Proposal: Splitting the forums into Fact and Fiction?

[Michael Kilderry]

Michael,

Don't let us stodgy old geezers intimidate you. So long as you enjoy what you're doing, and it doesn't hurt anyone, keep it up! Practice makes perfect, and I'm sure your artwork will continue to improve. - Selden

Thanks Selden. I created the forum because I thought that it would be fun to make one, and what other forum topic would I choose other than the Lera system? I made a lot of the members there moderators as a reward for being the few to come to the forum, and because it looked empty without them. I plan to extend this forum from what it is now to include future addons that I make, and then it may get more popular.

Again, what's the big deal here? As Michael said, let's try to enjoy the thing for a while. Sheesh! - Bob Hegwood

Exactly!

I think it is a bit strange how people are saying that fictional addons are dominating too much, just look at the list of new addons at the Motherlode, most of them are galaxies, at least that's how it appears to me:

http://www.celestiamotherlode.net/catal ... addons.php

The fictional addons are even dominating too much in the addons forum either, Runar's sun was near the top of the list for awhile and it's a realistic addon. It may have been more applicable a few months ago when me and Kikinho had a lot of fictional addon posts in there but now there's not that many (I don't think).

And a lot of the realistic, eductional addons are announced elsewhere on shatters.net forums. Such as Fridger's 2K Titan, which has a related post on the Users board.

A lot of the new people who do factual addons don't partcipate as much on the forum, if at all. So I think it is a bit of an illusion that fictional addons appear to be taking over. Here are some not so drastic things we can do that may help:

- Only one announcement per addon rule written somewhere clearly on the Addons Forum, I didn't know you weren't supposed to make more than one, it wasn't written anywhere.

- Encourage people to announce their new addons on the addons board at shatters.net. This could be done by writing a message about it under the upload instructions on the Motherlode. This way a lot of the factual addon people who don't announce their addons on the appropriate board might be inspired to do so, as well as participating in the rest of the forums.

Michael Kilderry

[t00fri]

And a lot of the realistic, eductional addons are announced elsewhere on shatters.net forums. Such as Fridger's 2K Titan, which has a related post on the Users board.
...
Michael Kilderry

My Titan posts do NOT refer to add-ons. I was reporting in the Users board on the status of the update work for my Titan texture in the regular Celestia distribution. If finished, i'll commit it to SourcForge as a 1k texture. It then will replace my earlier texture in Celestia-1.3.2.

It will not go to Motherlode.

Bye Fridger

[Evil Dr Ganymede]

My Titan posts do NOT refer to add-ons. I was reporting in the Users board on the status of the update work for my Titan texture in the regular Celestia distribution. If finished, i'll commit it to SourcForge as a 1k texture. It then will replace my earlier texture in Celestia-1.3.2.

Just out of curiosity, when will you consider it to be finished? If Cassini's going to be imaging Titan regularly on a global scale (certainly, there's a targeted Titan flyby on Feb 13th or thereabouts) then those will be continuously adding to the dataset used to make your global map.

Are you just going to keep on updating it as the flybys happen? Or are you going to commit this map as it is and wait for several more flybys before updating it?

[t00fri]

My Titan posts do NOT refer to add-ons. I was reporting in the Users board on the status of the update work for my Titan texture in the regular Celestia distribution. If finished, i'll commit it to SourcForge as a 1k texture. It then will replace my earlier texture in Celestia-1.3.2.

Just out of curiosity, when will you consider it to be finished? If Cassini's going to be imaging Titan regularly on a global scale (certainly, there's a targeted Titan flyby on Feb 13th or thereabouts) then those will be continuously adding to the dataset used to make your global map.

Are you just going to keep on updating it as the flybys happen? Or are you going to commit this map as it is and wait for several more flybys before updating it?

Like Celestia itself, textures will never be really finished. Above, 'finished' really means that I will have to be satisfied and various cross-checks will have to be completed.

Since right now there is no imminent new Celestia release, this issue does not call for an urgent decision. If new hires imaging of Titan will be published before the release of the next Celestia version, I probably will include the latest data. That's the idea of CVS development. Further flyby data will be incorporated in forthcoming releases as they come along...

I would be most urgently interested in more 'true/natural color' photos from Titan's surface, since they crucially contribute to making the surface coloration of my texture more realistic.

The next flyby's of Titan will take place on Feb 15 (950km), Mar 31 (2523km) , Apr 16 (950km), Aug 22 (4015km), Sep 7 (950km)...

My guess will be that the Feb 15 flyby data might well be included before the next version of Celestia will be released . If people are interested, I will continue to post upgrades beforehand in the Users board.

Bye Fridger

[Bob Hegwood]

My guess will be that the Feb 15 flyby data might well be included before the next version of Celestia will be released . If people are interested, I will continue to post upgrades beforehand in the Users board.

Well I for one, certainly appreciate your efforts here Dr. schrempp...

Please continue your updates for those of us who don't have a CLUE as to
how to make cylindrical texture maps from the real data.

By the way, 2k maps are much more appropriate don't you think? I mean,
we can always re-size the things downward, but going the other way is hard
to do.

Many thanks, Bob

[t00fri]

My guess will be that the Feb 15 flyby data might well be included before the next version of Celestia will be released . If people are interested, I will continue to post upgrades beforehand in the Users board.

Well I for one, certainly appreciate your efforts here Dr. schrempp...

Please continue your updates for those of us who don't have a CLUE as to
how to make cylindrical texture maps from the real data.

By the way, 2k maps are much more appropriate don't you think? I mean,
we can always re-size the things downward, but going the other way is hard
to do.

Many thanks, Bob

Many thanks, Bob, for your encouragement.

Actually, I think I could easily provide a port of Mathew Arcus' wwps code to Windows, i.e. post a compiled EXE. Using that program is really not hard, given the examples on Mathew's Website.

What is a little more demanding is to subsequently master an image manipulation program like Gimp or Photoshop such as to assemble the various 'texture fragments' located on different layers, smoothly into one single map. For that purpose one needs to know how to translate, rotate and precision align superimposed layers. Also, one has to play with the layer transparency, use feathered and color selects and all that...In any case that IS fun...

Concerning the size of the Titan texture, you are right, of course. But since I do it for the default Celestia distribution we normally impose a 1k limit for reasons of program size.
When posting previews in the forum or in my TextureFoundry, I shall always offer the optimal texture size for download, of course.

Bye Fridger

[Bob Hegwood]

When posting previews in the forum or in my TextureFoundry, I shall always offer the optimal texture size for download, of course.

In that case, I'll simply keep visiting the Texture Foundry.

Again, thanks for your efforts here. Much appreciated by the Brain-Dead.

Take care, Bob

[Evil Dr Ganymede]

I would be most urgently interested in more 'true/natural color' photos from Titan's surface, since they crucially contribute to making the surface coloration of my texture more realistic.

Don't think you're going to get any more of those, apart from the colour image here: http://www.esa.int/SPECIALS/Cassini-Huy ... Y3E_1.html