Need HELP for ATI 9800 Pro and Celestia

[Cham]

I installed today my new video card : ATI 9800 Pro (128 MB), on a Mac G4 dual 867 MHz with OS X 10.3.6.

Well, apparently, I have some problems

In Celestia, I no longer have Specular reflections and Bump mapping ! When I try cycling the Render path (using ctrl-v), I get some rainbow planets, or only the Basic and the multitextures. No Bumps, no specular ! What the hell is that ??

I tried all (?) options from the ATI card, but it changes noting ! I can have antialiasing (which is very nice), and can have the rings shadows on Saturn, but Saturn's shadow on its rings are damn ugly (with huge jaggies).

PLEASE HELP !

[TERRIER]

I can have antialiasing (which is very nice), and can have the rings shadows on Saturn, but Saturn's shadow on its rings are damn ugly (with huge jaggies).

PLEASE HELP !

I might be able to help you with your shadow of Saturn on its rings.

If you open your celestia.cfg file in the main Celestia directory, you can adjust your settings for shadow textures and eclipse textures to the following;

Code: Select all

#   ShadowTextureSize defines the size* of shadow texture to be used.
#   The default value is 256. Maximum useful value is 2048.
#
#   EclipseTextureSize defines the size* of eclipse texture to be used.
#   The default value is 128. Maximum useful value is 1024.
#
#   * The ShadowTextureSize and EclipseTextureSize values should both be
#     powers of two (128, 256, 512, etc.). Using larger values will
#     reduce the jagged edges of eclipse shadows and shadows on planet
#     rings, but it will decrease the amount of memory available for
#     planet textures.
#------------------------------------------------------------------------
  OrbitPathSamplePoints  100
  RingSystemSections     100

  ShadowTextureSize      2048
  EclipseTextureSize     1024


As for your other rendering problems, I am wondering if you have the latest ATI drivers for your graphics card ?

[Cham]

I've tried your suggestion. It doesn't make any difference at all !

I tried Celestia 1.3.1 and 1.3.2, and nothing is happening.

I tried various numbers (128, 258, 2048), and nada !

[selden]

Cham,

The rainbows are caused by bumpmaps and/or specular reflections not being applied correctly by the ATI graphics drivers that you're using.

Are you using the drivers that came with the card, by any chance?
Usually the ones that come on CD are obsolete (i.e. buggy).

If you haven't already done so, please download and install the newest drivers available on the ATI Web site and let us know if that helps.

[Cham]

Selden,

I believe I already have the latest drivers for that ATI card.

So here's a resume of my problems :

ATI Radeon 9800 Pro (128 MB) Mac Edition, OS X Panther 10.3.6 (latest).

-Bump maps not showing correctly (rainbow planet),
-Specular reflections not showing correctly (rainbow planet),
-Planet shadow on rings very crude (huge pixels).

I only have three Render Path options available : "Basic", "Multitexture" and "DOT3+ARB VP". The first two options doesn't show any shadow, no specular and no Bumps. The third one is showing some specular and some bumps, but on a rainbow "luminescent" planet. And the shadow on the rings is very crude. I tried editing the Celestia.cfg, but noting change.

[selden]

Cham,

I'm sorry, but your only recourse (other than replacing the card by one that uses Nvidia chips) is to report the problem to Apple.

For some reason I hadn't realized that you were using a Mac, or I would have been more insistant that you get an Nvidia card. The MacOS X ATI drivers continue to be problematic.

Sorry.