Celestia Forums

Hi - Can I ask for the following question to be submitted to the FAQ?

"How do I enable Virtual Textures - for example the California section?"

The problem is that the installation instructions supplied with the VT downloads are very vague and most say put them in the "/BlueMarble DDS/textures/hires/earth" folder. However I don't have this and I want to know how I go about it...

Dave

Dear Dave:

Virtual textures are a particular set of graphic surface images that Celestia can use to depict planet and moon surfaces. They take up less video RAM when running, but take up lots of regular RAM memory. Downloading them can be time consuming, because there are so many of them. For example, the Blue Marble VT set for Earth is over 300 MB in size.

Anyway, you can get VT sets for Earth at the Motherlode add-on website. Here is the link you need.

http://www.celestiamotherlode.net/catalog/earth.php

Any of the VT texture sets will work. Blue Marble DDS is one of the sets available on this site.

After downloading, place the entire set into your extras folder. Then, open the add-on and you will find a separate folder called "hires". Place the California VT textures in it, and they will be visible when you launch Celestia. The VT add-on will tell you what to do.

Regards,

Frank