Celestia Forums

This is a request and a question: Are there any plans for allowing stars to be placed beyond the current maximum distance (of which I forget the value), and if not, could this be included in an upcoming version?

I've been planning a series of add-ons for the Stargate Universe, and to make it realistic (as far as the show is concerned), not only would I need to place systems all over the Galaxy, but beyond it as well.

Also, there are some very fascinating major stars and features beyond the current maximum distance. One is the Pistol Star (which Steve Bowers made an add-on for at one point, I believe), but there are certainly many others.

...John...

If you haven't already read it, Q12 of the Celestia Users FAQ may interest you,

http://www.celestiaproject.net/forum/viewtopic ... ght=#16526

Michael Kilderry

Actually in Celestia this could be done as I have done it in my program that Ive been coding....I currently have 50,000 galaxies with 50,000 systems to explore in 4 universes which adds up to 10 billion systems in total...What I did was very, very simple but very, very tedious... Move the world around you and keep the observer stationary...Toggle z-buffer inside/outside a star system...Inside a star system z-buffer is disabled and all visible objects are scaled down to be far enough away to appear behind everything in the system and also close enough to keep from being clipped by the far plane....Outside the star system all external objects (galaxies and stars) are back to the original scale and z-buffer is enabled...I have a center point at the center of the known universe per universe that updates as you move...Everything is plotted around this point and therefore moves with the center point....My clipping plane is 10 x 1000000000 in which everything is shown at any given time...thus allowing for an infinate universe...One drawback to this is the scale Celestia uses...Celestia scales objects much larger than I do and decreases its boundries...BUT since I use double precision for all coordinates you will have 10e37 to work with...Celestia simply needs to convert its plotting system to double...reverse the camera movement to world movement and camera stationary and some other behind the scenes effects such as scaling background objects as you apprach a planet...If its done right there will be no noticable change to the user...