Celestia Forums

Is there a feature in Celestia that will calculate the distance between two objects, like Earth and Io? If not, could this feature be added?

Thanks.

Just go near one of the two objects, for instance, Earth, and select (but don't go to) another object (for instance, Io). The distance will appear on the top left corner of the simulation area.

Have fun...

Bruckner

Yes, but would I stay next to the object if it was moving or would the camera stay in a single position? I think it would be fairly easy to add the code to calculate the distance between two moving points if it could do it between one object and the camera.

Anonymous wrote:Yes, but would I stay next to the object if it was moving or would the camera stay in a single position? I think it would be fairly easy to add the code to calculate the distance between two moving points if it could do it between one object and the camera.

It would be extremely easy to write code to calculate the distance. The only real issue is how would it be integrated into the Celestia UI? Working on Celestia has made me more aware of how incredibly important the job of a UI designer is--there are a lot features that would be simple to implement in Celestia, but coming up with an intuitive, non-intrusive UI to expose the new features is a formidable task. I've been taking a lazy approach and adding more and more keyboard commands, but this is hardly ideal.

--Chris

Ctrl- or Alt- click and drag between two objects could draw a line between them that has an attached label with angular separation and actual distance. This is how Starry Night does it, and it works well.

I'd like to see an option to show a web of connecting lines between objects that are within a certain distance, or an option to hide objects that are further away than a certain distance. At the moment, it's hard to determine, say, which stars are nearest (the only way to do it is to rotate the view around the curent star, and judge the distance from the rotation of close objects).