Celestia Forums

I find it a tad confusing. :) I can select earth, then hit F for follow, then select the moon and hit "T".. and now it's tracking earth to moon. Or I can swap the two... and track moon to earth. What's the difference? What does this do exactly?

And then I can lock (:) stuff.. lock A to B. What does that do?

And lastly... what exactly does the "*" key do? It's not documented in the readme file.

Thanks!

Good questions! I hope someone with more experience than me will chime in, and let us both know! :wink:

This text file contains an explanation that might help you out:

http://www.shatters.net/celestia/manual.txt

And if it's not helpful, let me know so I can rewrite the confusing parts.

--Chris

MDesigner here (from another computer)

I went through that manual. The only explanation of track is here:

T
Track the selected object

No explanation really. The phase lock explanation is pretty good though!

Track is like pressing C every frame. It keeps the tracked object centered in your view.

Hope this is clearer.

abiogenesis

Tracking is like "C".. ? But so is F(ollow) and S(Y)nc Orbit.. they both follow the object in question. Maybe I'm missing something..

F - "Follow": Maintains relative position to selected object.

Y - "Sync Orbit": Same as follow, but also synchronizes camera's orbit of object to the rotation of the object.

C - "Center": Center's the selected object in the camera's view.

T - "Track": Keeps the selected object centered.

Example: Press H3G. You'll be looking at earth. "Follow Earth" will appear in the lower right because "Follow" is the default mode when you "Go To" an object.

Press L to speed up time until you notice the earths rotation. Earth will remain centered in the window.

Press Y to put the camera into a geosynchronous orbit of Earth. The planet will appear stationary as the stars spin around behind it. The camera's orbit is synchronized with the earth.

Press Esc to cancel all scripts. The Earth should wander off while the camera remains stationary.

Press C to center the Earth in the view. The Earth will be centered, but the camera will not follow it. It will continue to wander off.

Press T to track the Earth. Now, although the camera is still stationary and it's distance to the Earth is changing, the Earth will remain centered in the view.

That's a general overview of the main camera control functions. I'm not so sure about "Phase Lock", though... I don't think I have a firm grasp of the spacial relationship it's supposed to model. These are pretty simple though.

Hope this explanation clears it up.

abiogenesis