Another beautiful 3D Simulation

Paolo · Post #1by **Paolo** » 03.05.2003, 20:17

Navigating the web I occasionally return to NeHe http://nehe.gamedev.net/, and in these days appeared a piece of news regardig a beautiful 3D simulation named Infinite Universe developed by Jochen Winzen.

I've tested it for a while and it is very similar to Celestia. Actually I think it can be considered its perfect counterpart because covers one of the Celestia latest lacks: an improved planetary surface rendering.

With the downloadable package there is the complete source code.

I think that should be wonderful if the two development teams could merge in the Celestia project, or if Chris and the other Celestia guys use the Infinite Universe source code as a trace.

Greetings

New2Celestia · Post #2by **New2Celestia** » 04.05.2003, 00:50

That would Be Great! I have always wanted to goto Mars's surface.

Guest · Post #3by **Guest** » 04.05.2003, 01:23

Hmmm, this program is very buggy and lacks features. Why does Saturn have terrain??? Arent those clouds?

Borg-Bob · Post #4by **Borg-Bob** » 04.05.2003, 01:27

It eliminates the need for Bumpmapping since the bumps are already in 3d. This is a feature needed in Celestia...

Sum0 · Post #5by **Sum0** » 04.05.2003, 17:19

Very nice. Although the program needs a little work it looks lovely, and I really hope that it can be combined with Celestia someday.

I also noticed in the read me...

The code contains parts derived from work of other authors.
Thanks go to:
...

Chris Laurel (Julian date class from CELESTIA, http://www.celestiaproject.net/celestia)

Guest · Post #6by **Guest** » 04.05.2003, 23:45

Any screenshots would be nice...

bh.

billybob884 · Post #7by **billybob884** » 05.05.2003, 02:54

I took the time to download this program, and I must say that it is amazing. For surface browsing. Celestia is more based on the BIG picture, planets, nebulas, galaxies, ect. I think it may be better that they stay seperate, considering that my version of celestia with all the textures I have is running slow enough.

jamarsa · Post #8by **jamarsa** » 05.05.2003, 14:33

It crashes for me in Windoze, so I have compiled it in Linux, after a bit of tweaking in the code :twisted:

, but it's very slow (0.23 fps

) ... and I don't speak enough deustch to understand the help!!!

Post #9by **t00fri** » 05.05.2003, 15:05

jamarsa wrote:It crashes for me in Windoze, so I have compiled it in Linux, after a bit of tweaking in the code :twisted: , but it's very slow (0.23 fps :( ) ... and I don't speak enough deustch to understand the help!!!

This sounds like your hardware 3d support has not "fired". How many fps do you get when you compile Celestia in Linux. I assure you it's more than 0.25;-)

Bye Fridger

ElPelado · Post #10by **ElPelado** » 05.05.2003, 15:24

sorry for beeing so stupid, but how i can see my fps??

Post #11by **t00fri** » 05.05.2003, 17:03

ElPelado wrote:sorry for beeing so stupid, but how i can see my fps??

It's first of all written in the controls.txt file that you may call from menue->help. Where else?

Just hit ` . Note its the /backquote/, sitting to the left of 1 on an english keyboard. Under windows I noticed that it sometimes needs hitting several times;-) until the fps show up in the lower left corner (above the speed display).

Bye Fridger

jamarsa · Post #12by **jamarsa** » 05.05.2003, 17:52

My compiled celestia shows at between 37 FPS (when viewing Mars at 1000xtime speed) and 70 FPS (In interstellar space, of course ). :roll:

What do you mean by 'fired'? HW support for OpenGL needs to be specifically initialized? I thought it was activated at the mere use of the OpenGL libraries ... BTW, this program consumes a LOT of memory - about 244MB in my system, my swap space gets really 'fired' :lol:

Post #13by **t00fri** » 05.05.2003, 18:49

jamarsa wrote:My compiled celestia shows at between 37 FPS (when viewing Mars at 1000xtime speed) and 70 FPS (In interstellar space, of course ). :roll: What do you mean by 'fired'? HW support for OpenGL needs to be specifically initialized? I thought it was activated at the mere use of the OpenGL libraries ... BTW, this program consumes a LOT of memory - about 244MB in my system, my swap space gets really 'fired' :lol:

This sounds as if you know what you are doing;-). Sorry, in this forum the spectrum of knowledge about such things is vastly spread out. Experience shows that in >80% of reports where people get <1 fps in case of a 3d application that they do not know how to activate 3d HW support. That's why I asked for your Celestia fps rate, which is perfectly OK.

I have only briefly visited that website and found it sort of 'strange' (despite my perfect knowledge of German).

Don't ask me why;-)

Bye Fridger

Post #14by **chris** » 05.05.2003, 19:07

A few words about Infinite Universe . . .

First when close to a planet, the program seems sluggish even on my Athlon 2600/GeForce4 Ti 4600 system.

Second there's quite a lot of popping when switching levels of detail.

And third, the program seems generally flaky . . .

