Celestia 1.6.0-User's Guide - completed

[fsgregs]

The Celestia User's Guide has been updated to 1.6.0. You can download it at http://www.celestiamotherlode.net/creators/fsgregs/Celestia1.6.0-UsersGuide.zip

[BobHegwood]

Thanks very much for that, Frank.
Much appreciated by the Brain-Dead

[Reiko]

Thank you

[Fenerit]

Very appreciated, Frank

[bh]

Yes... thanks Frank... this will help me a lot.

[Andy74]

Frank,

thank you!
Your User's Guide (the former versions as well as the new one) is an absolute must-have for every Celestia user. Both comprehensive and clearly arranged -- in any case helpful.
Also appreciated by me.

Andy

[duds26]

Thank you, user guides are very helpful.
Especially when up to date

[jogad]

Hello

I am currently translating the guide into French and because of that I read it carefully.
It is easy to read and very comprehensive but I have a doubt on some very few points.

About Locations

Note that if the location is on the opposite side of a planet from where you are, Celestia will take a shortcut through the planet and stop above the location you select, but facing into space. You will have to rotate your view to see the location (see later sections for how to rotate your view).

This behavior is fixed in celestia 1.6.0 (and even in celestia 1.5.1).

About grids :

horizontal grid
Celestia 1.6.0 now draws a coordinate grid on the screen that is horizontal to a planet equator, and perpendicular to its pole. The gird will be drawn for any planet, moon or spacecraft.

Are you sure? for me it looks like the description of the celestial grid.

about axis

a) Show Body Axis - displays three arrows, representing the X, Y and Z coordinate directions of the object. The Z comes out the north pole. The X axis issues from the position of the vernal equinox at the J2000 epoch in the mean equatorial plane (e.g. - the zero degree line of longitude at the equator), and the Y axis come out of the equator at a 90o angle to that.

b) Show Frame Axis - displays three X, Y and Z arrows similar to the above, but the arrows are oriented to the internal body frame of the object, providing a reference to developers and model makers in orienting their models in Celestia.

Once again that sounds strange for me. I think that the Z axis comes out of the north pole but the X is rather oriented from the center of the body to the point of latitude 0° and longitude 0°.
And for the Frame Axis, it is fixed in space with X pointing to the vernal point and Z pointing to the ecliptic north pole. I don't understand your internal body frame.

for my translation, I provide this little picture to explain how to find the Y axis when X an Z are known.


about limit of knowledge
You provide 2 pictures with a link to Mercury.
Unfortunately there is no alternate surface for Mercury in the standard distribution of Celestia 1.6.0

I suggest this link pointing to Callisto
cel://SyncOrbit/Sol:Jupiter:Callisto/20 ... rc=0&ver=3

Finally I was very happy to see an explanation on how the X buton work . I never understood how to use it . Unfortunately, this does not seem to work properly. Or at least not reliably. Is there something else to know about it

Cheers

[Fenerit]

Frank, at page 41 is said that:

To save a compressed file, choose the format you desire. You may wish to try different choices and determine which one works best for your computer. The free DivX video codec available from http://www.divx.com provides excellent compression and quality, and is quite fast. If you want to create many video files with Celestia and are concerned with file size, we recommend you download and install DivX onto your computer, then save your videos as a compressed DivX file.

This is uncorrect. The DivX video codec is subdivided in two parts: the decoder and the encoder. The former is free and usually is shipped within the most famous "codecs packs" and video players, the latter IS NOT FREE and is copyrighted. By installing the free codec (decoder) no compressor is showed in the relevant Celestia's video settings window.

[BobHegwood]

About Locations

Note that if the location is on the opposite side of a planet from where you are, Celestia will take a shortcut through the planet and stop above the location you select, but facing into space. You will have to rotate your view to see the location (see later sections for how to rotate your view).

This behavior is fixed in celestia 1.6.0 (and even in celestia 1.5.1).

This behavior is NOT fixed (at least on my Vista system)...
Or, perhaps it is the way in which I use the locations.
When I wish to visit Jestr's rendition of his stonehenge model, for example,
the behavior is exactly as Frank describes it. I still have to rotate my view
somehow in order to see the model in its intended state.

Dunno if this is a big deal or not, but I just thought I'd mention it so
you know about it.

As always, thanks very much for your insights here.
-Brain-Dead Bob

[jogad]

When I wish to visit Jestr's rendition of his stonehenge model, for example,
the behavior is exactly as Frank describes it. I still have to rotate my view
somehow in order to see the model in its intended state.

In that part of the guide, Franks is explaining how to deal with locations.
And YOUR Stonehenge is not a location as it should be but a spacecraft

Try to edit the Stonehenge.ssc file like this

Code: Select all

Location "Stonehenge" "Sol/Earth"  #### add this section
{
LabelColor [ 1 1 0 ]
LongLat [-1.8587 51.2117 -0.002]
Importance 1
Type "City"
}

"StModel" "Sol/Earth" #### renaming the model ######
{
       Class "spacecraft"
       InfoURL "http://www.english-heritage.org.uk/stonehenge/"
       Mesh "stonehenge.3ds"
       Radius 0.098
       LongLat [-1.8587 51.2117 -0.002]
       Color [ 0 0 0 ]                                                 
       Albedo 0.3
}

AltSurface "Stonehenge" "Sol/Earth"
{
   Texture "Stonehenge.ctx"

}

if the cities labels are enabled you will have the correct behavior. Maybe a little too far, yet.

