Custom stars.dat files?

[Evil Dr Ganymede]

Let's say I want to ditch the existing stars.dat file and make up my own little universe. Is there a way I can put a load of stc entries together into a single text file and convert that into a new stars.dat file to replace the one that Celestia uses?

I figure there must be, or those big Hipparcos stars.dat files wouldn't be possible to make .

Can anyone point me in the right direction?

[marc]

Nice one silly, please read the announcement at the top of this forum.

You will need to write some code. Have a look at buildstardb.cpp in the celestia source, its used to create the stars.dat file.

[Evil Dr Ganymede]

Er, what announcement? There's nothing in the FAQ thread about this.

So I'd have to compile the stars.dat building code myself? I was hoping that there was an already compiled version of it out there somewhere that I could download (says he, not having C++).

[chris]

I can probably modify Celestia just slightly so that it can start up without loading stars.dat. As a temporary fix though, it would be easy to create a stars.dat file with just a single star, allowing everything else to be added through .stc files. Would that be adequate?

--Chris

[Evil Dr Ganymede]

That would be rather spiffy, yes - if it's not too much trouble that would be great! (I'm assuming you mean you'd create the stars.dat file with the one star, because I don't know how to do this)

Heck, assuming the default star wasn't Sol, you could set it up so it's an M9 V star about 3000 lightyears away or something, so it wouldn't show up in Celestia unless you ramped up the magntitudes all the way to maximum.

Thanks!

[wcomer]

Chris, that would be a great solution. Currently, stars.dat is the only thing left which has to be handled carefully during installation updates. This work-around would make the new installs completely painless.