I don't mean any disrespect to the authors of Infinite Universe; what they're trying to do is incredibly difficult to accomplish. The greater generality required (probably) by Celestia would make the task even more difficult. I'm not saying that it's impossible to integrate some sort of real-time procedural terrain modeling into Celestia, but it's a lot more difficult than "just" mixing in someone else's infinite terrain engine. There's a lot of work to be done before the stability and quality of these terrain engines is adequate for Celestia.

--Chris

jamarsa · Post #15by **jamarsa** » 05.05.2003, 19:09

Well, I'm not experienced at all in the graphics stuff, although I consider myself a systems programmer (of the old character console's times). I lack the time now to test it, but it could be the memory issue (I have only 256Mb in this machine). I'm suspicious too at the presence of a specific 'glext.h' in this program - maybe a 'Windows' specific thing?

Post #16by **chris** » 05.05.2003, 19:10

jamarsa wrote:My compiled celestia shows at between 37 FPS (when viewing Mars at 1000xtime speed) and 70 FPS (In interstellar space, of course ). What do you mean by 'fired'? HW support for OpenGL needs to be specifically initialized? I thought it was activated at the mere use of the OpenGL libraries ... BTW, this program consumes a LOT of memory - about 244MB in my system, my swap space gets really 'fired'

Did you mean that Celestia or Infinite Universe is using 244MB? That's way too much memory, unless you have lots of high resolution textures and the two million star database.

--Chris

jamarsa · Post #17by **jamarsa** » 05.05.2003, 19:36

Chris wrote:

Did you mean that Celestia or Infinite Universe is using 244MB? That's way too much memory, unless you have lots of high resolution textures and the two million star database.

Sorry to frighten you, chris!!! No, celestia takes only 85 Mb, it's IU what gets 244Mb.

I just read your note about IU... The author admits this is one of his firsts projects with OpenGL, and seems to be a graduate student, but I think it could be a nice new goal (very time consuming, I know) to grasp somehow the idea and develop a 'perhaps optional' extension for celestia, for the people who have enough 'power' in their machines. Not necessarily by you, of course... I lack the time now, but since a lot of time I want to explore the world of terrain generation... And this comes now!!

A little offtopic for t00fri: Jochen is a male or female name? I was wondering while writing this note... :oops:

About the screenshots...

This is the result from a quick search in Google... The Homepage of Infinite Universe:

http://vterrain.org/Packages/IUE/

Post #18by **t00fri** » 05.05.2003, 20:12

jamarsa wrote:Chris wrote:

Did you mean that Celestia or Infinite Universe is using 244MB? That's way too much memory, unless you have lots of high resolution textures and the two million star database.

Sorry to frighten you, chris!!! No, celestia takes only 85 Mb, it's IU what gets 244Mb.

I just read your note about IU... The author admits this is one of his firsts projects with OpenGL, and seems to be a graduate student, but I think it could be a nice new goal (very time consuming, I know) to grasp somehow the idea and develop a 'perhaps optional' extension for celestia, for the people who have enough 'power' in their machines. Not necesarily by you, of course... I lack the time now, but since a lot of time I want to explore the world of terrain generation... And this comes now!!

A little offtopic for t00fri: Jochen is a male or female name? I was wondering while writing this note... :oops:

About the screenshots...

This is the result from a quick search in Google... The Homepage of Infinite Universe:

http://vterrain.org/Packages/IUE/

Jochen is definitely a /male/ first name. The IU project is a Diplome thesis work, which in Germany is fairly high level . The Diplome is somewhat more than a Masters and the Diplome Thesis alone takes (exactly) one year to complete.

So you may assume that the project involved also a number of 'in depth' studies...

Bye Fridger

jamarsa · Post #19by **jamarsa** » 05.05.2003, 20:22

Aahh, so it's more what we call in Spain a 'Doctorate'... I was browsing the PDF and the program seems to explore the fractal field of mathematics (LOD algorithms).

I was thinking now that, being so appealing the idea of instant generation of virtual terrain, Celestia lies more in the 'real' world, so perhaps the goal would be the representation of DEM databases, as flightgear (http://www.flightgear.org tries to do.
But I still love the virtual worlds!! :wink:

Post #20by **t00fri** » 05.05.2003, 20:30

jamarsa wrote:Aahh, so it's more what we call in Spain a 'Doctorate'... I was browsing the PDF and the program seems to explore the fractal field of mathematics (LOD algorithms).

I was thinking now that, being so appealing the idea of instant generation of virtual terrain, Celestia lies more in the 'real' world, so perhaps the goal would be the representation of DEM databases, as flightgear (http://www.flightgear.org tries to do.
But I still love the virtual worlds!! :wink:

Well if the spanish 'Doctorate' finishes with a PhD then the Diplome is not ~ a Doctorate. Usually, starting from a German Diplome, it will take another 3 years to get the PhD. I know quite a few highly qualified spanish PhD guys who have definitely spent more than the time for a German Diplome thesis on their PhD work;-)

Bye Fridger