[BobHegwood]

In that part of the guide, Franks is explaining how to deal with locations.
And YOUR Stonehenge is not a location as it should be but a spacecraft

Okay, I'm a bit slow, but I see what you mean...
Thanks very much for the explanation.

Take care, Brain-Dead

[tellmeaboutit]

Hi everyone,

Before asking my question, I need to inform you that I am a struggling newbie. My learning curve is very steep, but I follow detailed instructions well. Please don't assume I know anything when replying to my post. You my find it helpful to know that my OS is Windows XP home SP3.

I am pleased to see that Celestia 1.6.0 has a users' guide, but after reading through this thread, I am concerned that I may need to need to know some programming to use it. I will await a reply in regard to this before downloading the Users' Guide, in the event that its use requires knowledge and experience I don't possess.

I wish to record and use a video of a view I have customized and bookmarked. My intended use is to create a screensaver using a Microsoft program written for this purpose available as a free download. I recorded a five minute segment and saved it to My Videos. I allowed Celestia to save it in default format. (I have zero experience with anything related to videos. I am looking at htis project as a learning experience as well a from the desire to reach the end goal of creating a screensaver.) I found myself unable to view the recording in both Windows Media Player and Apple Quicktime. The remainder of my post will deal with Media Player only.

The problem is obviously tied to the codec, a subject I have no understanding of. (I know that I have the ability to view AVI format; so that is not part of my problem.) Media Player gave me the error code:c00d1199-can't play the file, not supported codec used to compress file. I found no program available on the computer which I could use. Turning to online help, I found that the original error is listed as:80040218-no combination of filters could be found to render the stream. Further in that thread I found a loooooong list fo four digit codes meaning nothing to me and some solutions utilizing programming code. I explored every conceivable combination of properties for my saved video, finding nothing resembling a codec.

How do I proceed from here? Do I try to modify my saved file? Do I delete my saved file and start from scratch? Is the Users' Guide in a format that I can use without advanced Knowledge?

Your reply will be greatly appreciated.

tellmeaboutit

[Andy74]

tellmeaboutit,

I am using the very same operating system as you.
With Celestia 1.6.0 I recorded a short movie and could watch it without problems both with my VLC media player and with the Windows media player 11.
I used the Microsoft MPEG-4 Video codec v1. You should try again from scratch and play with the different settings that are offered by Celestia.
The Celestia user's guide is very comprehensive and absolutely appropriate for newbies. You don't need special skills to understand the instructions. And you will also find a section about recording movies.
Just go ahead and don't be afraid of anything. Many people with very different backgrounds are using Celestia.

Regards
Andy

[tellmeaboutit]

Andy74,

Thanks for your reply.

I used the link provided at the beginning of this thread for downloading the Users" Guide. (Here is where the "newbie" stuff comes to play.) I saved the program to a downloaded programs file I have created in the My Documents folder. I have searched the download and not found the Users' Guide as such. Selecting to install the download indicates that I will be installing the same version of Celestia I currently have (1.6.0). My understanding is that I may encounter one of three problems: a program can't be installed on top of an existing program, a duplicate copy will create conflicts, or my saved bookmarks, etc. will be lost.

How do I proceed from here? Thanks for your support.

tellmeaboutit

[tellmeaboutit]

I guess this is part of my inexperience. I tried to download the Users Manual via the link in the first post in this thread unsuccessfully. I then uninstalled Celestia and downloaded using the link successfully. I installed Celestia again, and all is well.

A quick review of the Users Guide indicates that it is very well thuoght out and wirtten.

Why did I have to use this round about way? I'm sure it has something to do with my methods. Your responses will be appreciated.

tellmeaboutit

[selden]

tellmeaboutit,

If the download worked as intended, the file containing the User's Guide is named
Celestia1.6.0-UsersGuide.zip

You might try using Window's Search program to find it.
There should be a link to Search in your Start menu, probably in the lower right corner.

Once you've found that zip file, you should double-click on it. That should open it almost as if it were a directory, but you'll see the option "Extract all files" at the upper left under the heading "Folder Tasks".

Clicking on the "Extract all files" option will start a "Wizard" to take you through the steps to place the extracted User's Guide where you want.

While you can double-click on the Users Guide to read it while it's still in the zip archive, you'll get better performance later if you do extract it.

Does this help?

[tellmeaboutit]

seldon,

Thanks for your reply.

I do have the Users Guide installed, but experienced problems doing so. My original install of Celestia was about six weeks ago. A search of the files under My Computer-->Local Disc C--> Program Files, both before and after my first attempt to download the Users Guide, revealed nothing even resembling Users Guide. Having nothing saved other than one bookmark, I decided that starting over from scratch was my best solution.

After uninstalling and reinstalling Celestia, I searched again for the Users Guide and found no such thing. I then used the provided link to download the Users Guide successfully. Navigating again to the Program Files folder, I found the (not zipped) Users Guide inside the Celestia folder. For easier access, I moved the file to a folder I have created in My Documents for similar files on other programs. All is to my liking now.

The question I have is in regard to the mechanics I had to employ to accomplish the task. I am unsure whether a glitch or bug is responsible, or my methods are the culprit. The only time I have had to use this approach was in a program where the support team for that program advised me that I had to use that method for an optional download.

Thanks again for your time and efforts.

tellmeaboutit

[selden]

Sorry, I misunderstood your problem.

The user's guide is not included with Celestia.
It must be downloaded separately.

It's available on the "Celestia Motherlode" on the page
http://celestiamotherlode.net/catalog/d ... ation.html

[tellmeaboutit]

seldon,

Yes I got that. The problem was having to do a fresh install to make the link work for me on this computer.---Thanks.

tellmeaboutit