Qt Celestia

[Christophe]

On a related note, Aaron Seigo's keynote at the KDE4 release event includes some demonstrations of KDE applications running on OSX (53:30) and Windows (1:02:10). The funny thing is that their demo app is KStars

GetHotNewStuff as demonstrated on KStars to distribute star catalogs is really something that Celestia could benefit from.

[Andy74]

Andy74,
Are you sure you have Platform SDK 2003 server sp1? I downloaded this and Visual C++ 2005 express edition the other day and didn't have any problems building QT4.3.3. I also built QT4 from the Visual C++ 2005 express command prompt. I also built QT4 BEFORE Visual C++ 2005 express edition was updated to SP1 the next day by Windows Update. If you built from the GUI, There was a setup procedure that modified the path,s in Visual C++ 2005 express to put the Platform SDK 2003 folders before the Visual C++ 2005 folders.
See here. http://www.celestiaproject.net/forum/viewtopic ... 8552#98552

But this is what I did to get the QT4 build to work. http://www.celestiaproject.net/forum/viewtopic ... 8506#98506

I think? maybe Chris also had problems building QT4 with Visual C++ 2005 express? That may be why he is using MinGW.
cartrite

cartrite,

thank you very much for your detailed remarks.
Well, I actually don't have Platform SDK for Windows server 2003 SP1 but
Platform SDK for Windows server 2003 R2 as I wrote above. This is a newer version.
And I didn't notice any update of the Visual C++ express by Windows update.
I tried to build from the command line. I wasn't aware of a GUI.
As my knowledge about compilers isn't the biggest, I didn't want to reinstall my environment, because "never change a running system" and compiling Celestia from the CVS sources works fine.
Anyway, thank you for your reply!

Andy

[cartrite]

cartrite,

thank you very much for your detailed remarks.
Well, I actually don't have Platform SDK for Windows server 2003 SP1 but
Platform SDK for Windows server 2003 R2 as I wrote above. This is a newer version.
And I didn't notice any update of the Visual C++ express by Windows update.
I tried to build from the command line. I wasn't aware of a GUI.
As my knowledge about compilers isn't the biggest, I didn't want to reinstall my environment, because "never change a running system" and compiling Celestia from the CVS sources works fine.

The MS 2005 express GUI starts when I click on celestia.vcproj. It's pretty cool. As far as QT4, you could also try the MinGW version. It took all the courage I could muster to switch build environments. But I didn't really switch. I can still build Celestia with the 2003 toolkit and the older sdk. I just set the environment variables differently.
cartrite

[cartrite]

This is weird. I just built Celestia-QT4 from the latest SVN. I was surprised at startup by seeing the sun was orange. After the earth stopped loading, I went back to to sun and noticed that the sun was using /lores/mars.jpg as the texture. I verified this by renaming mars.jpg and then the sun looked normal.
How is the sun using lores/mars.jpg as it's texture? No mention of it in celestia.cfg. The svn version built the regular way doesn't show this. I haven't checked windows qt4 yet. I noticed this with a linux build.
Here is a screen shot.



I just got the Win qt version built and this doesn't happen. I guess this is a linux problem. Does mac do this?
cartrite

[cartrite]

SVN revision 4072 fixes this problem with mars being used as the Suns texture.
cartrite

[Cham]

SVN revision 4072 fixes this problem with mars being used as the Suns texture.
cartrite

Do you mean your problem is solved ? If so, this is because Chris just fixed another bug, related to the star STC definitions. I noticed some texture problems on stars too, today. Chris fixed it.

[cartrite]

SVN revision 4072 fixes this problem with mars being used as the Suns texture.
cartrite

Do you mean your problem is solved ? If so, this is because Chris just fixed another bug, related to the star STC definitions. I noticed some texture problems on stars too, today. Chris fixed it.

