Celestia Forums

I have recently noticed in Celestia that the Earth has specular reflections from the Sun (quite impressive if you ask me ). First, let me say that I have two separate Windows desktop systems, both containing Celestia 1.3.0, and each with a Windows XP OS. I wouldn't actually consider this to be a bug, but I will tell you my system configurations and so forth. One system is a Dell Dimension 4450, with a Pentium 4 processor speed of 2.6 gHz, along with a NVIDIA graphics card of 64meg. (I'm not sure if this is enough information, but that is not the point). Anyway, the other system is an IBM NetVista with also a Pentium 4 and NVIDIA Vantage graphics card. The conflict is that on one machine I can see the specular reflections, and the other, I cannot. Is this simply an option integrated into Celestia, a graphic whose directory does match those which is indicated in the .ssc file, or a system requirement that I do not have that enables such rendering of Earth's texture? Please excuse me if this is not enough information; all I need is an answer of an ideal configuration to make specular reflections possible.

The NVidia card in the IBM is not capable of rendering specular lighting effects as it is based on a hobbled TNT chipsset design. The Card in the Dell is most likely a Quadro 2 card. Its based on the GeForce 2 GTS chip I believe. This is why you can see the specualr lighting effects. Actually specular lighting has been Celestia for over a year now. I hope this help answer your question. If you want your IBM to show specular lighting you need to upgrade to at least a basic GeForce2 card.

Don.

Thanks for the info. I'll check on getting an upgrade sometime soon.