Just started...problems :(

[selden]

I wouldn't expect the coloration to be that flat away from the glowing areas. It's consistent with Celestia not being able to find the Texture image. What gets drawn if you comment out the NightTexture? If the moon is drawn as a smooth globe, then that's probably what's wrong.

[Apollonius]

Sorry for the delayed response, I've been having computer problems. Imagine. This last one resulted in basically having to upgrade to XP. That's all well and good, but now my SAME video card, drivers, and adapter have fewer options available under XP. Multitextures are now gone, for instance.

What happened? I tried looking for XP-specific drivers, but didn't have any luck.

Oh, and to answer your question, when I comment out the night texture, I get the day texture. I really think the way it looks is due to my system setup, or the addon itself. The star shines in the ultraviolet spectrum, and it's not terribly bright (?)

I'm also not terribly bright.

Can't underestimate the effect of that. :p

I also have a theory that the pixelated nebula textures and heavily banded gradients I'm seeing are due to my 24-bit true color video card. I also see them in programs like NoLimits, and certain screensavers.

Oh, and I also just got V. 1.6.0. YAY.

[selden]

My guess is that XP is using Microsoft's OpenGL v1.1 software driver, not the Intel 810 OpenGL hardware graphics driver.

Exactly what does Celestia say about your graphics drivers?

run Celestia
select the Help menu
select the item OpenGL Info

Exactly what is shown in the first four lines of that popup window?
(You can copy-and-paste it.)
That will reveal whether the software or hardware drivers are being used.

Try turning on 3D hardware acceleration:
exit from Celestia and any other 3D graphics programs (e.g. games)
right-mouse-button click on the destop's backdrop image
in the popup menu, select Properties
select the tab Settings
select the button Advanced
select the tab General
in the Compaibility section,
select the option "Apply the new display settings without restarting"
select the tab Troubleshoot
In the Hardware Acceleration section,
move the slider all the way to the right (to Full)
Select OK and close all the popup windows

The screen should go blank briefly.
Then run Celestia and see if it works any differently

p.s.
I was just reading the specs for your laptop.
Unfortunately, it looks like it can use only 64K colors when used with 1024x768 resolution, and can use full color only at 640x480 resolution. I don't know if these limitations might be related to the problems you're seeing.

[Apollonius]

I'm sorry, i should have been more specific. I'm now using an HP Pavilion XE783. My open GL info has reverted back to exactly what it was before, on my old computer (at the beginning of this thread).

Vendor: Microsoft Corporation

Renderer: GDI Generic

Version: 1.1.0

Max simultaneous textures: 1

Max texture size: 1024

Point size range: 0.500000 - 10.000000



Supported Extensions:

GL_WIN_swap_hint

GL_EXT_bgra

GL_EXT_paletted_texture


How do I make sure I'm running the hardware openGL version? Whenever I search at intel.com, I wind up at the same place that tries to give me a driver that's older than the one I have...from the actual intel website. LOL. My current driver is an Intel 82810 version 6.13.1.3198, and it's trying to give me version 6.13.1.3196. I actually tried to install that one, thinking that perhaps the newer one wouldn't run on XP for some reason, but I still didn't get any more openGL render paths, and it made no difference in my openGL version, so I went back to the newer version.

I'm sorry I keep bothering the board with these problems that would be solved by a new video card, but thank you for your patience! I'm kinda the epitome of 'starving artist' at the moment.

[EDIT] Oh, and hardware acceleration is set to "full", yet when I use the program Nolimits (roller coaster sim), it says I have no 3D rendering available. All of these problems happened as a result of upgrading to XP recently.

[selden]

The OpenGL information "Microsoft Corporation / GDI Generic" shown by Celestia indicates that it is detecting only Microsoft's software OpenGL drivers and not Intel's hardware OpenGL acceleration -- it's as if no drivers actually got installed.

I'm sorry, but at this point I'm at a loss. I suspect, however, that this might be a relatively frequent problem. Someone with more experience with Intel drivers and chipsets might be able to help. I suggest doing a Web search for some combinations of
intel 82810 opengl driver problems
That should locate some postings to Web forums where people have discussed the issue.

[Apollonius]

I've been looking for hours, and I've managed to learn one thing: microsoft hates openGL.

"The video drivers on the Windows XP CD-ROM (That are installed by default) do not support any form of hardware accelerated OpenGL, so even if your card does, games will fail to run until you install an updated driver from your video cards manufacturer. What would happen in this case would be the game might spot the software mode OpenGL renderer that ships as part of Windows (for certain Screensavers, not suitable to run hardware accelerated OpenGL) and attempt to use it which would bring up the opengl sub system load failures type errors"

"the drivers written by Microsoft for Windows XP do not support OpenGL."

There was also a driver released by HP, for the exact computer that I have, that was supposed to add more openGL support for people upgrading from WInME to WinXP...like I did. Needless to say, I was the most excited about that one. It didn't work. I still am showing generic openGL rendering of 1.1 version openGL, with no render paths open.

I just can't believe more people haven't been screaming about this on this board, because they're screaming about it on just about every other board for games and programs that use openGL.

In any case, I wanted to be able to leave some kind of helpful information for the tiny handful of people that were in my boat, but I think I'm SOL until I get a new video card.

Celestia is so worth it, though. :p Who needs food when you have eye candy?

[selden]

People don't scream so much about it because it's one of the initial FAQs: the first thing to do is to install the driver provided by the graphics vendor.

a. use Control Panel / Add-Remove programs to deinstall the current graphics drivers.
b. reboot
c. cancel out of Window's offer to install drivers
d. install new drivers using the vendor's installation program
e. reboot
f. reconfigure screen resolution, etc

Not doing both reboots is the most common cause of driver installation failures. They seem to load but do nothing useful.

[Apollonius]

Ok...

I've read the FAQ. We're talking about 2 different things, apparently.

I HAVE updated the drivers, just the way you described, to the drivers that Intel said were the right ones.

It didn't work.

But never mind, I give up.

Thanks very much for your help and patience though.

[Apollonius]

But never mind, I give up.

NOT.

YAY! I fixed the problem!! In case someone else needs the info, I'll say exactly what I did. I FINALLY found a copy of "opengl32.dll" to download, backed up my original, and replaced it with the new one. I restarted, and BAM. I have 1.1.2 openGL again. I still can't believe it, either...I did that totally as a last resort.

I don't think anybody else is going to have this same problem, but if they do, and they can't find this DLL anywhere, I can send it on to them if they PM me. I would post the link to where I got it, but my instincts say 'better not'. I mean, I got what I wanted from there, but you just can't trust DLL download sites, for the most part.

I'm really sorry I got so frustrated.

And thanks again for the help, Selden!

[John Van Vliet]

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