Celestia Forums

wcomer- The best thing about quaternions, in my experience (game programming), is that they interpolate nicely. Because quaternions exist in a "spherical" space, when you interpolate between them you get smooth transitions, unlike with matrices. 3D character animation generally makes heavy use of qu...

I made a 32k virtual texture from the BlueMarble images, myself, a while back. What I'd really like is a 32k version with the arctic ice in place. The BlueMarble texture looks kind of artificial. Does anyone know of a more realistic high-res earth texture? Out of curiosity, do you know which compres...

I remember a thread where Chris was asking about alternative 3D file formats (I can't seem to find the thread at the moment...). One of the features he was looking for was the ability to include animation data in the model files. Since I can't find the thread, I don't know what the results of his se...

What's really needed to clarify Celestia's various coordinate systems is a set of diagrams . . . Would something like this do? http://www.next-semester.com/img/Coord_Follow.gif Admittedly, it's not very pretty but does it convey the necessary information? If so, I could whip up similar diagrams for...

My bad! :oops: Of course, you're right! I always got those terms confused! Eigen is german for "to own", Euler was the mathematician. I apologize for my brain fart. Anyway, although my terms may have been wrong, it appears that my understanding of the concept was sound. Eigen vectors are useful in l...

Hey, don- I'm not talking from Celestia scripting experience, but rather from 3D graphics programming, so take this with a grain of sodium chloride. :wink: Position will be the 3D vector specifying the cartesian position of the observer. It's just like plotting a point on a 3D graph. X, Y, and Z. I ...

Sure, billybob. You have a website. Perhaps you could mirror them there.

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Done. These are pretty interesting files, so they should be mirrored somewhere. I haven't looked, so I don't know if they are. If they aren't, they should be.

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You guys are all making incorrect assumptions of how textures are used in games. The textures in MS CFS III (and definitely those before) are not specifically based on imaging of the Earth. Using a Blue-Marble type texture, for instance, would be very inefficient for the requirements of a game. The ...

Currently, orbits are drawn behind everything. It's not really a bug, per se, and I believe Chris has a solution in mind and plans to implement it for 1.3.2.

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I've always taken the oposite view that if its not disproven its still possible. True, absence of proof is not proof of absence. However, there are fundamental problems with denying the importance of evidence. I consider myself a "positivist". That is, if the theory fits observation, it is useful. ...

I have no reservations in answering your poll, though I fear some may take offense at so personal a question.

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I downloaded the .cpp file and built it under Windows. The only problem I ran into was that the math.h header wasn't included. After adding the include, it compiled fine. I don't have any source images to try it out but, as far as I know, the stdin/sdiout "piping" tricks work in Windows as well as x...

It looks like that was the problem. For some reason, it seems that everytime I start Celestia, the following check boxes become checked: Orbit / Moons Orbit / Planets That's a remnant of the way orbits used to work. There's an overall "draw orbits" option, specified by the Orbits checkbox, and an o...

t00fri wrote:No need for all this. Just convert the grayscale to RGB and proceed.

Yes, of course! I had forgotten about that. Much simpler. Like I said, though, I can't use Photoshop at the moment so I was speaking from memory. Thanks for the assist, Fridger!

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RichText is just a markup language, like html (but uglier), to provide more formating for text. The RICHTX32.OCX file contains all the code needed for windows to use the Rich Text ActiveX control. It's harmless. You could probably find the file for download from Microsoft even. I thought it was incl...

I know that i dont get the info, i tryed it. so how do I do that(duplicate)? I haven't thought abou that. good idea, thanks. Unfortunately, my PC is going through some tough times at the moment and I am unable to run Photoshop. :cry: But, if I remember correctly, there is a panel that you can view ...

as far as i know, you can't do a normalmap from a bumpmap in the photoshop. the programs needs 3 or 4 different channels(RGB, R, G, B). bumpmaps don't have 3 or 4, so you have to make the normalmaps from the surface maps. I think. Making normal maps from surface textures is not going to provide the...

One other thing I should point out: The method given above is the current "standard" method of generating normal maps. There are, however, some interesting, if unconventional, methods being investigated by certain other individuals on the forum. These new methods involve keeping a much higher level ...

Harpeum wrote:And can I create a normal map from bump map. Maybe using photoshop?

Exactly. nVidia provides a command-line utility and a photoshop plug-in that do just that. You can find them here:

Photoshop plug-in

Command-line utility

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