Celestia Forums

What a monster PC configuration you have there? This is amazing both as a quality of the image and resolution size.

Thanx. I use 8192x8192 pixels DDS tiles, but my graphic card is not that new. To my surprise the whole hires data set is "only" 7GB.

Added after 2 hours 55 minutes:
I have to post these pictures, I have never seen these kind of details before (from 30km):

Major color overhaul of the 128k Mars texture. I hope it is the final version...

Hi john71.
The 128k Mars images are astounding, but I see (shadows and colors) that the last two are from another textures set.
Or are official images from orbit?
Just curious.

Goofy

Hi Goofy,
I used the Viking data, which is good up to 64k resolution, but I had to enhance and color it. To achieve the 128k resolution I had to find new data. The 213391 x 88914 pixels THEMIS Day IR 100m Global Mosaic was the best choice, but it needed enhancement. By the way it is a 22GB BW global map.

Added after 7 hours 25 minutes:
The moment when I realized that under-128k textures are so ten years ago (just joking):

John, while watching this pictures I almost imagine that I'm there - flying over the atmosphere of Mars!

It's amazing that Celestia can handle this. However, 22 GB just for a single planet texture is a overkill IMO.

I use compressed DDS files, so the add-on is significantly smaller (7-11 GB depending on alternative surface textures). The key is that modern graphic cards can handle tiles with 8192x8192 pixels. The GAIA star data is also approximately 90GB, so the future is at least 150-200 GBs of add-on data for Celestia in my opinion.

32k Venus texture with transparent clouds from the Magellan Venus Global Mosaic.

john71 wrote:The GAIA star data is also approximately 90GB,

Albeit it currently cannot be implemented into Celestia due to load times and RAM usage.

Gurren Lagann wrote:Albeit it currently cannot be implemented into Celestia due to load times and RAM usage.

That's true, but the Gaia Sky software can handle it very easily, so I think Celestia 1.7 or 2.0 will be able to do it someday.

john71 wrote:

Gurren Lagann wrote:Albeit it currently cannot be implemented into Celestia due to load times and RAM usage.

That's true, but the Gaia Sky software can handle it very easily, so I think Celestia 1.7 or 2.0 will be able to do it someday.

I don't know about you but GaiaSky was lagging a lot on my machine so I uninstalled it. But it's a nice software nonetheless. And it's worth mentioning that I really like what the GAIA spacecraft is doing. All of us will benefit from it (it's catalogue is the most obvious thing right now).

Just some clouds...

NGC 55 Group - Montage of the minor galaxies

From left to right...
Top row: LEDA 142402, LEDA 578544, APMUKS(BJ) B003411.16-325055.7 (with the M81 Group in the background), and LARCS a3888r14-2046
Upper middle row: LARCS a3888r24-691, LARCS a3888r11-1777, LARCS a3888r22-1310, and WHI B2317-32
Lower middle row: XXL-AAOmega J234044.26-531001.8, ESO 468-20, ESO 293-35, and LEDA 503631
Bottom row: ESO 410-5, ESO 294-10, IC 5152, and UGCA 438

I haven't posted pictures here in a while...

Proxima Centauri b & c (the texture for b is by Daly, from here).

Proxima c with a faint outer ring, similar to Saturn's Phoebe ring. This corresponds to the directly imaged ~5 Jupiter radius emission area (see this paper). The sprite model used is by LukeCEL.

A raw image of Proxima c from an approaching spacecraft... (made with Celestia+GIMP)

I've posted older versions of these planets somewhere in this thread; the versions shown here are currently in my NearbyExoplanets addon and have been for some time.

Added after 7 minutes 54 seconds:
Keid Ab, with Keid B and C in the background (aka 40 Eridani)

The planets of YZ Ceti (also in NearbyExoplanets)

V2384 Orionis, a young binary brown dwarf near the Orion Nebula

A flare star (texture is modified from one by Gurren)

The planets of LHS 1140 - two confirmed, two candidates

Sub moon Iroha backdropped by it's host Ui, Titan like moon of Kuroe.

Real, not upscaled 128k Earth texture:

Are you planning on making it public for download?

TYC 1733-118-1, a binary K-dwarf + white dwarf system, "discovered" while looking for stars near Alpheratz for a worldbuilding project. SIMBAD only has an entry for the K-dwarf, with no indication that it's a binary.
Edit: actually SIMBAD has an entry for the white dwarf as well.

Sirius_Alpha wrote:Are you planning on making it public for download?

I'm building a Solar System 128k add-on, but it will be huge (40-50GB). I don't know how to share it, but I'm not against it (after it's ready).

I think under 128k textures are basically useless in the case of planets. Upscaled 128k textures are useless too in my opinion.

Demonstration: 128k and 64k textures comparison side-by-side ->



Added after 7 hours 36 minutes:
A few more images (it is a very interesting planet ):



Added after 4 hours 1 minute:
Just...one...more...picture...or two:

john71 wrote:I'm building a Solar System 128k add-on, but it will be huge (40-50GB). I don't know how to share it, but I'm not against it (after it's ready).

You can host the files through sites like Media Fire or you can always use something like a Raspberry Pi has a file server that hosts the files and a basic website to download them from.