New features

[chris]

Here's a discussion starter: what are the top three features that you'd like to see added to Celestia?

--Chris

[Avetikus]

1. When you're viewing an object and select another object that's onscreen, to have the new object become the center of rotation for camera swings.

2. To have 'satellite orbits only' and 'spacecraft orbits only' as rendering options. I got buried in blue rings while looking at the satellites of gas giants in our system. (p.s. nice pod & monolith)

3. Constellation depictions that fade from view as the viewpoint changes to outside our solar system. (not going to let go of this one /grin)


MRodriguez

[Guest]

Here's a discussion starter: what are the top three features that you'd like to see added to Celestia?

--Chris

Good you ask;-)

I would love to see further features related to placing the observer onto specific points of the surface of celestial bodies and to improve finding specific objects from this position. (Of course, I know that this can be done by a rather tedious combination of actions already now.)

So specifically, one may imagine to simply click the desired point on the body from space and hit a key that beams the observer to the surface and orients the camera towards the sky (zenith, say) as a starting configuration. Next and most importantly comes a 'locate object' feature. Suppose I want to view a moon from my position on a planet, I type 'locate <moon>'. If it is below the horizon => too bad, try again. Otherwise center it in the screen.

These features would have a very wide range of possible interesting applications. They are great for observing astronomical events from earth as well as from any other celestial body (e.g. riding on comets).


Bye Fridger

[Guest]

Here's a discussion starter: what are the top three features that you'd like to see added to Celestia?

--Chris

Good you ask;-)

I would love to see further features related to placing the observer onto specific points of the surface of celestial bodies and to improve finding specific objects from this position. (Of course, I know that this can be done by a rather tedious combination of actions already now.)

So specifically, one may imagine to simply click the desired point on the body from space and hit a key that beams the observer to the surface and orients the camera towards the sky (zenith, say) as a starting configuration. Next and most importantly comes a 'locate object' feature. Suppose I want to view a moon from my position on a planet, I type 'locate <moon>'. If it is below the horizon => too bad, try again. Otherwise center it in the screen.

These features would have a very wide range of possible interesting applications. They are great for observing astronomical events from earth as well as from any other celestial body (e.g. riding on comets).


Bye Fridger

[bruckner]

In the mood I'd answer to a lamp's genie (should I ever find one...):

1st: I want to have nebulas.
2nd: I want to have randomized / parametrizable object generators (asteroids, stars, galaxies...)
3rd: I want to ask for another three features

Well... In all seriousness, I think XML support for ssc files would be my third, but I know you are nearly done on that one, so it'd be a wasted opportunity. Comet tails might be as well a consequence of nebulas (or is the other way round?), so I won't ask for that, also. Ah! multiple star systems with true rotation, with ability to specify strange planetary orbits (eight-shaped... Celestia can do it already, at least on the year 60000 )

If I continue writing I'll ask for a thousand more things, so I stop now.

Best regards.

Bruckner

[BreadMan]

Nebulae and comet tails would be nice visuals-wise, and I would really like to see multiple-star systems, pulsars, and black holes (ok maybe that's more than 3, but anyway...)

Suppose I want to view a moon from my position on a planet, I type 'locate <moon>'. If it is below the horizon => too bad, try again. Otherwise center it in the screen.

Hit Enter, type in the name of your desired object, hit enter again, then press C. It pretty much does what you're suggesting, minus the below-the-horizon bit.

[Guest]

Just like everyone else, I'd have to say nebulas, comet tails, and black hole. But I'm going to cheat and pretend that if you can figure one out, there others should be easy. In which case my other two feaatures would have to be :
Improved galaxies (random stars, maybe ?)
Animation effects (have certain features only appear at certain times, like aurorae)

I could go on and on so I think I'll just stop now !


(Mad Boris)

[t00fri]

Hit Enter, type in the name of your desired object, hit enter again, then press C. It pretty much does what you're suggesting, minus the below-the-horizon bit.

True;-)

Fridger

[Paul]

Well, firstly I'd like to say that I'd prefer bug fixing, although I haven't tried out 1.2.4 - hopefully it's a lot less buggy than 1.2.3. Anyhow, such things aside, what I'd like to see is more interesting stuff that we know of further out in our galaxy...

1. Star clusters (open and globular) that resolve into individual stars (not necessarily the actual number/distribution of stars, although that would be nice).

2. Dark nebulae and emission nebulae

3. Protoplanetary discs and dust discs along the line of Beta Pictoris and Fomalhaut, frankly I think these are as interesting to put in as extrasolar gas giants.

[Buzz]

What I would like to see to make Celestia even better:
- shortcut(s) for flying smoothly to the next planet and/or moon
- as many others: nicer galaxies, nebula
- I didn't try the joystick or arrow keys to navigate recently, but for me it worked anti-intuitive. I'm used to flightsimulators that point the nose up when you pull the stick towards you or hit the down key. Could this be made configurable if it isn't already?

