Celestia Forums

I'm afraid that I'm still too busy for Celestia development, but here is what's possible with the new Gaia DR2 catalog: holeintheheavens.jpg This is an area the central Milky Way blocked by dark nebula Barnard 86 ("Herschel's Hole in the Heavens"). Nearby is open cluster NGC 6520. No 3D in...

Chuft-Captain wrote:Heard on the news today about several people killed in 2 separate shooting incidents in Seattle.
I trust that Chris is OK... anyone in touch with him today?

Yes, I'm fine. I was actually in the Netherlands when this occurred. Tragic though...

--Chris

I'll try generating a version of the Vesta model that uses a cylindrical texture mapping. It shouldn't be too difficult. Hopefully, the cylindrical map is well-aligned with the 3D model (I mention it, because I recall reading somewhere that the map uses a new planetographic coordinate system.) Than...

Thanks Chris, for confirming my guesses about the required cube-maps, if one wants to add a surface textures to your models. Given a good vesta model, I am still undecided between these two alternatives: 1) hires details via xNormal but NO surface texture and 2) using a hires surface texture withou...

EDIT2: I quickly performed the described manipulations and tryed the texture out. It seems that ChrisL's model requires a cube-mapped texture rather than a simple cylindrical projection. I am sure he can clarify this. The normal map was generated from the high resolution model using the free tool x...

Here it is http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/855/vestafromdawn.jpg/ Maybe the model is not correct... It looks like you are using this map: http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA14703 But, I think that you are using it incorrectly. Because Vesta's northern hemisphere has been in shadow for...

I tried the model and texture and looks like something is wrong with Vesta.Its texture is bland http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/819/vestadontseemcorrectlyt.jpg/ That's how the model is supposed to look: there is no texture applied other than the normal map. It's possible to apply a texture, bu...

Reiko wrote:The 2nd link seems to be broken. I get a 404 error message.

Sorry about that... It's fixed now.

--Chris

The Vesta add-on is here: http://www.celestiaproject.net/~claurel/celestia/models/vesta.zip I've also updated the Gaskell models add-on. It now includes Vesta, Eros, Itokawa, Phoebe, Phobos, and Mimas. If you download this one, you do not need the separate Vesta add-on above. The models are availabl...

Yes this is exactly how I would like to run Celestia. Where do I start with rendering out to multiple viewports? It is something that needs to be set up with a lot of scripting? Could it be done over five playback PC's so i could keep everything at the highest quality and each computer would only b...

Robert Gaskell's shape model of Vesta is now available. As with Gaskell's other shape models, this one is derived from spacecraft images (in this case, from Dawn.) I'm almost done with an add-on for Celestia. Here's a video comparing the shapes, sizes, and rotations of Phoebe, Vesta, and Mimas: http...

I don't think that Celestia's FOV limit will be a problem here... If I've understood correctly, what you want to do are render five 90 degree views in different directions from the same point in space. Then, your software will combine these views and warp them for display on all screens. Is that rig...

I've written some simple tools to convert these models into Celestia cmod files. It's a fairly convoluted process: - Convert the asteroid model to a Wavefront OBJ file (via a Python script) - Convert the OBJ file to an ASCII cmod (via a C++ program that uses the assimp library) - Process the cmod fi...

Please check in these patches; it seems more important to get Celestia compiling on the new Ubuntu now than to figure out the most elegant g++ command line. (At some point, we should investigate upgrading to Eigen 3.0, since that is where new development is happening. I don't think it will be too di...

t00fri wrote:[Click on image by all means]

n2419_celSci.jpg

The dim globular NGC 2419 has an integrated m = 10.2, only.

Very nice! It looks quite like the 'grains of sugar on a black table' impression of globulars seen through a telescope.

--Chris

Since realistically, my entirely new cluster code involves also lots of dim stars (with appMag>20), the limiting magnitude had indeed to be pushed up significantly, leading to big-sized glaring bright stars, of course. But in case of the "scaled disk" style, the star sizes are about equal...

Incidentally, I did some benchmarks with your patch/VESTA shaders and found that with my older graphics cards at least (GeForce 7950 GT, ..., shader model 3.0), it slows down the fps quite dramatically compared e.g. to the "scaled disk" star style. Did you also notice this? I haven't benc...

Anyway, you did not reply to the main part of my above question: How can we use that star shader code (or improvements thereoff) for Celestia or Celestia.Sci, given that tacitly it was copyrighted by ASTOS solutions long ago?? I don't know. I thought it was different enough. I can talk to ASTOS abo...

Actually, ChrisL's MW method is interesting: he obtained the MW image by summing brightnesses of stars in the USNO's NOMAD catalog! Yes... With this method, perfect alignment is easy, and there's no need to manually remove stars--a simple apparent magnitude filter is all that's required. But there ...

Since ChrisL did work for ASTOS, it is best if he specifies which star code was first and how it may now be used in other software, including Celestia(.Sci). Since meanwhile, I developed the star rendering of Celestia.Sci quite a bit further, along with the rendering of all globular cluster stars w...