Suggestion: Azimuth readings along planet horizons

[Darkstone]

Thank you for your suggestion, Selden. Once again I am awestruck by Celestia?€™s capabilities. However, as a person who genuinely wants to help develop the program further, I would like to submit a few more ideas:

(1) It?€™s still difficult to keep the horizon level, even when I?€™m in alti-azimuth mode.
(2) I would like to see compass directions or azimuth readings along the horizon.
(3) There should be an alti-azimuth grid showing the zenith and altitude/azimuth readings.
(4) Setting orbital/rotational elements for user-created planets should be simplified. Perhaps a dialog box with fields for eccentricity, ascending node, etc., should be available for those who are confused by the script in the extrasolar.ssc file.

Thank you for your consideration.

Sincerely,

Peter

[selden]

Thank you for your suggestion, Selden. Once again I am awestruck by Celestia?€™s capabilities. However, as a person who genuinely wants to help develop the program further, I would like to submit a few more ideas:

(1) It?€™s still difficult to keep the horizon level, even when I?€™m in alti-azimuth mode.

Are you using the arrow keys to turn? For me, the horizon doesn't get misaligned until I've done a lot of spinning around.

(2) I would like to see compass directions or azimuth readings along the horizon.

Have you turned on the Celestial Grid? It includes blue compass tick marks, too. Unfortunately, they don't have values next to them.

(3) There should be an alti-azimuth grid showing the zenith and altitude/azimuth readings.

maybe someday

(4) Setting orbital/rotational elements for user-created planets should be simplified. Perhaps a dialog box with fields for eccentricity, ascending node, etc., should be available for those who are confused by the script in the extrasolar.ssc file.

These values have to be in an SSC catalog that Celestia reads when it starts up, so a separate program to calculate orbital parameters would be more appropriate, I think. Rassilon is working on a program that can create planetary catalogs, I think, although its primary focus is on generating the planets themselves. See the thread about Terraform: http://216.231.48.101/forum/viewtopic.php?t=7825
.

Also, the program StarGen creates entire planetary systems, optionally creating SSC catalogs, too. See http://home.comcast.net/~brons/NerdCorner/StarGen/StarGen.html