Celestia Forums

Have just done a clean install of Vista (seems to be the only way), installed Celestia version 1.4.1, which I'm sure was OK on the upgrade (one of the few things that were). Now I get no nightside lights. I can switch clouds on and off but no nightside. Any ideas please?

Did you update the drivers for your graphics card after you installed Vista?

Microsoft's OpenGL drivers provided with Vista are less than optimal.

You have to upgrade the NVidia driver to get sensible OpenGL back. Microsoft have given in to protests. Celestia tells me I have 4 x 4K textures.

No nightlights = Celestia is using the Basic Render path.
a) buggy drivers are installed and/or
b) not all OpenGL routines are available, or
c) you need to type Ctrl-V several times to select the best Render path.


1. Which edition of Vista did you install?
There are a half-dozen different editions.

2. Did you install 32bit or 64 bit Vista?
Celestia may have problems under 64bit Vista.

3. What version of drivers is installed?
There are Beta and Qualified drivers, each with different bugs.

4. Run Celestia and type Ctrl-V several times.
What Render Paths does it list?
Nightlights requires at least Multitexture.

a) buggy drivers may not include the necessary OpenGL routines.

b) When you exit Celestia, it remembers which render path you were using. If you previously were using Basic, that's what it would start with and would be unable to draw Nightlights.

It's Vista Home Premium, 32bit on an Athlon64. The driver is just released by Nvidia, downloads as ForceWare release 100.65

The render paths are
Basic
Multitexture
OpenGL vertex
OpenGL vertex/NVidia
Open GL2.0

Are you saying that there are no nightlights in any of the Render paths?



If so, then a bug report may have to be filed with Nvidia.

It could be that an OpenGL routine needed by Celestia to display emissive textures is missing or damaged.

Please provide a list here of the OpenGL routines that are available: please copy-and-paste what's shown by Celestia's menu Help/OpenGL Info.

That's right, none.
Here's the OpenGL info

Vendor: NVIDIA Corporation

Renderer: GeForce 6200 TurboCache(TM)/PCI/SSE2/3DNOW!

Version: 2.1.1

Max simultaneous textures: 4

Max texture size: 4096

Point size range: 1.000000 - 63.375000



Supported Extensions:

GL_ARB_color_buffer_float

GL_ARB_depth_texture

GL_ARB_draw_buffers

GL_ARB_fragment_program

GL_ARB_fragment_program_shadow

GL_ARB_fragment_shader

GL_ARB_half_float_pixel

GL_ARB_imaging

GL_ARB_multisample

GL_ARB_multitexture

GL_ARB_occlusion_query

GL_ARB_pixel_buffer_object

GL_ARB_point_parameters

GL_ARB_point_sprite

GL_ARB_shadow

GL_ARB_shader_objects

GL_ARB_shading_language_100

GL_ARB_texture_border_clamp

GL_ARB_texture_compression

GL_ARB_texture_cube_map

GL_ARB_texture_env_add

GL_ARB_texture_env_combine

GL_ARB_texture_env_dot3

GL_ARB_texture_float

GL_ARB_texture_mirrored_repeat

GL_ARB_texture_non_power_of_two

GL_ARB_texture_rectangle

GL_ARB_transpose_matrix

GL_ARB_vertex_buffer_object

GL_ARB_vertex_program

GL_ARB_vertex_shader

GL_ARB_window_pos

GL_ATI_draw_buffers

GL_ATI_texture_float

GL_ATI_texture_mirror_once

GL_S3_s3tc

GL_EXT_texture_env_add

GL_EXT_abgr

GL_EXT_bgra

GL_EXT_blend_color

GL_EXT_blend_equation_separate

GL_EXT_blend_func_separate

GL_EXT_blend_minmax

GL_EXT_blend_subtract

GL_EXT_compiled_vertex_array

GL_EXT_Cg_shader

GL_EXT_depth_bounds_test

GL_EXT_draw_range_elements

GL_EXT_fog_coord

GL_EXT_framebuffer_blit

GL_EXT_framebuffer_multisample

GL_EXT_framebuffer_object

GL_EXT_gpu_program_parameters

GL_EXT_multi_draw_arrays

GL_EXT_packed_depth_stencil

GL_EXT_packed_pixels

GL_EXT_pixel_buffer_object

GL_EXT_point_parameters

GL_EXT_rescale_normal

GL_EXT_secondary_color

GL_EXT_separate_specular_color

GL_EXT_shadow_funcs

GL_EXT_stencil_clear_tag

GL_EXT_stencil_two_side

GL_EXT_stencil_wrap

GL_EXT_texture3D

GL_EXT_texture_compression_s3tc

GL_EXT_texture_cube_map

GL_EXT_texture_edge_clamp

GL_EXT_texture_env_combine

GL_EXT_texture_env_dot3

GL_EXT_texture_filter_anisotropic

GL_EXT_texture_lod

GL_EXT_texture_lod_bias

GL_EXT_texture_mirror_clamp

GL_EXT_texture_object

GL_EXT_texture_sRGB

GL_EXT_timer_query

GL_EXT_vertex_array

GL_IBM_rasterpos_clip

GL_IBM_texture_mirrored_repeat

GL_KTX_buffer_region

GL_NV_blend_square

GL_NV_copy_depth_to_color

GL_NV_depth_clamp

GL_NV_fence

GL_NV_float_buffer

GL_NV_fog_distance

GL_NV_fragment_program

GL_NV_fragment_program_option

GL_NV_fragment_program2

GL_NV_framebuffer_multisample_coverage

GL_NV_half_float

GL_NV_light_max_exponent

GL_NV_multisample_filter_hint

GL_NV_occlusion_query

GL_NV_packed_depth_stencil

GL_NV_pixel_data_range

GL_NV_point_sprite

GL_NV_primitive_restart

GL_NV_register_combiners

GL_NV_register_combiners2

GL_NV_texgen_reflection

GL_NV_texture_compression_vtc

GL_NV_texture_env_combine4

GL_NV_texture_expand_normal

GL_NV_texture_rectangle

GL_NV_texture_shader

GL_NV_texture_shader2

GL_NV_texture_shader3

GL_NV_vertex_array_range

GL_NV_vertex_array_range2

GL_NV_vertex_program

GL_NV_vertex_program1_1

GL_NV_vertex_program2

GL_NV_vertex_program2_option

GL_NV_vertex_program3

GL_NVX_conditional_render

GL_SGIS_generate_mipmap

GL_SGIS_texture_lod

GL_SGIX_depth_texture

GL_SGIX_shadow

GL_SUN_slice_accum

GL_WIN_swap_hint

WGL_EXT_swap_control

Could it be that you just forgot to switch the nightlights on??
What happens when you toggle CTRL + L??

Bye Fridger

Nothing happens. I can turn off/on planets, clouds but no nightlights

knight-gkla wrote:Nothing happens. I can turn off/on planets, clouds but no nightlights

What happens when you press CTRL + V repeatedly?
What is the rendering path that is displayed after the first push of CTRL +V?

Bye Fridger

As you will see above I get 5 render paths. Nothing on any of them

Looks like you got that bug called MicroSoft

That is why I am not touching "MMista" I mean "vista" with your computer much less mine for a year. Just to identify all of the bugs and hopefully fixes.

Don

I have a similar problem with mac... night side flickers then there's a huge power outage worldwide.
Happens whatever render path I use.

Intel GMA 950 64VRAM... it's an on board device so I will not be changing it.

Tried the latest NVidia beta driver 101.41, no change.

knight-gkla wrote:Tried the latest NVidia beta driver 101.41, no change.

I still believe that your observed lack of nightlight rendering is NOT due to VISTA.

Fightspit as well as other users have also installed VISTA and did not report any problems whatsoever?? After all, your card is by NVIDIA!

http://www.celestiaproject.net/forum/viewtopic ... ight=vista
I think one may even make out some nightlights there...

Fightspit?

Let me quote:

Fightspit wrote:

rra wrote:using the latest Vista build(5600 / 32 bit) with the NVIDIA driver (96.33) gives good results:

Congratulation! Nvidia driver with ICD OpenGL works fine Very Happy

It's certainly not due to Celestia either. Too many people have installed it successfully with different cards and operating systems...
To give you an idea: Celestia 1.4.1 for Win32 has been downloaded

1 032 262 times!
until today. NASA, ESA,...use it...

