Celestia Forums

Ok. I have Celestia and I can hit GO and go to planets and things. BUT, what else does this do? For example. If I go to one of the comets, I can LOOK at it? Is that all? I'd like to be able to manipulate something like a comet and set it towards a sun and see the tail. Am I thinking that this should be too much of a GAME type thing???

I did an add on of the Star Wars with the 6 movies. You can SEE things and see the movies but that's about all I could figure out other than maybe turning something with the mouse.

OR, am I missing a whole point? Why would someone need a joystick for it? That is why I think I am missing some very important features. I love looking at the program but want to DO more I guess.

Ms. C wrote:Ok. I have Celestia and I can hit GO and go to planets and things. BUT, what else does this do? For example. If I go to one of the comets, I can LOOK at it? Is that all? I'd like to be able to manipulate something like a comet and set it towards a sun and see the tail. Am I thinking that this should be too much of a GAME type thing???

I did an add on of the Star Wars with the 6 movies. You can SEE things and see the movies but that's about all I could figure out other than maybe turning something with the mouse.

OR, am I missing a whole point? Why would someone need a joystick for it? That is why I think I am missing some very important features. I love looking at the program but want to DO more I guess.

How about taking the excellent Celestia documentation, READing it first, learning what all this is about...and then write posts like this one or perhaps not.

Why do you need people /spending their time/, explaining to you what you are actually supposed to read yourself in the corresponding manual available to everyone??

A gifted teacher spent many weeks of his spare time creating a pedagogical introduction to Celestia with many illustrations etc. When I see your kind of mail, I keep asking myself why it should still make sense that such nice manuals are being written...

Unfortunately, that attitude seems to become increasingly popular... The only explanation I could find so far is:

READING HURTS...


Bye Fridger

Ms. C wrote:Ok. I have Celestia and I can hit GO and go to planets and things. BUT, what else does this do?

Celestia itself is just a tool -- a 3D visualization program. You tell it what objects to draw and then use it to display those objects. It's optimized for astronomical topics but can be used for other things, too.

Think of it as being like a paintbox. There are lots of pretty colors that can be entertaining to look at just for themselves, but when you add water, a brush and blank paper, many more things can be created.

OR, am I missing a whole point? Why would someone need a joystick for it?

A joystick is an alternative to using the keyboard for changing the viewpoint. Currently a joystick provides access to only a few limited motions, however.

The ability to rotate and move things manually in realtime (using ScriptedRotation and ScriptedOrbit) are only just now becoming available in Celestia v1.5. Older versions of Celestia require motions to be predefined in catalog files.

That is why I think I am missing some very important features. I love looking at the program but want to DO more I guess.

Well, then maybe you should start thinking about creating your own Addons

Selden, Thank you for your quick and thoughtful reply. That's all I needed to know. I basically get the entire program. Love the graphics!!

Fridger, While I wish I had a lot of time to peruse manuals, I have literally minutes of time in a day with a 17 hour work day most days of the week. The fact that I even have a minute to look at this program and ask a question since the last time over two weeks ago, shows you that I think this is a worthwhile program.

Since I am able to teach myself most programs including many more difficult ones, I was just making sure that the limitations I already saw were correct. I now understand Celestia and yes, it would be nice if I could do the honor to the manual producer but it also seems silly to spend hundreds of pages on how to run a program step by step(I am not talking about writing your own objects or scripts) when using the menus is a lot easier.

By the way, it DOESN'T hurt to be civil and obliging.

subsequent posts about hamburgers have been moved to the Purgatory Forum, Topic subject hamburgers