Celestia Forums

Hello All,
As a new user to Celestia, I downloaded Celestia 1.3.0 but am having problems displaying the text. I scanned the forum, but most of the display issues appear to be related to animation and/or resolution.

Problem : The onscreen information text is unreadable. However no problems with textures, animation, etc.

OS: Windows XP Professional (5.1, Build 2600)
Processor: Intel Pentium III, 800MHz
Memory: 512MB RAM
Display Card: S3 Graphics Savage/IX
Display Memory: 8.0 MB
Current Mode: 1024 x 768 (32 bit)
PS: yes, this is an HP notebook.

I have included a screen shot to better illustrate this.
Installed both the hi res and lo res Celestia versions, the screen shot is from the low res installation. In either case the text is illegible.


Any suggestions welcome, I look forward to enjoying Celestia to the fullest.
Royet

Im not sure if this is the problem or not
but windows XP has a font setting for Laptop computers

its called "clear type"

and can de found in the Effects settings of the Apperence tab of the Display properties.

see if that helps ?

About all that I can suggest is to upgrade the drivers for your graphics card. Turning ClearType on or off will have no effect, as Celestia uses OpenGL to render the text overlayed on the 3D view.

--Chris

Hi,

Thanks for your feedback.
Unfortunately the ClearType suggestion had no effect

I tried to find out more about the OpenGL solution. The display drivers are the most latest from manufacturer site (http://www.s3graphics.com). However unable to determine the OpenGL version. As a test, I downloaded the 15 day trial of Starry Night Backyard (http://www.starrynight.com); where it failed to initialize OpenGL for the display card.
So Chris, you maybe right; it is an OpenGL problem
Any other suggestions welcome.
Thanks for your response.
Royet

Royet wrote:However unable to determine the OpenGL version

You can find information about the OpenGL driver in Celestia, selecting Help->OpenGL Info. Please post us this information.

Try turning antialiasing off or change it to 4x or higher.

Here is the OpenGL info :

Vendor: S3 Graphics, Incorporated
Renderer: SavageMX
Version: 1.1 2.10.77
Max simultaneous textures: 1
Max texture size: 2048

Supported Extensions:
GL_ARB_texture_compression
GL_EXT_texture_compression_s3tc
GL_EXT_abgr
GL_EXT_bgra
GL_EXT_clip_volume_hint
GL_EXT_compiled_vertex_array
GL_EXT_fog_coord
GL_EXT_packed_pixels
GL_EXT_point_parameters
GL_EXT_paletted_texture
GL_EXT_separate_specular_color
GL_EXT_shared_texture_palette
GL_EXT_texture_lod_bias
GL_EXT_vertex_array
GL_KTX_buffer_region
GL_S3_s3tc
GL_WIN_swap_hint

Tried disabling/enabling Antialiasing - no success.
Royet

I have an ATI graphics card and with some program's I have the same problem (all the NFS games). Did you tweak your card ? Or maybe the default setting are just not so compatible.

I use Rage3D for advanced settings because it is not in the normal ATI drivers and it's called alternate pixel centre there. I'm sure that Nvidea and S3 have such a setting too but I don't know how it's called.

But if you had a ATI card I would be sure it was this, with an S3 I'm not but it sound like the same thing !