Celestia Forums

Hi, i've got rendering problems with Celestia 151 Ed. When I launch 'World of Celestia Tour' activity, outside of any planet atmosphere the sky becomes full of big circles. I've notice that the circles match to every asteroid in the asteroid's belt. This is not only annoying but also makes the rendering process too slow. For me, the only workaround that solves the problem is to turn off planet visualization (i'm a completely newbie in Celestia)

I have an ATI X1650 512Mb graphics card with the latest drivers installed, Intel Core 2 @2,67Ghz and 2Gb@800MHz RAM.

[Edit]

Also, when launching Celestia without any actitvity, the surface on Mars becomes inverted so Olympus Mons is a very very big hole The problem disappears when 'World of Celestia Tour' is on.

Needless to say that I love this program a lot and I'm a little frustrated for these issues. Has anybody noticed this? Any help would be very appreciated.

Thanks in advance.

neurogallo wrote:Hi, i've got rendering problems with Celestia 151 Ed. When I launch 'World of Celestia Tour' activity, outside of any planet atmosphere the sky becomes full of big circles.

More than likely this problem is caused by outdated graphics drivers. I don't see the circles on my machine.
Have you tried to update your drivers? Just a thought.

Bob's advice to update your graphics drivers is the best first option. You said you have the latest drivers, but did you uninstall your existing graphics driver via the Windows control panel (very important) before you installed the new one? If not, you need to do that, then reboot, reinstall the new driver, reboot, and see if the problem with Celestia151-ED still exists. If it does ...

There may be two files that MAY be causing you some trouble. The first is a sound file called "OpenAL32.dll". When Celestia151-ED is launched, that file becomes active. On some computers, the presence of that file will lock up the program, cause weird visual effects, or cause the program to crash.

The file is located in the main Celestia151-ED directory. A different copy of it is also located in a separate folder inside the directory. As a troubleshooting step, try moving the file out of Celestia151-ED directory. Just drag it somewhere safe. Then launch Celestia151-ED and see if you get any problems.

If the problem is still there, then move the file back into the main directory, since it is not the problem.

The 2nd issue may involve the use of the Lua Edu Tools add-on, that is part of the 151-ED package. On some computers only, running it will cause strange visual effects, including circles around stars and planets.

To see if this is the problem, open the "celestia.cfg" file inside the main Celestia151-ED directory, and locate the line "LuaHook "luahookinit.lua", and place a comment # symbol in front of it.

It should now read like this: #LuaHook "luahookinit.lua

Save the Celestia.cfg file, andf relaunch Celestia151-ED. If your problem is now solved, let us know. Vincent, the designer of Lua Edu Tools, will need to figure out what is causing the bug.

If it is not the problem, reopen Celestia.cfg and remove the comment symbol.

The last thing I can suggest is to cycle through the rendering controls. Press the [Ctrl+V] keys, while looking at a star or planet with the strange circles. See if they go away in any of the settings.

If not, I have no other comments, other than the possibility that your install may have been corrupted. Try re-downloading the main program "Celestia151-ED-WIN.zip", and reinstalling.

Let us know what happens.

Frank

I have found the same problem and traced it back to:

educational-extras\World_of_Celestia\Oort_Cloud

If I remove this folder, everything looks OK. But I'm not sure what are the implications or if there exists a better workaround

have found the same problem and traced it back to:

educational-extras\World_of_Celestia\Oort_Cloud

If I remove this folder, everything looks OK. But I'm not sure what are the implications or if there exists a better workaround

I will research this. The Oort cloud add-on works fine on my system, which has a Nvidia card, and on my school computers which have ATI cards, so I'm not sure what the problem could be. I will contact the designer of the oort cloud add-on and ask him for help.

launching Celestia without any actitvity, the surface on Mars becomes inverted so Olympus Mons is a very very big hole The problem disappears when 'World of Celestia Tour' is on.
Needless to say that I love this program a lot and I'm a little frustrated for these issues. Has anybody noticed this? Any help would be very appreciated.

Sorry about not answering this before. The problem is actually an optical illusion and is not limited to the volcanoes. Craters will suddenly become hills, if you keep staring at Mars. This is apparently caused by the shadow lighting (NormalMap) on the texture for Mars. If you stare at Mars for a minute or less, the inverted mountains will become real mountains and the craters will invert back into the ground where they belong.

To demonstrate this, look at the enclosed screenshot for a minute or so. In most people, some or all of the craters will flip from being holes ... to mountains ... then back again.



I am used to it. I don't know if it is limited only to the texture I have selected for Mars, or if other Mars textures have the same problem. Anyone ....

Frank

I also experienced this rendering problem and fixed it thanks to Poncho's tip.

My graphics card is an ATI Mobility Radeon X1400, so it seems that some ATI cards don't like the Oort Cloud add on.

Searching this forums I found in another thread, that you can change the type of rendering with CTRL-V. In the Celestia Keystroke Summary this key is described as Cycle through vertex shading options. Press it several times until you get the best for your system working result. The pink balls go away, but every setting looks a bit different. According to the text messages on the screen it looks like open GL 2.0 is not working with my ATI 3870 with newest driver version 8.62 (just mentioned for these guys always blaming outdated drivers )