Celestia Forums

Is it possible smoothening the movements of Celestia for video capture (eg. when you move with arrow keys or mouse)?
Is the PAL (720*576) the maximum resolution for video capture? or it depends on the video card? (I have an FX5200 128MB)
Can I create a path in space wich the camera would follow? (the goto function isn't always the right choice)

Howdy MindToAsk,

In the Celestia folder is a file called "celestia.cfg". In this file you will find the entry, "RotateAcceleration 120.0". This controls the speed of the arrow key functions. Change the value to a much lower value (like 30.0) for use when capturing video.

Yes, I believe that 720x576 (PAL) and 720x480 (NTSC) are the largest supported video sizes. These are standards-based (PAL and NTSC) and are for TV viewing. At these sizes, using even a 3.06 GHz processor, the frame rate is reduced to 10-20 FPS, which is much lower than the standard provides for (PAL=24 and NTSC=30), so I don't think larger video sizes would work very well in Celestia.

To create "paths" in space, you need to write a script (.CEL or Lua) for use within Celestia. See the Scripting forum here. I have not personally tried to capture a video while running a script, so I'm not sure if that works, or if it is slower, or ???

Hope this helps!

-Don G.

Thanks don . I've modified the celestia.cfg with a new parameter for RotateAcceleration and I've achived what I wanted. As for the scripting part, I've done a test of recording while running demo; it works just fine.

Howdy MindToAsk,

Glad you got it to do what you wanted to!

MindToAsk wrote:As for the scripting part, I've done a test of recording while running demo; it works just fine.

Very glad to hear this too. Sooooo many fun things to explore in Celestia!

-Don G.