Celestia Forums

Hi everyone !
All the spacecrafts look like dots, and eventually disappear when I zoom in. I thought it was a problem with my way of installing addons, but the problem is the same with "built in" spacecrafts. Can you help ?

Thanks !

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linux ubuntu dapper AMD64 / 1Ghz RAM - nvidia geforce 7200

Which version of Celestia are you using?

Some of the spacecraft, like a few of the built-in (default) craft, are visable only during specific date spans. Were you aware of this?

What command / method are you using to zoom in on the craft?


More detailed information about the above will better enable folks to help you with such problems.

> Which version of Celestia are you using?
1.3.2

> Some of the spacecraft, like a few of the built-in (default) craft,
> are visable only during specific date spans. Were you aware of this?
Yes. I could see Station Mir appearing, but under the shape of a little white dot.

> What command / method are you using to zoom in on the craft?
Typing "F" then using center wheel of the mouse. I can see for example the ISS like a white dot. Then when I get quite close (about 20 km) it disappears.

I've just realized it's the same with some asteroids : I can't see Eros either...

Yes. I could see Station Mir appearing, but under the shape of a little white dot.

Have you moved or renamed the "celestia/models" directory?
The symptoms you describe would normally occur because Celestia cannot find the model meshes referred to in the SSC file.
In order to locate the meshes, Celestia requires them to exist in a sub-folder named "models".

The general rule (for addons) is: whichever folder in which your SSC exists must contain a sub-folder named "models" containing all meshes referred to in any ssc's existing in the parent folder.
A similar rule for textures: the same folder referred to above must also contain a folder named "textures" with as a minimum requirement a sub-folder named "medres" containing the textures.

For the built-in spacecraft, it's slightly different... they are defined in the "celestia/data" folder, the models must be located in "celestia/models" and the textures in "celestia/textures/medres".
As long as you haven't messed with the original folder structure after installation, then this should be the case.

Have you moved or renamed the "celestia/models" directory?

No.

The symptoms you describe would normally occur because Celestia cannot find the model meshes referred to in the SSC file.

I guess so... Is there any text output that could help debugging ?

The general rule is: whichever folder in which your SSC exists must contain a folder named "models" containing all meshes referred to in any ssc's in the parent folder.

Are you sure about that ? Is it true with linux, too ? Most of my ssc files are in a "data" directory in celestia root folder, but "data" doesn't contain any models. The models are in a "models" directory placed in Celestia root folder. And I didn't modify this.

A similar rule for textures: the same folder referred to above must also contain a folder named "textures" with as a minimum requirement a sub-folder named "medres" containing the textures.

Same remark as above.

As the built-in spacecraft are defined in the "celestia" folder, the models must be located in "celestia/models" and the textures in "celestia/textures/medres".

Same remark : the spacecraft are in celestia/data and not in celestia/
Is this normal ?

margret wrote:Same remark : the spacecraft are in celestia/data and not in celestia/
Is this normal ?

Yes that's normal. (Sorry, mistakes in my original remarks...now corrected). See above.

It looks to me like your directory structure is normal.

Models not being drawn by some versions of Celestia under linux is a "known problem". You'll need to recompile from source specifying

CXXFLAGS=-fno-strict-aliasing

See
http://www.celestiaproject.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=9605