[Pixel]

1) Possibility to define exact custom animation interval. aka per24h slide show. It is just feature that sets exact time acceleration rate.
2) texturing to support both - specular light map (in alfa or my be in sep.file) and bump-maps. Bump-maps and cloud-maps to support compressed dds format.
3) Toggle onn/off the selected star's eclipse plane (infinite semitransparent disc) and planet's axis line.
4) possibility to "land" camera on body's surface at exact planet coordinates. Although one can do it with manual navigation . Then it is good to see the main direction marks for Nord,South,East,West, according the body axis and rotation direction or to calc. equatorial grid. This is where Celestia can transform itself to regular 2D-planetarium. With the big advantage that it will not stick only to Earth
5) There is much to do in imrovement of the star light-model. The distant stars still don't look amazing, even as dots. And one hardly can recognize constelations and brightest stars without help. Close-star looks much better from previous versions, but in Open Universe the Sun is nicer.

Best regards!

[picili]

1 ) A way for Celestia to get its model files from the models directory and all its subdirectories. (so I can add a 2001 subfolder :) )

2.) The possibility to create cameras tied on objects and some way to save them. (like having a web cam on ISS space station) It would need to assign keys to move in the object referencial (relatively to it). Are there lens flares on web cams by the way ? :wink:

3.) Dynamic random objects for planetary rings (those objects would appear randomly as you appproach the ring and disappear after, so no video memory nor performance problems)

[Guest]

"Staged" orbital elements - for lack of a better term;

Ie the possibility to have a table of valid time segments and corresponding orbital elements for that timeframe. Thus making it possible to be able to track a probe like NEAR, Voyager, Pioneer, You-Name-It, from launch "to infinity -- and beyond!"

I'm not a good mathematician to know if this is feasible, but there's for instance quite a lot of data from NEAR that seems usable..

/ Lars

[Guest]

Certainly, an automatic update of orbit elements of the various space-stations etc from the standard servers via ftp in form of a key press like in XEphem would be nice.

With properly updated elements it is really fun to rush into the backyard and watch ISS, mir and friends raise above the horizon with O(few seconds) precision...

Generally I strongly vote for improving the /precision/ of the simulation and the operational ease rather than filling space with more phantasy objects. The users should be able eventually to add whatever objects they prefer, just like e.g. in the existing flight simulators.
XML is a very good framework for this.

Also picking specific galaxies and other objects seems not a good approach since already the NGC catalog contains over 10000 such objects. Which ones should one select? Rather, Celestia could aim at a more general acceptance of the standard professional formats of the various catalogs for celestial objects. Of course not all catalogs do have the information celestia needs for full operation...Still feeding in specialized catalogs may be very worthwhile for particular projects.

Fridger

[Sum0]

In no particular order...

1) Better-looking galaxies.
2) Volcanoes on Io and Triton using the same technique as the upcoming comet tails/nebulae.
3) Sulphuric acid rain on Venus (although nobody really knows what it looks like....)
4) Multiple cloud layers.
5) 3D landscapes! If you try to recreate the view from the surface of the moon or whatever, it just looks like you're hanging in space with a grey floor underneath. Which does nothing for atmosphere (no pun intended). How about some simple 3D mountain models which appear when you zoom in to the surface closely? Or even something like a Quicktime panorama? It would look very cool to see the Sun rising over Mount Olympus on Mars...

[sonofsam]

I'd like an option that allows the user to view (toggle on/off) in other than visible light (eg. radio wave emissions, etc.) Not sure if this feasible or reasonable - just a thought.
P.S. Fantastic program - I'm happy it's evolving.

[Thomas]

(random) solar eruptions (i know, this could be quite hard to code and would probably be a frame killer, but hey - i would be a great feature)
ps:
of course, you'd have to fly close to the stars to see, this way you should be able to save frames by a z-buffer.
but again: this would be cool but also is more utopic.
thomas

[jobezone]

Besides the comet trail, which I've read that you are wanting to put,
I would love _a lot_ to have textures for close-ups of the planets which we have close-up satelite images of, like Earth, Mars, Moon, etc.

So, for example, as we aproached Earth, at around altitude 1400 km, which is when the textures is starting too look blocky, another one would show up; I'm no programmer, but perhaps by dividing the closeup texture to several smaller ones, it would be the way to avoid a big performance hit.

I think that going even closer to earth wouldn't be necessary(for now:)) and very dificult, since it would need for you to go search around the net satelite pictures of every possible place on earth.

[Rassilon]

#1 Decode the stars.dat to use an ssc file instead...OR where additional stars can be added using ssc format (This is done already with galaxies but could also be done with nebulas and other spacial objects) PLUS the ability to add additional stars in solar systems...i.e Sirius has a white dwarf system...

#2 Better flight controls, gravity, escape velocity etc... Add flight controls in the demo and start cel file scripting..Fullscreen mode in scripting would be cool too but not that important...

#3 Bug maybe...but fixing the ability to add planets to systems at any distance from thier sun. And fixing the clipping effect I saw in the Toliman system when I added a planet there, it moved close to Rigel Kent B and disappeared when approaching the planet...I think this may have to do with lighting effects...maybe.

Thanks for hearing us out Chris!

[TVTExtreme4]

I would love to see te following three things added to celestia, if possible.

1. Nebulas
2. Improved Galaxys
3. Better Cloud Textures