Celestia Forums

So I used an earlier version of Celestia on a 1ghz/256 ram machine with a Matrox dual head card and Win2k. It worked pretty well....smooth movement, rarely crashed.

Now I'm on same machine with newest Celestia... 1ghz/512ram with an NvidiaGeForce 2ti and Win XP but now, even with the star filter maxed out, I dont' see that many stars....and the program is not smooth...everything choppy and then eventually freezes.

I've even closed everything I can think of in order to free up resources. What could be the problem.....it doesn't seem to make sense

Current versions of Celestia, v1.3.0 and later, require OpenGL v1.4.
v1.2.4 did not.

Geforce2 cards don't have the hardware needed to support v1.4, so their drivers do many operations in software, which makes them very slow.

I'd suggest upgrading to a current generation card: the FX 5200 is only about U.S. $80.

I've updated form CVS this night, and compiled the newest Celestia version. Works fine on my Athlon XP 1800, ATI 8500, Win XP.

Can you specify the celestia version you are using?

GeForce 2 Ti is not the latest video card but I know for sure that Celestia works fine on with it.
Usually in these situations a video card driver update should solve the problem.

Bye - Paolo

selden wrote:Current versions of Celestia, v1.3.0 and later, require OpenGL v1.4.
v1.2.4 did not.

Geforce2 cards don't have the hardware needed to support v1.4, so their drivers do many operations in software, which makes them very slow.

I'd suggest upgrading to a current generation card: the FX 5200 is only about U.S. $80.

This is not true . . . Celestia only requires OpenGL 1.1, though all rendering features won't be available unless you have an OpenGL 1.4 driver. It should run fine on any GeForce or Radeon card . . . Even old TNT cards have no trouble with Celestia. Also, the most important OpenGL 1.4 feature, vertex programs, can be emulated in software on a fast processor without completely killing Celestia's performance.

--Chris

I have a Radeon 9000 Pro 128, and the only major issue I've had is the well-known Ring shadow problem. I don't get too much slowdown (Unless I switch on the names of all those Jovian trojans I downloaded ).

I have resolved that, if the problem ain't fixed in 6 months (Possibly via updated drivers), I'm going for an GeForce Card (besides, I want to try AGP 8x hehehehe)

Spec:

Athlon 1500+
256mb ddr 400mhz Ram
Sapphire Atlantis Radeon 9000 Pro 128
Windows 98 SE

I know you guys want Celestia to be the best it can be. I know it could be better, and WILL be better with each release, but its still the best there's ever been . As I said in an email to Chris Laurel, you guys have made abstract, cold, dry numbers and flat static images move and live and breathe, and allowed many of us to give final vent to creative impulses that have long gone untapped.

Celestia is, from what I've seen of the program and read on the forum, not just a labour of love, but a work of passion....

Cormoran

Chris,

Sorry, I didn't phrase things correctly: it needs v1.4 in order to show all of the eye-candy.

Unfortunately, the older ATI libraries for their older cards are, shall we say, less than bug free. Apparently they report to Celestia that they support functions which are (to put it kindly) not properly coded.

My understanding from postings here on the forum (as well as a brief visit to one of the ATI forums) is that the newer libraries work well for the higher levels of cards (9500 and above) but more bugs are present in the drivers for the lower numbered cards.

For example, the drivers for the RAGE series of cards, including the RAGE 128 which I suspect is the one that is mentioned above, are quite pathetic: night textures are indeed drawn entirely in software and are incredibly slow. The drivers for the 7000 card as was provided in Catalyst 3.2, regularly crashed systems where I work. Catalyst is up to v3.6 now. Hopefully it's in better shape now.

Hi CitizenZed
I am using XP and a nvidia Gforce 2 mx400( with the 44.03 driver ) and its anly chopy with the "c" star cat. -the 2.5 mil.one or if i am using 16k maps

what driver are you using I hope that it is not the one from Microsoft's auto-update because it sucks .