the binary executable directly. 1.) To run SaVi standalone, without needing Geomview, in the $SAVI directory type: ./savi Or from any other directory, $SAVI/savi where $SAVI is the path of the savi directory. To load in a satellites tcl scriptfile directly, type: ./savi filename SaVi supports a number of command-line switches, many related to use with Geomview. To see these, type: ./savi -help 2.) To run SaVi as a module within Geomview, for 3D rendering, when in the $SAVI directory start up Geomview: geomview and then select "SaVi" from Geomview's scrollable list of external modules, where it will have appeared. Or invoke directly: geomview -run ./savi [flags] <script filename> Or from any directory where you can start Geomview, try geomview -run ./savi [flags] <script filename> You might invoke a saved one-line script, to pass parameters through to SaVi: geomview -run ./savi [always-on flags] $* To see SaVi listed as an external module in Geomview's main window whenever Geomview is launched alone, Geomview has to know where SaVi is and how to launch it. This can be done by reading from a file called .geomview, and the .geomview file in the savi/ directory: (emodule-define "SaVi" "./savi -geomview") tells Geomview this whenever geomview is launched with the savi directory as the working directory. This line can be edited with the absolute path of the savi start script and copied into a .geomview configuration file in the geomview/ directory, or to a .geomview-* configuration file in geomview's modules directory, as described below, so that SaVi is always accessible from Geomview even when Geomview is launched by itself. 3.) To make SaVi accessible to other users, you can copy the "savi" script in $SAVI to some directory in other users' search paths such as /usr/local/bin, so they needn't add SaVi's own directory to their own path. If you do, edit the "savi" script, inserting the full path name of $SAVI as indicated in the script itself: # If you copy this script from the SaVi installation and run it # elsewhere, then you should uncomment the following line: # SAVI=/usr/local/savi # and replace /usr/local/savi with the location of # your SaVi installation. You can also make SaVi accessible from Geomview's scrollable list of external modules. Assuming Geomview is installed in /usr/local/Geomview, say: cd /usr/local/Geomview/modules ls -lsa to see a number of files telling Geomview about modules. These are shown alphabetically in Geomview's External Modules panel. Create a file here called ".geomview-savi" containing e.g.: (emodule-define "SaVi" "/usr/local/savi1.5.0/savi -geomview") where the right-hand side is the absolute path name for the savi script. The .geomview file can be modified to say e.g.: (emodule-define "SaVi" "./savi -redrawn-menus -geomview") with other always-on flags to control SaVi behaviour. 6. COMMAND-LINE SWITCHES FOR SAVI ================================= SaVi supports the following command-line switches and flags when run standalone. These can be combined, e.g. geomview -run savi -geomview -large-map -levels -19 -debug $* -all-maps adds further map projection options to the coverage panel. These map projections are not as useful as the always-available options, or are experimental. -debug turns on debugging output to the terminal. This is useful for programmers or for output of detailed statistics. -fake-geomview pretends that SaVi is running with Geomview, even when it isn't. This is useful for debugging by looking at the log of commands to geomview, with: e.g. ./savi -fake-geomview > savi-oogl.log -help shows command-line switch help in the terminal. -large-map uses a bigger coverage panel map of 1024x512 pixels, instead of 600x300. Useful for larger displays, and for better texturemapping. This is currently the default setting. -levels <n> Sets the number of color levels used by the coverage panel map. n can be from 1 to 29. A large value of n is useful for high-diversity constellations with overlapping coverage, such as navigation systems or megaconstellations. -map-view-height <n> resizes the coverage panel map to 2n pixels across by n pixels down. A large height can give slightly better texturemapping in Geomview, though the coverage panel map outline is not resized. n can be from 8 to 2048, giving map sizes ranging from 16x8 to 4096x2048 pixels. -map-view-middle <longitude> shifts the map horizontally so that the selected longitude is centred. zero is the default. The longitude can be from -180 to 180, going from west to east. -max-transmit-altitude <kilometers> sets an altitude above which coverage footprints are not drawn. This is useful for simulating satellites in elliptical orbits whose satellites communicate or take imagery while near perigee. -min-transmit-altitude <kilometers> sets an altitude below which coverage footprints are not drawn. This is useful for simulating satellites in elliptical orbits whose satellites communicate while near apogee, e.g. Molnya, Tundra, Sirius Radio and Ellipso. -orbit-model <JO|J2> chooses the orbital model. J2 is the default, but a simpler Keplerian J0 can be selected. -redrawn-menus changes how SaVi draws its menus to an older method. This is useful on some versions of Tcl under Mac OS X (particularly 10.5 