Celestia 1.3.0 is ready!

[chris]

Celestia 1.3.0 is ready! Go to http://www.celestiaproject.net/celestia/download.html to get it. Thanks to everyone who helped out with development, documentation, and testing of the prereleases--a tremendous amount of work has gone into this release.

Here's the complete list of changes since 1.2.5:

* Integrated more of Grant Hutchinson's corrections for the orientations of
solar system bodies
* Updates for asteroids and comets from Grant Hutchinson:
- Added Phil Stooke's textures for the asteroids Ida and Gaspra
- Fixed mirror-reversal of Ida and Gaspra meshes (Grant Hutchinson)
- Use orbital elements valid for the Galileo encounters of Ida and Gaspra
- Corrected rotation parameters
* Made name matching for galaxies case-insensitive
* Corrected orbits of Uranians satellites Miranda, Ariel, Umbriel, Titania and
Oberon.
* cel:// URL fixes
- Added support for relative URLs
- Improved drag and drop support on Windows
- Browser integration on Windows: clicking on a cel:// URL launches Celestia
- Better time precision
* Added new keyboard commands for dealing with light time delay
- ? : show light time delay between current position and selected object
- - (minus) : compensate for light time : subtract light travel time to
selected object from the current time
* KDE interface: add subtract light time button to Set Time dialog
* Added cubic interpolation option for sampled trajectories (.xyz files)
* Added NormalMap field for .ssc files
* Prevent crashing when CompressTexture true is specified for an already compres
sed texture.
* KDE: Implement eclipse finder
- Eclipse finder code separated into UI and platform-independent parts
* Added basic support for rendering nebula as 3ds meshes.
* Modified format of galaxies file to handle other deep sky objects as well
* Added OpenCluster objects
* Implemented 'markers'
- Selection is highlighted with a marker
- Markers may also be set on objects using the right-click context menu
- Added mark/unmark commands for scripts
- Bound Ctrl+K to toggle display of markers
- Added flash messages indicating on|off status of markers
- Implemented markers into KDE interface
* Added triangle-accurate picking of mesh objects
* Multiview
- Ctrl+R : split view vertically
- Ctrl+U : split view horizontally
- TAB : cycle active view
- DEL : delete active view
- Ctrl+D : delete all views except active one
- Views may be resized by dragging on borders
- Multview functions also available in the view menu
* Eliminated eclipse shadows appearing on wrong side of planet
* Added support for specular and bump map effects across a wider range
of graphics hardware.
- Introduced notion of a render path
- Ctrl+V changed to cycle render path instead of toggle vertex shader
- Added IgnoreGLExtensions directive for celestia.cfg
* Added track command for script
* Fixed eclipse shadow z-fighting artifacts
* Fixed vertical mirroring of textures on 3DS models
* Fixed problems with bump mapping
* Enabled loading of .cel scripts through the Windows or KDE shell
* New directory structure for add-ons; meshes, textures, and other media
may now be located withing an add-on subdirectory.
* Added texture for Eros
* Added separate cloud and surface textures for Venus
* New "invisible" class for solar system objects
* Fixed crashes that occurred when viewing ringed planets on older hardware
* Got rid of three zeros after decimal point when displaying time rate
* Updated configuration files for new versions of autoconf

--Chris

[gordon]

Hi Chris,

Thx again for your work.

I ve just installed this new release and it seems there is a problem with bumpmapping. Any planet or moon which is defined with a bumpmap in the solarsys file is black (no texture), the others are ok.

My configuration :
ATI (!!) 7500
Win XP pro
AMD 1700+

Is this a known issue (i have search but not find) knowing that it worked well with the 1.2.5 relaese ?


Gordon

[gordon]

the planets concerned by the problem with the current solarsys file are :

Mercury
Mars
Moon
Pluto

G.

[JackHiggins]

What does "cubic interpolation" actually mean, in relation to xyz files?

[Solneman]

Hi all,

have a Radeon 9000. Saturn has corrupted Texture and makes the program "not responding" for Win XP. Version 1.2.5 had no problems. BTW: First time that "specular highlight" (or something shiny ) works for me!

Again and again: Greatest star program ever. Thank you a lot for your work!

Greets and ... PEACE!

[Solneman]

...same problem (as described for Saturn) with Uranus... flickering corrupted texture (black holes in texture, program just before freezing)... perhaps the rings cause it ? Hey, and "bumpmapping" seems to function for me the first time - I first recognized it with Mercury and Mars...

...and: do this ATi shaders work now, because the "greyed out" menu-items (just working for nVidea in 1.2.5) have disapeared?

Byebye

[Gordon]

hi solneman,

I have the problem with my ATI 8500 and XP and it's related to the rings (that s why uranus and saturn are concerned).

One solution (not the best) is to go to the solarsys file and to desactivate the lines describing the rings.

G.