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New on board (warning: extremely verbose!)

Posted: 05.11.2006, 19:21
by JorgeLl
Greetings to all!
Having passed some weeks after I discovered Celestia (actually, just two), today I decided to make my debut on stage. I've managed myself to learn all what I could regarding Celestia BEFORE jumping on here and starting to make the typical newbie's questions, but remenber, actually, I AM a newbie... :wink:
The first of my S.O.S.'s is not directly about Celestia, but rather about my graphics card. I've stuffed te info of my system in my signature, so let's go for work: the current configuration of my sys can't handle Celestia (1.4.1, by the way) as fine as I wish, so I tried to update the card's drivers as Celestia suggests. I downloaded the package from NVIDIA's site and followed step-by-step the instructions (uninstalling the old drivers before installing the new ones, etc), but the installation program suddenly told me that there was NO NVIDIA'S CHIP IN MY SYSTEM. And closed itself. After re-starting the computer, the "new hardware found" dialog appeared and... surprise!... the Windows InstallShield prompted me to install a generic VGA graphics adapter (like there was no NVIDIA's card there!).
Summarizing: the TNT2 had "dissappeared" from my computer...
I tried everything I could realize to fix the problem, but to no point: I ended with a 800*400 screen resolution with 16 colours...
Fortunately, I am not SO dork, and I made a backup of my sys before uninstalling the drivers, so once I gave up, I restored it and now everything is fine again... considering, of course, I can't update the Card's drivers. Every attempt I made has the same result: the ol' good TNT2 flies off... (The guy in the IT store where I usually go to ask help thought I was kidding him when I explained all this, and did'n believed me until he saw it with his eyes)... So... Have you heard of something like this before? How do I manage to update my drivers? Well, I'm going to buy a new computer for Christmas, so it's not a life-death statement, rather a very curious one...

Now, go for Celestia-related matters.
If I try to replace the standard textures for Stars with improved ones (i.e. Sgt. Chen's) downloaded from the Motherlode, nothing happens: even if I move the default ones to the "Backups" folder and place the new ones in their place, the stars keep looking just like always. Curiously, Mr. Thorvaldsen's stunning Sun does work finely. The failure is just when trying to replace the standard textures... By the way, just today I tried the Black Hole add-on by Jestr (I'm becoming one of Jestr's greatest fans, ya know), but the model shows no textures, just a bunch of letters and alphanumeric symbols spinning around, but I guess it's the card's fault...
Well, I think that it's enough for my first time here.
I want to really thank you all for giving me te chance to make real one of my oldest dreams: to boldly go where no one has gone before...
Cheers! 8)

Posted: 05.11.2006, 21:10
by selden
Jorge,

Welcome to Celestia!

Unfortunately, if you read the fine print carefully, the most recent Nvidia drivers do not support the TNT2 chipset. Their "Products Supported" link takes you to a page that says
The following products are not supported in the current ForceWare Release 80 driver. Please continue to use the previous ForceWare Release 70 drivers available here: http://www.nvidia.com/object/win9x_archive.html

TNT2
TNT2 Pro
TNT2 Ultra
TNT2 Model 64 (M64)
TNT2 Model 64 (M64) Pro
Vanta
Vanta LT
[...and others...]



Starting with v1.4.0, Celestia uses only the texture astar.jpg. bstar, gstar. mstar, etc are ignored.

You'll see numbers and other strange things when Celestia cannot load the texture you specified, usually because it can't be found. I don't think the TNT chipset understands the .dds format, so Celestia may show something similar if you try to use that image type.

Does this help?

Re: New on board (warning: extremely verbose!)

Posted: 05.11.2006, 22:40
by rthorvald
JorgeLl wrote:nothing happens: even if I move the default ones to the "Backups" folder and place the new ones in their place, the stars keep looking just like always. Curiously, Mr. Thorvaldsen's stunning Sun does work finely. The failure is just when trying to replace the standard textures


That??s because my sun isn??t defined as a star, but rather as an orbiting body with the same radius as the Sun, so your challenge with the star textures does not apply.

- rthorvald

Posted: 06.11.2006, 15:39
by JorgeLl
Thank you very much for your answers and advice. Yes, I didn't read the "small letter"... Well, Christmas is at the turn of the corner, so I will perfectly survive... :wink: And yes, I figured out that the TNT can't support dds format after several attempts to use models with this texture format. What still amazes me is the way Celestia resists to be fooled with replacement textures for stars and keeps using its own's even if I try to hide them, lol...
I can't really say how much I like Celestia. Everything I could say has been said before. One of the first add-ons I installed was, in fact, Runar's Sun (Small version, the Complete caused a near fatal cerebral aneurysm to my pc) and stayed almost half an hour staring at it, mouth-opened... And can't wait to have a new pc to enjoy the wonderful Ran!

As soon as I find a way to contribute to Celestia, be sure that I will.
Cheers!
8)