Leopard). -small-map uses a small coverage panel map of 600x300 pixels, instead of 1024x512. -splash generates SaVi's about dialog on launch. This dialog is useful for reporting the version of SaVi and the command-line flags chosen. -verbose also sends included non-functional comments in OOGL to Geomview, which is a minor slowdown. This is useful when debugging Geomview with: ./savi -fake-geomview -verbose > savi-oogl.log -version reports the version of SaVi and when it was built. [filename] a script for SaVi to run on launch, typically from the savi/data directory. and when run with Geomview: -dynamic-texture-with-map passes the unprojected or cylindrical bitmap coverage panel outline map through to Geomview for texturemapping, instead of drawing the vector outline map in Geomview. -geomview tells SaVi that it is being run with Geomview, and that it should pipe commands to Geomview. This is set by SaVi's launch script, so you should never need to use it. -gzip-compressed-textures uses gzip headers when compressing the texturemaps sent to Geomview, when SaVi has been built with the zlib library. Only of interest to programmers. -no-logo disables display of the SaVi logo in the corner of the Geomview camera. -sun-lighting turns on Geomview light sources that attempt to emulate the Sun's lighting. Lighting appears wrong, so this is disabled by default. -uncompressed forces sending uncompressed texturemaps to Geomview, when SaVi has been built with the zlib library. Only of interest to programmers. Geomview also supports a range of command-line options, which are documented in the Geomview man page. The most useful is: -noopengl this disables Geomview's OpenGL use, in case of problems with texturemapping or with blank camera displays, to fall back to a vector drawing of the Earth's continents. Use as e.g. geomview -noopengl -run savi 7. CONTRIBUTING TO SAVI ======================= Contributions and additions to SaVi, particularly those addressing the issues raised in the BUGS textfile, are welcome - just email lloydwood@users.sourceforge.net. There is also a savi-developers mailing list for discussion: https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/savi-developers SaVi's code layout believes that a tab is four spaces. C code uses an indent of two spaces, while Tcl code uses an indent of four spaces. 8. VERSION HISTORY OF SAVI ========================== 1.6.0 Hierarchical menus and new constellations, April 2023. 1.5.1 Minor bugfixes. Cygwin Tcl/Tk 8.6 compatibility, July 2017. 1.5.0 Coverage gif animations with gifsicle, can load TLEs from the web. September 2016. 1.4.9 Coverage "Show map" now controls Geomview, removes legacy disk scratchfile texturemapping method. January 2016. 1.4.8 Bugfixes to new colorful coverage map. Wider support for Tcl/Tk 8.6. January 2015. 1.4.7 Minor bugfixes. Fisheye geostationary ring and parallels. New colorful unprojected land/sea coverage map. January 2015. 1.4.6 Minor bugfixes. Cygwin unix Tcl/Tk 8.5 compatibility. May 2013. 1.4.5 Minor bugfixes. Mac ActiveTcl compatibility. April 2011. 1.4.4 Minor bugfixes. Tcl/Tk 8.6b1 compatibility. February 2011. 1.4.3 Minor bugfixes. Better Mac OS X compatibility. December 2009. 1.4.2 Minor bugfixes. February 2009. 1.4.1 Full help system. Fixes to edit dialog problems introduced by sunlight support. January 2009. 1.4.0 Tk 8.5 and Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard) compatibility. Adds satellite names, sunlight on map, varying (1-19) levels of coverage shading. Vastly-improved high-performance coverage texturemap piping to Geomview. Shift- and control-click multiple satellites in the list. June 2008. 1.3.2 Blending user interface with Mac OS X Aqua and Cygwin environments. 1.3.1 Mac OS X port and gcc 4.0 compatibility. 1.3 Includes all work done for a workshop on satellite applications and constellations given as a guest lecturer at the International Space University Summer Session. Students used SaVi in class exercises, July 2006. 1.2.x These developments bring together a variety of contributions in a single package, 2001 and onwards. 1.1 Diverse versions with various modifications, not widely released, 1999. 1.0 First public release of SaVi binaries and source code, 1997. 8. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS FOR SAVI ============================ Martin Lo, Polly Estabrook and David Bell at NASA's Jet Propulsion Lab inspired the SaVi project. Patrick Worfolk and Robert Thurman created the SaVi project while at the Geometry Center, with support from the Geometry Center technical staff, especially Stuart Levy, Lori Thomson and Nicolas Vera. Gregory LaCoste contributed coverage interval decay and other code to the SaVi project. Claus-Justus Heine contributed assistance with pipes and 64-bit machines, and made inline texturemap streaming and many other things possible with his thoughtful additions to Geomview. Ari Stern contributed assistance with menus and porting to Mac OS X. Matthias Foehl contributed assistance with file dialogs and Cygwin. Cliff Anders suggested and supported the fisheye equatorial exclusion zone. Lloyd Wood has contributed simulations of commercial constellations and other code significantly enhancing the SaVi project, and maintains SaVi at SourceForge.