Radeon 9800 Pro and Celestia

[guest jo]

deleted

[RHAS]

I want to change my video card, because my NVidia GeForce4 MX (32 MB Vram) totally sucks.

Will Celestia be able to use vertex shaders, bump maps and all the special effects, if I put the ATI Radeon 9800 pro in my system ?

hello,

With my ati 9800 Pro i run celestia at 1280x1024 Fullscreen with anti aliasing enabled and all the goodies settings in celestia turned on.
I found that i can run 2k textures best.

My system specs are:

Intel Pentium 4 2,4 Ghz HT 800 FSB
ASUS P4P800 800 FSB GBLan/Sata/Sound/Raid
Twinmos 1024 MB DC-DDR & Revoltec RAM Freezers Platinum
ATI Radeon 9800 PRO 128 MB
Creative SoundBlaster Audigy 2
Maxtor DiamondMax Plus 9 80GB 8MB Sata HDD
Maxtor DiamondMax Plus 9 80GB 8MB Sata HDD
PHILIPS DVD-Rom 50x 16X
PHILIPS CD-Rewriter 52x 24x 52x
Coolermaster Wavemaster Case
Coolermaster rounded FDD cable
Coolermaster Aerogate II
Coolermaster SAF Fan 4x
Sony 3,5" FDD
IIyama Vision Master 1451 19"
Logitech internet navigator keyboard
Logitech MX510 Optical Mouse
Microsoft Sidewinder Force Feedback joystick

Cable internet connection: Chello Classic 2560/384 Kb/sec

AquaMark Score: 40413 (CPU: 7793, GFX: 5457)

3DMARK03 5705 3DMARKS

[Cham]

With my ati 9800 Pro i run celestia at 1280x1024 Fullscreen with anti aliasing enabled and all the goodies settings in celestia turned on.
I found that i can run 2k textures best.

What do you mean by "run 2k textures best" ? Can you elaborate on this ?

[selden]

Cham,

I suspect he meant to write something like "The best I can use are 2K textures." It's a rather subtle phrasing of English.

My understanding is that that's one of the hardware limitations of the high-end Radeon cards: they have a 2K texture buffer. In contrast, Nvidia cards have a 4K texture buffer.

[Cham]

My understanding is that that's one of the hardware limitations of the high-end Radeon cards: they have a 2K texture buffer. In contrast, Nvidia cards have a 4K texture buffer.

Thanks Selden.

The 2k limitation should be fine with me, but do you think he can have full 2k BumpMap with 2k textures ?

Right now, with my NVidia GeForce4 MX (32 MB), I only can have 1k BumpMap with a 2k texture, or a 2k BumpMap with a 1k texture :_(

I hope to be able to use 2k BumpMap with a 2k texture with my Radeon 9800 pro (should have it next week).

[selden]

Cham,

I don't think you'll have any problems in that regard.

Note that in Kendrix' posting above, where he copied Celestia's listing of the features in his 9800 Pro, it says

Max simultaneous textures: 8
Max texture size: 2048

What does it say for your MX card?

[Cham]

Cham,

I don't think you'll have any problems in that regard.

Note that in Kendrix' posting above, where he copied Celestia's listing of the features in his 9800 Pro, it says

Max simultaneous textures: 8
Max texture size: 2048

What does it say for your MX card?

How can I find it ? I guess I'll have to experiment tonight, when I'll be back home (I'm at the job, right now !).

[selden]

Run Celestia
Select the Help menu
Select the item "OpenGL Info"
Copy and paste from the popup window titled "OpenGL Driver Info".

[RHAS]

Cham,

I suspect he meant to write something like "The best I can use are 2K textures." It's a rather subtle phrasing of English..

Indeed.

My understanding is that that's one of the hardware limitations of the high-end Radeon cards: they have a 2K texture buffer. In contrast, Nvidia cards have a 4K texture buffer.

I dont think its a limitation a have loaded higher textures like 4k and 8k but celestia slow down a bit when i have a lot of those.

[RHAS]

I hope to be able to use 2k BumpMap with a 2k texture with my Radeon 9800 pro (should have it next week).

Dont worry!

[selden]

RHAS,

Celestia cuts up images that are used for surface textures on its own spherical planets and moons so that they fit into the texture buffer. It also cuts up Cloud textures when CloudSpeed is set to 0. This is the basis of Celestia's VT support, too.

Celestia does not cut up or scale images that are used for Rings or for moving Clouds. It also does not cut up or scale images that are used on the surfaces of 3DS, CMOD or CMS models. This includes the models used for spacecraft, for some moons, and for Nebulae.

Surface texture images used for these purposes must be small enough to fit into the buffer of your card.

I hope this clarifies things a little.

[Cham]

I hope to be able to use 2k BumpMap with a 2k texture with my Radeon 9800 pro (should have it next week).

Dont worry!

Thanks !!

[Cham]

Run Celestia
Select the Help menu
Select the item "OpenGL Info"
Copy and paste from the popup window titled "OpenGL Driver Info".

I can't even do that in Celestia Mac OS X edition ! :_(

[guest jo]

deleted

[selden]

J?rg,

Regretfully, yes, even for their top-of-the-line X800.

See
http://www.delphi3d.net/hardware/viewreport.php?report=1146
which lists the X800's OpenGL features.

http://www.delphi3d.net/hardware/listreports.php lists the features of other models.

[RHAS]

So to say things clear it means that you can't display 4k ring-textures on a radeon 9800.
But is this true for all(!) ATI cards ??

I followed this discussion and selden axplained a few things to me i do not understand at all.
I have a Ati 9800 Pro and i just downloaded a 4k and a 8k earth texture from the motherlode and celestia displayed them fine.
I dont understand what this discussion is about with 2k texture limits.

[maxim]

Read the post on top of this page again.
Learn in which cases there is an automatic subdividing and in which cases it is not.

maxim

[selden]

RHAS,

When Celestia draws textures on spherical planets and moons which use Celestia's internal spherical model, then Celestia can cut the texture images into smaller pieces which fit into your card's texture buffer. The Earth is a spherical planet drawn using Celestia's internal spherical model.

When Celestia draws textures on other types of objects, though, it cannot cut them up, so those objects can't use texture images which are larger than your card's texture buffer.

Ring, Mesh and moving Cloud textures all are limited to 2K textures on ATI cards. Clouds are a special case, though: if you set Cloudspeed to 0, then Celestia can cut up the texture.

If you can demonstrate a Mesh, Ring or moving Cloud which works with a 4K or larger texture, please do so!