Talk:Hermod Gate

Canonical Stargate Addresses Make No Sense

As any fan of the Stargate franchise knows, from the movie in 1994 we know that the dialing of a Stargate is 6 symbols represented by constellations which pinpoint a destination of travel. The movie makes it clear that this is because to travel anywhere in 3D space we need 6 points forming a crosshairs and a 7th point that is a point of origin. This makes absolutely no sense, even for our collective understanding of space in 1994. The purpose of this section is to explain why the Hermod Gate system uses such a radically different idea of how gate addresses work within the Blazing Umbra game than Stargate canon uses. -Cyclops (talk) 22:18, 1 March 2022 (PST)

Canonical Stargate Addressing

The idea that the Stargate points to some other gate by using a universal addressing scheme makes a lot of sense. I do not mean to suggest that the creators of the movie / shows should have done things differently. Using an address for a gate that doesn't change allows for the writers to have a much easier time presenting how one travels using the gate system than it otherwise would be. That all being said, the way the addresses are explained have a lot of problems.

Everything is Moving

If the 6 points in space represented by the chevrons along the outside of a Stargate are supposed to form a kind of 3D crosshairs pinpointing an exact location for a destination gate, that address would have to be constantly changing. Earth itself is moving, it rotates on it axis and orbits the Sun. The Sun (and thus the entire solar system) also orbits around the center of the galaxy. The galaxy itself is also in motion, nothing is ever in the same spot twice. So if one is to assume that a symbol on a Stargate matches a location in space and that 6 symbols match a location to a specific gate, all of those 7 points (the 6 constellations and the planet the gate itself is on) would all have to be either stationary or all moving at the same speed and in the same direction. This is just not true.

Stargate SG-1 attempts to address this with something called a Correlative Update, handled by the dialing devices themselves. While it is true that most stars are roughly moving in similar directions, circling around the center of the galaxy, it is not true that they all move at the same speed relative to each other.

Constellations Don't Work

Each symbol in a gate address, except the point of origin, is supposed to represent a constellation as seen from Earth. This is a problem because the constellations would be meaningless from anywhere else. Looking up from Earth at the night sky star groups we have defined as constellations all appears as if they are all grouped on some massive sphere around Earth. If this was true, a constellation as a symbol for navigation in outer space would make sense. The Big Dipper or Orion would always be a single group of stars. Each star within a constellation has wildly different distances from Earth. So referencing a constellation as some kind of fixed point which can be used as a navigational aid anywhere but on the surface of the Earth is just not going to work.

The Address & Point of Origin are Redundant

It has always bothered me the point of origin. A Stargate in SG-1 itself contains 39 symbols while a DHD (Dial Home Device) has 38 symbols. This means that each Stargate on SG-1 has 38 symbols which make up a gate address and an additional unique symbol to symbolize the point of origin, a 39th symbol. On the DHD the show demonstrates they never hit a symbol representing the point of origin, they simply press the big red gem-link button at the center. If each gate has a unique symbol, why are there 6 symbols required to "dial" a gate? We know from canon that the DHD keeps track of the stellar position of where it is relative to other gates and produces updates sent out to the rest of the gates in the network. So each gate knows where it is already because the DHD has to know where it is in order to update its location based on stellar movement. If this is so, there should be no need to have an address of 6 symbols to find another gate in the system.

Furthermore, we have established that a gate knows where it is. Thus if a gate already knows where it is, there is no reason to manually enter a 7th symbol. The gate knows where it is and the destination gate knows where it is. Thus if both gates know where they are and all gates have a unique defined address anyway, all one should have to do is select the gate they want to go to by its own unique assigned symbol. There is no reason to have 7 symbols in a gate address for any logical reason.

Points in Space - The Math

Mathematically, to travel anywhere in 3D space you need just two things a distance and direction. One obtains a distance and direction by using coordinates to form what is called a Euclidean Vector. Coordinate systems standardize how position is measured relative to an origin. Most people are familiar with Cartesian Coordinate System, this is what schools use most often and is laid out as a grid with the origin being at the center (0,0) for a 2D plot or (0,0,0) for a 3D plot. To form a vector from a Cartesian Coordinate System one needs to have a point of origin (can be centered at the center of the coordinate system or any other point in the system. These values are used with some trigonometry to give distance and direction between 2 points. There are more direct ways to measure distance and direction.

When moving through space one can measure either finite distance in a specific direction, such as a store being a mile down a road. The road provides the direction and 3 miles is a finite distance from where you start to where you're going. One can also specify movement by stating the direction and velocity. In either case, moving anywhere in 3D space requires only 2 pieces of information, a direction, and some way to measure how far one is to travel.

