Graphics Question

[Eriksrocks]

I have one small question that's been bothering me:
How do you acheive the graphics demonstrated on the Celestia homepage and in the screenshots?

Like this:

'

Now this is what I get:
http://www.erikswan.net/hubble.jpg

That's a screenshot, taken directly from Celestia. Obviously there is a big difference.

And this screenshot too:
http://www.celestiaproject.net/celestia/images ... lorida.jpg

The shuttle detail is amazing, but more importantly I can't get the level of detail in the ground texture then shown. This is what I see:

http://www.erikswan.net/florida.jpg

From far out it looks fine, but close up, as demonstrated in the screen shot, it just looks ugly. This holds true for the whole planet. The caption on the screenshot reads...

A closeup of the space shuttle Discovery in orbit over Florida; this shot demonstrates Celestia's virtual texture feature for extremely high resolution mapping of planets.

I can't find a "virtual texture" feature anywhere...

Can someone please help with this?

Thanks.

[selden]

Erik,

The high resolution model of the Hubble telescope is an Addon available on
the Celestia Motherlode on the Web page at
http://www.celestiamotherlode.net/catal ... llites.php

High resolution models of shuttles and of the ISS and other satellites are on that page, too.

High resolution virtual textures for the Earth are available on the Celestia Motherlode on the Web page at
http://www.celestiamotherlode.net/catalog/earth.php

Higher resolution virtual textures of limited areas of the Earth are available on the Celestia Motherlode on the Web page at
http://www.celestiamotherlode.net/catal ... loseup.php

They aren't included in Celestia's standard distribution kit because of their very large sizes.

[Eriksrocks]

Thanks for clarifying that selden!

(BTW, I think it would help if you put a little note of that somewhere on the screenshots page - it definitely had me confused! )

[Eriksrocks]

Also now that I'm looking at the Sattelites page, if I downloaded the high detail hubble model, would it replace the current model? And would it be in the right place and orbiting the earth, etc?

The same goes for the ISS...

And is there a way I could uninstall it if I wanted?

Thanks.

[selden]

Also now that I'm looking at the Sattelites page, if I downloaded the high detail hubble model, would it replace the current model? And would it be in the right place and orbiting the earth, etc?

The same goes for the ISS...

That's up to you and how you install the Addon. You need to read the Readme file that's included in the Addon's Zip archive.

And is there a way I could uninstall it if I wanted?

By deleting or renaming its files.

I'd suggest reading http://www.lepp.cornell.edu/~seb/celestia/addon-intro.html

Once you understand how Addons work you have the option of simply using the procedure suggested by the author of an Addon or doing it your own way.