Yes, I already responded to an email at source forge to let Chris know because he asked if the star.cpp fix also fixed my problem. I was just posting here too in case someone who never had the svn revision I had to produce this was wondering what was going on. This qt4 bug was only around a few hours.
cartrite

[chris]

Qt4's OpenGL support seems very good. I just added support for multisample antialiasing: six lines of code, and suddenly a feature that was only available on Windows can be used on any platform. (This is not line antiliasing, but the full-scene antialiasing configurable via the AntialiasingSamples setting in celestia.cfg.)

--Chris

[dirkpitt]

Qt4's OpenGL support seems very good. I just added support for multisample antialiasing: six lines of code, and suddenly a feature that was only available on Windows

Just to clarify, FSAA has been available for other platforms too in the official 1.5.0 version of Celestia (non-Qt4).

[chris]

Qt4's OpenGL support seems very good. I just added support for multisample antialiasing: six lines of code, and suddenly a feature that was only available on Windows

Just to clarify, FSAA has been available for other platforms too in the official 1.5.0 version of Celestia (non-Qt4).

Sorry, DW. I checked through the cpp files to see if anyone was using the aaSamples property from the config file. But, I forgot to check the .mm files and missed out on the fact that the Mac version of Celestia does in fact support antialiasing.

--Chris

[Andy74]

Chris,

I think your last glext.cpp fix was no good . It generated a link error also in my environment and didn't help cartrite either ...

Can we return to the old setup?

F.

Dear Fridger,

after I built QT4 successfully with MS Visual C++ 2005 Express I went on with compiling CelestiaQt (thanks for your instructions earlier in this thread). It seems everything is working well until finally the link error you mentioned (see quote) occurrs. My big hope is that I can get around this with the version of glext.cpp before Chris' changes you addressed in your post. Where can I find that file? Could you perhaps provide it? In the latter case I'd be happy if I may send you my E-mail address via PM.

Regards
Andy

[Epimetheus]

I have Qt4.3.4 configured to run with VS 2005 on Win XP. Took a little tweaking but it works. Here's my setup for Visual Studio 2005, this assumes you've already installed Qt4 on XP.

I created QTDIR and QMAKESPEC environment variables. QTDIR is the path to the Qt folder and QMAKESPEC is the platform you're compiling on, for me it's win32-msvc2005 (Visual Studio 2005).

QTDIR = e.g. C:\Qt\4.3.4
QMAKESPEC = e.g. win32-msvc2005

You'll need to add %QTDIR%\bin to your PATH.

Now create a new VC++ MakeFile project and access the Project's Property pages.
Project -> Property Pages -> Configuration Properties -> NMake ->

DEBUG
=======
General
-------
Build Command Line : nmake debug-all
Rebuild All Command Line: nmake debug-clean debug-all
Clean Command Line : nmake debug-clean
Output : foo.exe

Intellisense
------------

Preprocessor Definitions:
WIN32;NDEBUG;UNICODE;QT_LARGEFILE_SUPPORT;QT_DLL;

Include Search Path:
$(QTDIR)/include/QtCore;
$(QTDIR)/include/QtGui;
$(QTDIR)/include;
$(QTDIR)/include/QtOpenGL;
$(QTDIR)/include/mkspecs/win32-msvc2005;

RELEASE
=======
General
-------
Build Command Line : nmake release-all
Rebuild All Command Line: nmake release-clean release-all
Clean Command Line : nmake release-clean
Output : foo.exe

Intellisense
------------

Preprocessor Definitions:
WIN32;NDEBUG;UNICODE;QT_LARGEFILE_SUPPORT;QT_DLL;

Include Search Path:
$(QTDIR)/include/QtCore;
$(QTDIR)/include/QtGui;
$(QTDIR)/include;$(QTDIR)/include/QtOpenGL;
$(QTDIR)/include/mkspecs/win32-msvc2005

------------------------------------------

I setup a Qt toolbar in Visual Studio with the following commands.
(See menu: Tools -> External tools...)

