Celestia Forums

That would be a simple vector subtraction, if Celestia used velocity vectors. However, I'm pretty sure the positions of objects are specified explicitly. .xyz files, for instance, are just a list of time/position pairs. Of cource, it wouldn't be too hard to approximate... - a b i o g e n e s i s -

Multiple light sources are trivial to implement in OpenGL. The issue is with the way Celestia uses lights. I haven't looked at the code for a long time but, If I remember correctly, Celestia assumes a very simple lighting model. Whenever the viewer is in the local coordinate space of a star, a singl...

selden, That's how it's done independent of the app. Any 3D program with z-buffer info can be stereoscoped by the drivers. I was thinking that an application-specific implementation, if that's even possible, would give better results. Now that I think about it, though, it's really not that important...

AAAAGGHH! My head! It looks very cool, though. Perhaps I would enjoy it more without the aneurysm. Here's an idea: Now that Celestia has built-in support for multiple views, perhaps it wouldn't be too difficult to do the binocular vision thing in-code. For instance, the nVidia-based ASUS card I have...

It's pretty ballsy to be posting lies like that on a board maintained by an nVidia programmer.

- a b i o g e n e s i s -

...is because a texture transform is used to make the cloud layer move... Is that because you're using linear textures instead of swizzled textures for the clouds? If so, could you use a vertex shader to tweak the texture coordinates of the vertices instead of the "texture transform"? I'm taking a ...

Hey, Fridger- I've downloaded and built DevIL on WinXP (I know...), but I'm having a problem. It's all my fault though, as it's likely improper use. Remember that 32k earth texture that has been summarily dismissed as a pipe dream by the wisest of the developers on the forum? Well, I can't give it u...

While we're on the topic of UI, why don't you just make the key maps user configurable. Then all you have to worry about, Chris, is the default config. And if someone doesn't use some of the more esoteric Celestia features, they can re-map the keys to do something else. I haven't looked at the sourc...

Hey, marc- I'm replying to your post in the other thread. Unfortunately, I'm in the process of deleting the files. I have been for about three days. :!: It appears that my hard drive may have been fragmented a bit before the installation and after, well, I won't go there. I looked, but Part 71 is al...

I tried a full MH install with the 2 Mil star database. It didn't work. :( After about five hours it says there's an error with fread or fscanf or some other file IO function. It doesn't appear to generate nearly as many planets as I had hoped. The vast majority of stars have no planets. The Habitab...

I thought that KaZaA used FastTrack, not Gnutella. FastTrack is what Morpheus used to use, before switching to Gnutella and subsequently sucking. FastTrack supports "swarming". That is, downloading one file from multiple users simultaneously. This has the potential to greatly increase download speed...

If you run the simulation at 1000000x, won't your sample rate be too low? You can only output to the log once a frame and, at that time scale, you won't get continuous data. Halley will likely fly right past the closest point, perhaps multiple times, without a single log. As far as I know, Celestia ...

Static bumpmapping is just an image processing trick where shadows are added to the image where they should be based on the assumed topology of the terrain. So the shadows look the same on the texture regardless of where the light is coming from. Not realistic. Dynamic bumpmapping, on the other hand...

But why did you not reduce the size of the spec map in one go? It should be a triviality for these programs? It would have been trivial, I'm sure. And it would have made the subsequet water selecting much simpler as well but, since I already had the 16k resolution, I figured I'd use it. There are s...

I am definitely interested in your bump map. As for the 16k spec map, I just opened Earth16k.dds in PaintShop Pro using the photoshop dxt plug-in. Then, I selected all the water (lots and lots of water, all those tiny lakes...). I cleared all the water to white, all the land to black, then I saved i...

I successfully converted the Earth16k.dds file into a specular map and added it to the .ssc file. It works beautifully. It is , however, a 16k specular map(!), because I used the Earth map as the source. Much more resolution than necessary, I know, but it looks good. Now all I need is a good bump ma...

The Earth16k.dds map doesn't have a specular map. I don't remember the exact reason. I think the level of DXT compression used didn't support alpha or something. It shouldn't be a big deal now, though, since 1.25pre3 supports separate spec files. Just make a low resolution specular map and add it to...

I guess that makes sense then. A wood grain texture of a huge wall would need a huge texture map, but the grain pattern is probably really simple to code up algorithmically. I can get that. It might be hard to algorithmically generate the surface of a planet, though. Unless maybe using fractals. Hm....

Thanks, guys. If you find a solution, I'd be glad to hear it. I was looking at the Script-Fu stuff you can do with Gimp, but I don't have the time to study up on all that right now. Oh well. I wish you luck.

- a b i o g e n e s i s -

Speaking of large Earth maps, I downloaded the BlueMarble maps from NASA. 16kx16k for each hemisphere. I've tried to combine them into one, gargantuan 32,768 x 16,384 pixel image, but my PC seems to have a low tolerance for pain. :wink: Has anybody ( Fridger ) got this to work? I'm using an AMD Athl...