360 set-up

[colinyell]

Hi,

I work for a company called igloo vision and we have a range of panoramic projection domes, http://www.igloovision.com, and I was wondering if it would be possible to configure Celestia to work in panorama through five projectors rather than full dome. The idea is to use the panoramic system at a schools event in the uk in April.

We plan to set the dome up in a space ship type set-up with a starship enterprise style control room to give school children a spaceship simulator type experience. Ideally I would like to run Celestia on one PC with an eyefinity graphics card outputting to five channels of video. I would then capture these signals into our existing igloo geometry correction and edge-blending system and display this on the 360 screen.

Is it possible to configure Celestia to have one 360 field of view that spans five outputs? Is this the best way of setting Celestia up to work in panorama?

Cheers,

Colin

[John Van Vliet]

--- edit ---

[selden]

John,

Where can one get a wide-angle version of Celestia?

The standard version is limited to a view which is about 120 degrees tall. If you force it beyond that, things are badly distorted.

If you have multiple displays and their drivers are correctly configured in the operating system, you can drag Celestia's borders so it draws on all of them, but that's only part of the problem.

p.s. In "full screen" mode, Celestia only fills the primary screen -- at least that's what happens on my dual-display Windows computer. The other screen continues to show the desktop. Having to drag the window borders is a problem both because it's an extra manual operation and because the borders continue to be visible.

[colinyell]

It sounds like it might not be as simple as I first thought.

I believe the eyefinity graphics card can be configure so all outputs apear as one screen to the computer so full screen should send it across all screens but obviously the main problem is the FOV. Is it possible to customise Celestaia to use a panoramic or cylindrical camera with a 360 FOV?

If not is it posible to run multiple instances of Celestia so one did two screens another copy did another two screens and a third did one screen and then share commands from one version to the other two?

Can anyone sugest a good scripter who may be able to do this sort of customization who wants a job?

Cheers,

Colin

[chris]

I don't think that Celestia's FOV limit will be a problem here... If I've understood correctly, what you want to do are render five 90 degree views in different directions from the same point in space. Then, your software will combine these views and warp them for display on all screens. Is that right?

--Chris

[colinyell]

Yes this is exactly how I would like to run Celestia. Where do I start with rendering out to multiple viewports? It is something that needs to be set up with a lot of scripting? Could it be done over five playback PC's so i could keep everything at the highest quality and each computer would only be doing one output or would it be easier from one with a multiple output graphics card?

[chris]

Yes this is exactly how I would like to run Celestia. Where do I start with rendering out to multiple viewports? It is something that needs to be set up with a lot of scripting? Could it be done over five playback PC's so i could keep everything at the highest quality and each computer would only be doing one output or would it be easier from one with a multiple output graphics card?

More than just scripting is required for this... The Celestia source code would have to be modified. It would be easiest to make it work on a single PC with multiple outputs. Otherwise, there's quite a bit of extra work required to keep the multiple instances of Celestia synchronized. Do you have hardware than can output to five displays? And if so, how is it done?

--Chris

[Kepeck07]

The problem is not the FOV but the output must be wrapped before to have the 360 FOV ?!
No one could adapt a fisheye view for Celestia like Stellarium ?
Perhaps the NASA team ? I dont understand why it is not implemented for the education. It is very difficult to do this option ?
Thank you.

[Fenerit]

The problem is not the FOV but the output must be wrapped before to have the 360 FOV ?!
No one could adapt a fisheye view for Celestia like Stellarium ?
Perhaps the NASA team ? I dont understand why it is not implemented for the education. It is very difficult to do this option ?
Thank you.

Maybe because the observer should be rest from start and such an option should be like Celestia were to load from the beginning in quiet mode; that is: another version of Celestia. With a FOV o 360 the observer can only spin.