+++++++++++++++++++
Did you do ANYTHING with the Celestia distribution after installing it?
Are we STRICTLY talking about the Celestia default distribution??
+++++++++++++++++++

Add-ons, for example? They are a frequent cause for malfunctionings of various kinds, since add-ons are often created by users with little experience. Also add-ons are rarely adapted to the ongoing Celestia core development. The developers of Celestia have NOTHING to do with add-on maintenance. This is entirely a user responsability.

The real problem with such "mysterious" NO-GO's is most frequently that

a) the users concerned are unexperienced with Celestia and/or their computer

b) the users "unconsciously" made some little change (including e.g. add-ons!) which they ignore to report, which however is the actual cause for the problem...

Bye Fridger

t00fri wrote:I still believe that your observed lack of nightlight rendering is NOT due to VISTA.

I can confirm that I have no problems what so ever with Vista and nightlight, but I do have a ATI Radeon card.

//Tech2000

Looks like you were right. Went back to first principles, blew it all away and started again by downloading 1.4.1 again, although it's what i had before. Installed and there were the nightlights.
The only thing I had added was earth's Blue Marble Next Generation 64K VT.
Should I try adding this again?

t00fri wrote:

knight-gkla wrote:Tried the latest NVidia beta driver 101.41, no change.

I still believe that your observed lack of nightlight rendering is NOT due to VISTA.

Fightspit as well as other users have also installed VISTA and did not report any problems whatsoever?? After all, your card is by NVIDIA!

http://www.celestiaproject.net/forum/viewtopic ... ight=vista
I think one may even make out some nightlights there...

Fightspit?

Let me quote:

Fightspit wrote:

rra wrote:using the latest Vista build(5600 / 32 bit) with the NVIDIA driver (96.33) gives good results:

Congratulation! Nvidia driver with ICD OpenGL works fine Very Happy

It's certainly not due to Celestia either. Too many people have installed it successfully with different cards and operating systems...
To give you an idea: Celestia 1.4.1 for Win32 has been downloaded

...

I use the last WHQL Nvidia driver 100.65 (101.45 is a BETA) on VISTA Business and there is no problem with the default night texture
Celestia 1.4.1 with a fresh installation (no add-on).


I also posted about VISTA RC1 (before the FINAL version) when only Nvidia provided a usable Opengl driver:
http://www.celestiaproject.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=10111

knight-gkla wrote:Looks like you were right. Went back to first principles, blew it all away and started again by downloading 1.4.1 again, although it's what i had before. Installed and there were the nightlights.
The only thing I had added was earth's Blue Marble Next Generation 64K VT.
Should I try adding this again?

Aha! Here we go.

Sure enough, that add-on is tricky!

So far only Fightspit published a 64k base and spec texture VT set on Motherlode. I coded a cross-platform toolset and wrote a detailed tutorial about howto make your highest quality, optimized MONSTER normalmap VT set :

http://www.celestialmatters.org/cm/index.shtml
http://www.celestialmatters.org/cm/host ... s/nmtools/
http://www.celestialmatters.org/cm/host ... al00.shtml
http://www.celestialmatters.org/cm/host ... lates=blog

Soon, I will publish complementing tools for people to make their own monster base and spec textures with one click, no matter what their OS and memory are.

Now comes the catch.

Fightspit's VTs are not optimized at all, while mine are/will be highly optimized in many respects.

+++++++++++++++++++++
So it all depends on your amount of card memory, whether you will get problems with running such large textures! With 256-512 MB cards you should be fine.
+++++++++++++++++++++
Problems could be indirectly due to the additional graphics resources used up by VISTA compared to XP.

For instance with Fightspit's separate base and spec VT's, Celestia crashes when I activate cloud shadows in pre 1.5.0/CVS versions. The reason for this is known to us devs...but there is no fix yet.
With my tools the RGB base texture and the spec texture are mounted into RGBA tiles and are DXT compressed thereafter. This way, there is no crash from cloud shadows, since this trick saves plenty of card memory.

Also when using these kingsize, very demanding VTs, you should update to the latest Celestia 1.5.0 pre2/3 version, since there was a bad bug in VT operation earlier!

Good to learn that you are now "on track". Yet, your case once more fitted perfectly to the standard reasons for NO-GO

++++++++++++++++
I think that you are using up your card memory with administrating these gigantic tile sets such that no room is left effectively for rendering the nightlight texture!
++++++++++++++++

You may simply deactivate the highest VT level(s) and see whether the nightlights now show up....

Good luck,
Bye Fridger

Thanks for your help.