Celestia Forums

I downloaded an 8k Io map and 8k Io Normal map from john Van Vliet's website. When I just use the regular texture, Celestia runs just fine, around 15-20 fps. But when I combine it with the Normal map, it slows way down, to around .25 fps. I have the same trouble with his Callisto map.

Yet, I have a 16k Mars map and a 16k Mars Normal map, and it runs just fine using them both together.

The Io maps are .png and the Mars maps are .dds. Is there a difference with the way they work, and this is what causes my performance issues?

I'm using Celestia V. 1.4.1. I have an ATI Radeon 9250 graphics card with 256 RAM, with fully updated drivers, and 1 GB of RAM.

DDS format is used directly by modern graphics hardware. It can be read in and loaded into the graphics card with no translation. It has the best performance, but may have some color artifacts due to its compression algorithm. JPEG format has to be decompressed and translated into DDS format before it can be used. Unfortunately, however, older graphics cards and Microsoft's software OpenGL routines do not understand DDS format.

You can also convert .jpg and .png textures to .DDS with Photoshop. Nvidia makes some very good plugins for this, you can find them with a quick google search of "nvidia photoshop plugins". The same plugin will also generate normal maps from an RGB image (based on height) This is not the right way to do it for a normal 3D model, but I am not sure in the case of Celestia planet textures (since there isn't really a high-resolution model of a planet, it would have to be generated from the texture)

Photoshop costs money

GIMP doesn't and there is a plug in for DDS

Johaen wrote:Photoshop costs money

There's a free 30 day trial

buggs_moran wrote:GIMP doesn't and there is a plug in for DDS

What about GIMPshop?

Great program. here is a link:
http://www.gimp.org/
http://registry.gimp.org/plugin?id=3475
EDIT:I think there is a link to a newer version of the plugin somewhere but I can't find it.
cartrite

Well, I downloaded GIMP, and got that working. I then downloaded the plugin in that link, but it just had a bunch of files that I had no idea what to do with. Plus, it says that it does not include write dds capability. So I did a bit more searching, and found this dds plugin: http://nifelheim.dyndns.org/~cocidius/dds/

I downloaded the windows binary zip and put those files into GIMP's plugins directory. I started up GIMP and was able to save the .png's as .dds's. Yet, when I started up Celestia, and switched to the new textures for Callisto, it takes over 2 minutes to load up, and I still get like .25 fps. As in, 1 frame every 4 seconds.

I checked the log thing, that shows what images are being loaded and it says this:



I checked Mars again, and Celestia runs just fine when I look at Mars. The 16k DDS takes about 8 seconds to load, and I get around 20 fps. I checked the log thing again, and it says this:



Mars' log does not have that "DDS Format: 0" line. Is that my issue? I know when I saved the .png's as .dds's, I had a few different options. For compression, I have None, DXT1, DXT3, and DTX5. I left it as None. For Format, have a few different options, like Default, RGB8, RGBA8, etc. I left that as Default.

Now, I did test out using an 8k .png main texture, with a 4k .png normal map texture on Callisto, and it seems to run fairly smoothly. So I can deal with that, if I have no other options.

Compression should be usually DXT1 or DXT3.

maxim

I INSIST that Mars VT texture from John Van Vliet isn??t working.I am almost sure that there is a problem in the making of the .ctx file or cartrite??s directory structure is wrong.??
Please,John or anyone else,help me!

Johaen wrote:I downloaded an 8k Io map and 8k Io Normal map from john Van Vliet's website. When I just use the regular texture, Celestia runs just fine, around 15-20 fps. But when I combine it with the Normal map, it slows way down, to around .25 fps. I have the same trouble with his Callisto map.

Yet, I have a 16k Mars map and a 16k Mars Normal map, and it runs just fine using them both together.

The Io maps are .png and the Mars maps are .dds. Is there a difference with the way they work, and this is what causes my performance issues?

I'm using Celestia V. 1.4.1. I have an ATI Radeon 9250 graphics card with 256 RAM, with fully updated drivers, and 1 GB of RAM.

Daniel,

Levels 0,1,2 work fine for me.
(I don't have the time to download the rest.)

Here are the steps that I used.

download and install 7-Zip.

download MarsLevel_0_1_2.zip

download MarsCTX.zip

Create the folders
Celestia\extras\Addons\jvv_mars\textures\hires

open the folder Celestia\extras\Addons\jvv_mars\textures\hires\

run 7zip

in 7zip, browse into MarsCTX.zip
drag Mars.ctx into the folder jvv_mars\textures\hires

in 7zip, browse into MarsLevel_0_1_2.zip
drag the folder Mars into the folder jvv_mars\textures\hires

close 7zip

open the folder Celestia\extras\Addons\jvv_mars\

create there the new text file mars.ssc containing the following text:



Run Celestia

GoTo Mars

click on Mars with the right-mouse-button

In the popup menu select Alternate Surface / jvv's Mars

There will be a pause and then Mars will change color from bright orange to light tan as it is drawn using John's virtual texture.

danielj wrote:I INSIST that Mars VT texture from John Van Vliet isn??t working.

I INSIST that Mars VT texture from John Van Vliet IS working.

Besides the SEX bots, Daniel's persistent and never ending NOGO's are becoming the main attractions here, it seems

Bye Fridger

PS: Daniel, pleeeeease, what is so complicated to understand once for all how to attach VT's to Celestia. Once you understand this, you can also easily make corrections yourself, if there are typos or other oddities.

OMG... my thread got highjacked... And who ever said anything about a VT?

As for my issue, I tried using different compressions. I tried both the DXT1 and DXT3 compressions, but when I viewed Callisto in Celestia it's now just a plain black sphere, no surface features at all. For both of them. It's not a white sphere, like when it can't find the image, or when I try to use a 4k texture on a model, when my video card can only handle 2k textures.

I'll try fiddling around with it some more tonight, if I have time.

Well, you've already shown that your 9250 can display DDS surface textures, so that suggests some other problem.

Have you installed Irfanview? It can display DDS textures, so that would be one way to check to see if they contain the images you think they have.

Dimensions matter, but if you used nvdxt to create them, it would have complained about non-power-of-two dimensions.

Well, I figured out why Callisto is just a giant black sphere. It's because the texture is a giant black rectangle. I found this out by installing that Infraview thing you mentioned.

I'll go through a step by step process of what I've done make the .dds's.

I downloaded and installed GIMP, got that working. I then downloaded the win32 binaries zip from http://nifelheim.dyndns.org/%7ecocidius/normalmap/ , which is that nvdxt you mentioned. It came with 4 files: a .exe, 2 .dll's, and a readme. The readme said to simply extract the files to the GIMP plugins directory, so I did that.

I then opened up GIMP, opened the .png and saved it as an uncompressed .dds. Now, this uncompressed one is actually a picture. Unfortunatly, it's also really huge, like 96 MB. I then tried using DXT1 compression, as suggested. This .dds is much smaller, around 16 MB, but as I said, it is just a giant black rectangle. I got the same results using DXT3 compression.

You mentioned dimension, so I check that too to make sure. All the files are 8192 x 4096, which are both powers of 2. If anyone's got any other suggestions, I'm all ears.

Johaen wrote:Well, I figured out why Callisto is just a giant black sphere. It's because the texture is a giant black rectangle. I found this out by installing that Infraview thing you mentioned.

I'll go through a step by step process of what I've done make the .dds's.

I downloaded and installed GIMP, got that working. I then downloaded the win32 binaries zip from http://nifelheim.dyndns.org/%7ecocidius/normalmap/ , which is that nvdxt you mentioned. It came with 4 files: a .exe, 2 .dll's, and a readme. The readme said to simply extract the files to the GIMP plugins directory, so I did that.

I then opened up GIMP, opened the .png and saved it as an uncompressed .dds. Now, this uncompressed one is actually a picture. Unfortunatly, it's also really huge, like 96 MB.

PNG is equally huge if you don't use (e.g. level 9) compression. DXT1 is 8:1 compressed while DXT3 only has 4:1 compression, but it can carry an alpha channel besides RGB, while DXT1 cannot.

Also, DXT format is highly lossy. So never save DXT1/3 several times or convert it to other formats!

Bye Fridger

I am happy to report that I finally got something working here. After searching the forums for a bit, I came across An FAQ on DDS files for Windows users. After reading through it, I tried out The ATI Compressonator. Downloaded it, installed it, started it up. My 1st time throught, I didn't use the Mipmap thing. But then I noticed it. There's actually a drop down next to the Generate Mips button. The options are Box-Filter and D3D Filter. I just left that as Box-Filter. Then when I click the Mips button, I had another dropdown, labeled "Lowest Mip Level", and the options being 1x1, 2x2, 4x4, 8x8, 16x16, etc. I also left that 1x1. I then compressed the textures and saved them, as described in the FAQ. It takes a very long time to compress, but it seems to get the job done. Once everything was saved, I opened up Celestia, went to Callisto and changed to my new textures, and it seems to be working just fine.

Fun stuff. If anyone has any ideas to help me streamline the process, or to make it work better, I'd love to hear it.

Now,it works.Thanks.
It was a problem of nomenclature,after all...

selden wrote:Daniel,

Levels 0,1,2 work fine for me.
(I don't have the time to download the rest.)

Here are the steps that I used.

download and install 7-Zip.

download MarsLevel_0_1_2.zip

download MarsCTX.zip

Create the folders
Celestia\extras\Addons\jvv_mars\textures\hires

open the folder Celestia\extras\Addons\jvv_mars\textures\hires\

run 7zip

in 7zip, browse into MarsCTX.zip
drag Mars.ctx into the folder jvv_mars\textures\hires

in 7zip, browse into MarsLevel_0_1_2.zip
drag the folder Mars into the folder jvv_mars\textures\hires

close 7zip

open the folder Celestia\extras\Addons\jvv_mars\

create there the new text file mars.ssc containing the following text:

Code: Select all

AltSurface "jvv's Mars" "Sol/Mars" {
   Texture "Mars.ctx"
}

Run Celestia

GoTo Mars

click on Mars with the right-mouse-button

In the popup menu select Alternate Surface / jvv's Mars

There will be a pause and then Mars will change color from bright orange to light tan as it is drawn using John's virtual texture.