Celestia Forums

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Added 04.12.2018, 18:06:

Hi everyone,

I am happy to let you know that the CelestialMatters site is up and alive again!

Big thanks are due to the help by the Ibiblio staff.

Cheers,
Fridger

Thanx.

Hi Celestians

The CelestialMatters.org website seems to be offline for quite a while now.
Does anybody know what's going on?
Thanks for any information.

Regards
Andy

The CelestialMatters.org website seems to be offline for quite a while now.
Does anybody know what's going on?
Thanks for any information.

The site is now a parked domain and is sadly offline/inactive forever. Its domain expired a while ago and t00fri is inactive for a long time, which means he cannot restore the website. Sorry . If you're looking for Celestia.sci it's still in private use.

R.I.P Celestial Matters

An absolutely logical result.

Such a shame really. Fridger really was/is a genius in making Celestia shine. His reworkings of galaxies and the new mechanics of Celestia as revealed on Celestia.sci (and formerly CelestiaMatters), were really stunning. Too bad he chose to withhold this great effort from the general public and use it only privately.

fsgregs wrote:Such a shame really. Fridger really was/is a genius in making Celestia shine. His reworkings of galaxies and the new mechanics of Celestia as revealed on Celestia.sci (and formerly CelestiaMatters), were really stunning. Too bad he chose to withhold this great effort from the general public and use it only privately.

yup, default galaxies needed the improvement and black holes needed gravitational leasing

Yes... such a shame, I used to visit quite often.

Totally agree with Frank - Fridger doesn't seem to want to visit us here.

bh wrote:Totally agree with Frank - Fridger doesn't seem to want to visit us here.

would there be a susesser to Fridger to add gravitational leasing and improve galaxy rendering?

BH:

Its my understanding that Fridger worked on both concepts for at least 2 years, based on his posts. The screenshots he posted were really great, so the code is probably extensive. Maybe, if anyone in our forum is at least on cordial terms with him ... maybe ... they could get him to share even some of his new code for Celestia 1.6.2. Its doubtful, given his semi-hostile emotions toward others who have "polluted" Celestia with frivolous stuff, but its worth a try.

There is another thread about this:

https://celestia.space/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=20610&hilit=celestiamatters

I read the thread. The entire point was the false promises of public release in the near future. We cannot ever know if
Fridger really planned to share his work with the world or not, but constantly promising to do so any day now, ... releasing tantalizing screenshots, seeking compliments about his work, promising to release soon ... then ignoring it all for not a few months but for over 5 years, is the part we all object to. If you want to make Celestia private, so be it. Most of his visitors to Celestiamatters would leave immediately. Lying to them about a pending public release you never intended to make, possibly to keep an audience around solely to admire your work, is the immoral component here.

To be honest, I don't really care about Celestia.sci anymore.

But Fridger should at least release the old utilities, which were free for years.

He could post them here.

fsgregs - what is your evidence that Fridger never intended to release celestia.Sci and was lying.

My assessment of the state of the code when I was working on it (note I removed my copies of the code when I stopped working on it, so don't bother asking me for it), is that it was not ready for release - lots of rough edges that needed to be fixed. Probably that would be fixable faster if more people were working on it, but that's a risk you take with small teams of people (I believe it is 2) working in their spare time.

A software project taking a lot longer than planned does not mean the initial estimates were deliberate lies.

ajtribick wrote:A software project taking a lot longer than planned does not mean the initial estimates were deliberate lies.

Missing a deadline is usual, but disappearing with hundreds of hours of forum threads and with a lot of emotional investment is very-very unusual.

Should I say insulting?

If Celestia.sci was not ready, then why did he disappear?

It doesn't make any sense. If it is an abandonware, then share it.

Celestia 2.0 can be built from it. Fridger will have his name in it in either case, this is his legacy.

I don't want to belabor the issue, but Fridger kept making his promises of his pending public release for at least 5 years ... maybe more. Repeatedly, folks on the site asked him to make even a few interim releases ... please share with us your new version of Celestia to date, with beautiful galaxies, or new X or new Y. He could have done so. Each time, he just kept promising ... and nothing. Honestly, I don't think this was an issue of the program not being ready for release. From the back and forth over 5 years, it strongly appears to have been intentional choice to withhold the program from public release. Of course, he is theoretically allowed to do that. It is his work that went into it. But ... don't keep promising ... for five YEARS ... string everyone along ... then just close shop and take your toys home with you.

In any event, it is "water under the bridge", so to speak. Fridger has pulled up stakes, so we have nothing more to say.

I know you're disappointed you don't get to play with shiny new toys, but you people seem to desperately want to attribute malice here. I'll just point out that the Celestial Matters forum went offline as a result of the same ibiblio hosting outage that took down the Celestia Motherlode for a few months last year, rather than being a deliberate decision to take it offline on Fridger's part. I guess they had other priorities than resurrecting a low-traffic forum. The actual developer discussions took place elsewhere anyway.

ajtribick wrote:I guess they had other priorities than resurrecting a low-traffic forum. The actual developer discussions took place elsewhere anyway.

Oh well then would you be so kind to tell us the address of the project's new website?

You know, to reach the free utilities?

Why do you think there is one? Developer communications aren't a website or a file hosting service.

Let's be clear, no one is accusing no one. We are saying that disappearing with a publicly hyped project is not very nice. Letting down their fans is not very nice.

I hope they will eventually release the software.

This is the best way they can prove their good intensions.

By the way, they can retract their previous public announcements.

That would be the most honest way to defuse the situation in my opinion.