Real Life Navigation

In airplanes and and water craft it's actually a Polar Coordinate System, where you only need to know 2 things to travel anywhere in 2D space (airplanes and ships at sea don't use 3D coordinates as they plot courses based on points on the surface of the Earth). In Polar Coordinates you just need a bearing and distance (r, θ) where r is distance from your starting position and θ is the angle from your starting position (usually facing North is 0).

Watch a TV show or movie that shows courses being plotted, one can see a distance being measured with a tool called a compass (not to be confused with the way of finding North). This measures exact distance on a map from one point to another. The angle is measured with a protractor and the help of a compass (the kind that finds North).

Using North as 0 degrees one can then use Polar Coordinates to plot any course in 2D space. Pilots in aircraft also communicate their "flight level" (altitude) and submarines communicate their depth but these aren't used to plot their course from point A to B on the map. As a side note, pilots and submariners actually use a coordinate system called Cylindrical, in which up/down is measured in distance from a flat plane and polar coordinates are used horizontally.

Science Fiction Navigation

Space is pretty big and a ship moving through space can move in any direction (up, down, left, right, forward, and backward). To plot a course in space, one would need to use something that measures distance in 3D. A cylindrical coordinate system (mentioned above) can do this. Plot a course using distance and bearing horizontally and add altitude to it. Cartesian coordinates can also do this 2 points on a cartesian 3D grid measured by 2 sets of 3 numbers (x, y, and z). Neither of these is as practical as the closest 3D analogue to how real ships (and aircraft) plot courses, which is called a Spherical Coordinate System. From a point of origin one measures vertical angle (altitude) and horizontal angle (azimuth) which form a direction in 3D space and a distance to travel.

Spherical coordinates are how the positions of planets in the night sky are actually measured. Longitude and latitude along the surface of the Earth is also measured with spherical coordinates but without a distance measurement as one assumes the distance is the surface of the planet. In Star Trek, they make use of Spherical Coordinates for heading. Courses are stated as 2 angle measurements said on screen as some angle mark some other angle (altitude and azimuth). This orients the ship similar to how a course heading on a ship at sea or aircraft orients based on how many degrees from North one wants to point their vehicle. On Star Trek we never really know if courses are plotted with some kind of "north", but it is suggested that for interstellar travel the ships would use the direction of the galactic center as a kind of north while local course changes would reference the ship's current heading as 0 mark 0 and angles diverging from those two values for a course heading.

Development of Hermod Addresses

To create the system that Hermod Gates use for their coordinate system in the game, I borrowed from the GPS network. GPS receivers use the signals from any satellites they can receive information from to calculate a persons exact position. Fewer satellites mean a less accurate position, this is why GPS takes some time to get an accurate location. The receiver has to receive signals from not just one satellite to even two satellites, but 4 are required to give a precise location. From where GPS satellites are positioned one should be able to have line of sight with at least 6 but up to 10 satellites at a given time with 31 in orbit as of 2021. Calculating precise location via triangulation requires overlapping triangles, this is because there is only so precise measurements can be in the real world.

With the Hermod network the Cardinal Gates are used in a similar way, with 6 auxiliary gates being used to calculate the position of the origin gate and destination gate precisely in the vastness of space. The gates then use the point of origin from each gate address to verify that they have calculated the correct position for the correct gate. Using this precise information the 2 gates are able to open a wormhole to each other. I had toyed with the idea of using beacons or some kind of satellites which would have special addresses, but seemed to preserve some of the feel of the gates from Stargate canon to use actual gate locations, since they all had symbols anyway.

This is a kluge to maintain the feel of a Stargate address being used. What would be more reasonable is the existence of continuously updated stellar movement charts, one simple tells a computer where they want to go and the computer handles everything on the back end to go there. Within the canonical Stargate format this doesn't work, it increases the mystery and adventure to have mysterious gate addresses used which could lead a person anywhere. I have tried to define the Hermod Gates in such a way that one can use them in this more "traditional" Stargate method or in a more basic kind of "Travel to Earth" or "Travel to Markab" kind of way. The general idea is to provide more methods of constructing a story, not less.

Stargate Image Source

The images for the Hermod Gate are taken from a blog post by David Gian-Cursio on his web site from July of 2021. The author has different versions of the 3D mesh available at the link above. It is excellent work and I take no credit for the awesome job creating this object digitally.

The active gate image comes from the Stargate Wiki and the image of the wormhole without a gate comes from a stock image site.

Cyclops (talk) 15:28, 24 November 2021 (PST)