rotation and its step size

[surket]

When I press SHIFT+LEFT Arrow on a planet, the planet turns by a certain amount. If I now press SHIFT+RIGHT Arrow the planet does not come back to the previous angular orientation. This happens even if the time is paused. Any ideas why?

Also how can I adjust the step size in the rotation above?

Many thanks,

Ben

[Marco Klunder]

Ben,

The amount of rotation is determined by the time you press these keys.
So when you first rotate left, you need to press the keys for the right rotation exactly the same amount of time.

May I suggest reading the User guide at http://www.celestiamotherlode.net/catalog/documentation.html which explains the working of all individual menu items and keyboard keys in great detail. It is even available in different languages.

Regarding the speed of the rotation, that can be set in the celestia.cfg file, located in the celestia main directory.
open it with a text editor and locate the lines:

Code: Select all

#------------------------------------------------------------------------
# RotateAcceleration defines the speed at which an object will be
# rotated in Celestia, when using a keypress, such as the left and right
# arrow keys. A higher value will rotate the object quicker, while a
# lower value will cause a slower rotation. The default value is 120.0.
#------------------------------------------------------------------------
  RotateAcceleration 120.0

Change the value according your wishes and save the file, that's all.

Regarding your questions at this forum during the last week, it looks like you're seeking for a very precise method to control Celestia.
As you already asked for, you like to have a kind of command engine, but at this moment in time that only works by using scripts within Celestia.
E.g. If you want to rotate an object exactly 30 degrees left, followed by exactly 30 degrees right, that is almost impossible with your keyboard controls and those very precise movements can only be programmed using scripts. Setting the above parameter to lower values will help here a bit (but it also takes more time to rotate).
Unfortunately for you, but that's the way it works for now

Marco

[Fenerit]

When I press SHIFT+LEFT Arrow on a planet, the planet turns by a certain amount. If I now press SHIFT+RIGHT Arrow the planet does not come back to the previous angular orientation. This happens even if the time is paused. Any ideas why?

Also how can I adjust the step size in the rotation above?

Many thanks,

Ben

Whether "come back to the previous angular orientation" and "step size in the rotation" means discrete angular values, you could to use the menu "navigation > goto object" and to set the latitude and the longitude (and the distance). Through such degrees you always return where you were.