Title: QMake (Project File Generation Mode)
Command : %QTDIR%\bin\qmake.exe
Arguments: -project

Title: QMake (Makefile Generation Mode)
Command : %QTDIR%\bin\qmake.exe
Arguments: -makefile -spec $(QMAKESPEC)

Title: QtDesigner
Command : %QTDIR%\bin\designer.exe
Arguments:

Title: QtAssistant
Command : %QTDIR%\bin\assistant.exe
Arguments:

[cartrite]

Chris and Vincent,
Nice job on your respective projects. I like the bookmarks toolbar and the time dialog popup.
Here is a peek for those not building QT4. It's really starting to get there. QT4-R-4304 running on Linux.

QT4-bookmarks.jpg

cartrite

[Epimetheus]

AWESOME, cartrite! Looking good!

brent

[chris]

Chris and Vincent,
Nice job on your respective projects. I like the bookmarks toolbar and the time dialog popup.
Here is a peek for those not building QT4. It's really starting to get there. QT4-R-4304 running on Linux.

QT4-bookmarks.jpg

cartrite

I'm glad you like the new bookmarks toolbar. In fact, it's not that new: a lot of the ideas are borrowed from Christophe's KDE version of Celestia, which has offered a bookmarks toolbar with thumbnail icons for some time. However, it wasn't possible to reuse much of that code because it was heavily dependent on features of the KDE environment that don't exist in Qt4.

--Chris

[Vincent]

Chris and Vincent,
Nice job on your respective projects. I like the bookmarks toolbar and the time dialog popup.

Steve,

Thanks a lot for your continuous help on testing the Qt4 time dialog.

The bookmark toolbar is indeed a great addition! It is both very handy and nice looking.
Well done Chris and Christophe!

[ElChristou]

Chris and Vincent,
Nice job on your respective projects. I like the bookmarks toolbar and the time dialog popup.
Here is a peek for those not building QT4. It's really starting to get there. QT4-R-4304 running on Linux....

How is the dropped bookmark tool? (the bar is nice but with dozens of bookmarks I fear it won't be of a great help...)
What about the idea of tagging bookmarks with version, author and why not description? Not wanted or just later?

[cartrite]

How is the dropped bookmark tool? (the bar is nice but with dozens of bookmarks I fear it won't be of a great help...)

You can easily move them back to the Bookmarks Menu with drag and drop.

[chris]

Chris and Vincent,
Nice job on your respective projects. I like the bookmarks toolbar and the time dialog popup.
Here is a peek for those not building QT4. It's really starting to get there. QT4-R-4304 running on Linux....

How is the dropped bookmark tool? (the bar is nice but with dozens of bookmarks I fear it won't be of a great help...)
What about the idea of tagging bookmarks with version, author and why not description? Not wanted or just later?

There's a bookmarks organizer that lets you move bookmarks between the tool bar and bookmarks menu. You can create folders of bookmarks, nest them to an arbitrary depth, and even move a bookmark folder to the tool bar. There's a description field that you can edit in the bookmarks organizer; the description is shown as a tooltip when the mouse hovers over a tool bar bookmark. I'm checking in a change today that lets you create bookmarks that either don't affect the time, or that set the time to the current system time. You can create one of these near the location of your home and add it to the tool bar, giving you a one click way to see what's visible in the sky tonight. There's no author information for bookmarks--it just doesn't seem relevant. Cel URLs (which is how bookmarks are represented) are tagged with a version, but it's not currently shown in the UI.

--Chris

[Epimetheus]

Here's another screencap for those of you curious to see the progress on the experimental Celestia Qt4 GUI. Thanks to some tips from Chris and a few slaps upside the VC++ linker's "head," the Qt app compiled without much trouble. NOTE: You will need to download and place the libjpeg2.lib library somewhere in your LIB path so the C++ linker can find it if you wish to build the Qt4 front-end.

Great job developers!

Screencap of the experimental Celestia Qt4 GUI.



Full-size screencap 400KB

Download libjpeg2.lib
/~claurel/celestia/files/libs/libjpeg2.zip

- brent p.