For the non geo-nerds out there, GIS is a standard form of terrestrial mapping that was first coined as a term in the mid-1960s, but which dates back decades earlier.
Put simply, GIS is a spatial system that creates, manages, analyzes, and maps all types of data.
Or, more comprehensively:
GIS connects data to a map, integrating location data (where things are) with all types of descriptive information (what things are like there). This provides a foundation for mapping and analysis that is used in science and almost every industry. GIS helps users understand patterns, relationships, and geographic context. The benefits include improved communication and efficiency as well as better management and decision making.
ORA’s Protostar system is essentially a next-generation GIS which takes data from any terrestrial sensor or socio-economic index and terraforms a planetary hologram. This is a generative software which means that algorithms in its creationary engine ‘generate’ patterns and objects that are an embodiment of the data inputs that feed it.
A slide from the Protostar patent - you can view the product brief, here.
While this has vast implications for 3D world-building and metaverses that are responsive to their agents (as opposed to 'canned' or pre-programmed game worlds), the immediate terraforming opportunity for a planetary Protostar is as a 2-Dimensional GIS.
The name for the designs - or patterning conventions - that tell the story about the land and its occupant populations to a viewer in a GIS are called HEATMAPS.
The nerdy definition of a HEATMAP is: a 2-dimensional data visualization technique that represents the magnitude of individual values within a dataset as a color.
A heat map showing the RF coverage of a drone detection system
There are a wide spectrum of design approaches to HEATMAPS and we were fortunate to have one of our colleagues, Lloyd Richards from Interactive Things, undertake a study of the coolest and most relevant patterning styles for our Protostar.
Our vision is that once the system is operationalized as a PaaS, users will be able to access a marketplace of pattern inventories from which to terraform their Protostars. But until then we can just fantasize with Lloyd’s slides:
