Displaying Celestia in full screen mode

[SimonFTB]

I'm having trouble displaying Celestia in a full screen mode and would welcome some guidance. I've found that if I press the Alt + Enter keys on my Windows XP laptop when running Celestia, the screen changes so that I lose the menu and title bar at the top of the screen. This is great, as it means that when this is projected through a digital projector, I just see a full screen space image.

The problem is, when I switch to this mode, the resolution plummets down to 640 x 480. I've found that this is the same resolution as "Monitor 2" in the Settings tab of the Windows XP Display Properties dialogue box. I take it this is not a co-incidence. Every time I try changing the resolution of my Monitor 2 settings, they automatically default back to the rubbish 640 x 480 settings again! I conclude that this must be linked to the graphics card in my laptop (an ATI Mobility Radeon X300 PCI Express with 64MB VRAM) and that said graphics card cannot support a higher resolution on Monitor 2 (forgive me if this seems incredibly basic to most of you, but I'm not much of an expert with computers). I've tried reducing the Monitor 1 resolution to see if this allows me to boost the Monitor 2 ones, but this doesn't work.

Can anyone advise me of a way to get Celestia into a full-screen mode that does not involve this plummeting of resolution (I want to project through a digital projector at maximum achievable resolution)?

This is really important to me and I'd really appreciate your help!

[t00fri]

Never forget this forum has a HUGE database that can be searched with a powerful engine...

It is VERY probable that your question has been asked and answered before.

Here is what you could have found easily:
http://www.celestiaproject.net/forum/viewtopic ... creen+mode

Look notably into the 4th post by ANDREA.

Only in Windows switching to fullscreen tends to end in 640x 480 resolution. In Linux all this works perfectly as it should. This is an illustration that in case of questions the specification of the used operating system is always crucial (I am aware that you did that).

Bye Fridger

[SimonFTB]

Many thanks for your reply, Fridger. Making the assumption that someone had probably asked the same question before, I did do a search, but clearly I didn't use the right search words! My mistake entirely.

The only trouble now is..... that when I try the steps given by Andrea in her post on this subject (the one you kindly pointed me towards), when I try modifying the Target path, when I add in the "double-space, double-minus-sign fullscreen" text, Windows XP throws up a dialogue box saying:

"The name 'C:\Program Files\Celestia\celestia.exe --fullscreen" specified in the Target box is not valid. Make sure the path and file name are correct"

At the risk of appearing even more stupid than I already may seem (and probably am!), could you please clarify how I get round this little problem?

Many, many thanks in advance - I feel the answer is tantalisingly close!!

Simon

[SimonFTB]

Although I still can't get Windows to accept my addition of the " --fullscreen" text in the Target path for Celestia (see my message above), I just ran Celestia the old-fashioned DOS way from the Command Prompt and it happily started up. I went through the rest of Andrea's instructions and it did, indeed, change the resolution precisely as she described.

The remaining problem, though, is that because I can't seem to get Windows to accept the " --fullscreen" text in the Properties of the Celestia desktop icon, when I run Celestia again using the icon, it runs normally (i.e. not in fullscreen mode). This, of course, is hardly surprising.

Should I maybe make a new shortcut for Celestia which runs through the Command Prompt and a DOS window? Is this not a bit cumbersome?!

Simon

[SimonFTB]

To my tremendous embarrassment, I now find that (having gone through the Command Prompt method mentioned above) Alt + Enter does successfully bring up the Full Screen Mode in exactly the same resolution as "normal" mode, thus achieving what I've been wanting (without having to buy a new computer and fancy graphics card - at least, I think so!!!)

Nevertheless, my problem with opening up Celestia in Full Screen mode remains, i.e. that Windows won't accept the additional target text. Obviously, I've now found I can switch to the full screen mode once Celestia is running, but (just to finish this thread), can anyone explain how I can get Windows to accept the " --fullscreen" text?

Cheers (from a rather red-faced)

Simon

[Vincent]

"The name 'C:\Program Files\Celestia\celestia.exe --fullscreen" specified in the Target box is not valid. Make sure the path and file name are correct"

Simon,

In your path definition, you may try to place the last quote (") at the end of celestia.exe instead of the end of fullscreen. Just like this:
"C:\TortoiseCVS\celestia lua\celestia.exe" --fullscreen

[Andy74]

... given by Andrea in her post ...

Dear Simon,

ANDREA lives in Italy and is male (as far as I know).

Bye
Andy

[SimonFTB]

Firstly, big thanks to Vincent for curing my Windows problem in a split second! It worked instantly, and was so absurdly simple and obvious that I feel like Homer's really, really stupid third cousin. Oh dear.

Secondly, thanks for pointing out my gender mistake, Andy - I simply assumed that, because Andrea is a girl's name in English, the same would apply to Italy! A thousand apologies to Andrea, if, as you suspect, I made a mistake.

And thirdly, thank you all for going to the trouble of answering my seemingly ridiculously simple questions. I am really, really pleased I've now got Celestia working in full screen mode properly, thanks to your help and guidance. It will make my work educating and inspiring children about astronomy and space that much more effective, now my image resolution can leap up!

The last little question I have, then, is this: Was the whole Monitor 2 having a resolution of 640 x 480 a complete co-incidence after all? I take it, it was....?

Big thanks,

Simon

[ANDREA]

..Secondly, thanks for pointing out my gender mistake, Andy - I simply assumed that, because Andrea is a girl's name in English, the same would apply to Italy! A thousand apologies to Andrea, if, as you suspect, I made a mistake. Simon

Don't worry Simon, it happens a lot of times, so no problem.
I'm happy that my little check-list helped you to reach the wished result, enjoy!
Bye

Andrea