Post Bugs Here

[Ominous]

I have a 2.4 GHz processor with 1.024 Gig's of RAM, 50+ Gig's of still free hard drive space, and an ATI Radeon 9600. Celestia 1.3.2

I don't know why these specs would be causing the problem I've experienced, but I gave them anyway. Whenever I load Celestia, the Halley comet, the comet that starts with B, and the comet that starts with I have there names showing. I can't turn off their names by pressing the "W" key like the controls file under help says. How can I get rid of the annoying names that are disrupting my views of the vastness of space. Sorry if this is an easily fixable problem thats not really a bug.

[selden]

Strange: it works for me.
lower case w toggles asteroid labels
upper case W toggles comet labels.

You didn't mention which operating system you're using. Win98 is known to have some problems with some keyboard commands. I'm running XP.

Alternatively, you can use the Render/View Options menu: click in the "show label" box for comets to clear that box's check mark.

[andersa]

According to Chris in Selden's Celestia notes: "The origin is the center of the parent object, whether it's a star or a planet. If the parent is a planet, the +z axis is the planet's north pole and the xy plane is the planet's equatorial plane at the reference epoch J2000. The x axis points at the ascending node of the equatorial plane on the ecliptic."

Is this the same definition of the ascending node as that used by JPL Horizons? When I obtain orbital elements from Horizons for anything orbiting another planet than Earth, the ascending node has a value very different from the one in solarsys.ssc (Celestia 1.3.2, Win98), and the orbits end up rotated relative to each other. For instance, Phoebe is given an AscendingNode of 14.381449 in Celestia, but 54.527 (approximately) by JPL Horizons. When obtaining an XYZ trajectory, it gets rotated by the same amount relative to Phoebe's original orbit in Celestia.

As all Saturn moons seem to be displaced by the same angle (currently around 40 degrees), is this perhaps related to the precession problem mentioned earlier? I don't find any precession rate value for the planets in solarsys.ssc, and I haven't experimented with fictional planets as I'm not too sure what the real effect of precession is supposed to be on the orbits of natural satellites.

In any case, someone appears to have calculated a value for each moon's ascending node in solarsys.ssc that is different from the one provided by JPL to put the moon in its correct position, suggesting that this is either a known problem being compensated for, or a discrepancy in the definition of the ascending node making it impossible to import non-solar-origin trajectories directly from Horizons to Celestia. What sources have been used for solarsys.ssc data?

[selden]

Do a search for postings by Grant Hutchison. He described the differences between Horizons' and Celestia's planetocentric coordinate systems. Grant spent quite a while making sure the EllipticalOrbits of the various moons had the correct parameters.

[andersa]

Do a search for postings by Grant Hutchison.

Thanks for the hint; I suppose you are referring to this thread from last October. Ok, good to know it's not a bug then. However, it means Horizons' data (elements as well as XYZ plots) have to be processed further before they can be used in Celestia. I was a little misled by the next statement made by Chris in your notes:

The good thing is that these are exactly the same conventions used by JPL's Horizons system by default, so very little processing of Horizons generated ephemerides is necessary.

I would say it's not exactly the same convention as that used by Horizons, only a similar one, using the same body equatorial plane but another longitude of origin for the ascending node (but I'm commenting on a third-party quote in your personal notes here, so it's no big deal). The extra calculations needed should thus be fairly trivial, but I'll have to find out what "40 degrees" should be more precisely with respect to Saturn (and corresponding values for the other planets). I learned spherical trigonometry 25 years ago, but it's not like I get daily practice calculating spherical triangles...

[selden]

The values provided by Horizons for heliocentric trajectories and orbital parameters are exactly as used by Celestia, except for formatting.

It's the planetocentric trajectories and orbits that need corrections.

[MapleLeafMerc]

Hi all

This probably isn't considered a bug, but I didn't know where else to post it.

I downloaded Celestia 1.3.2 from the VoxRox site in New York today and thought I'd pass along my experience. I have read some of the bug posts here and the Read Me that came with it, but I don't know how to proceed.

When I double click on the application, the viewing window appears. First it scrolls right to show the Sun, and back left to a star field. At this point it freezes, and within a few seconds my entire system is frozen. I can't make it quit with option-command-esc.

I don't know how to follow either of these suggestions in the Read Me file:

* Turn off "Ring Shadows" in the "Preferences" panel

* Edit the file "celestia.cfg" in the "CelestiaResources" folder and remove the # from the beginning of the line that says:

# IgnoreGLExtensions [ "GL_ARB_vertex_program" ]

I am using a G4 dual processor Mac with OS 10.3.8. This the graphics info:

Type: display
Bus: AGP
Slot: SLOT-1
VRAM (Total): 64 MB
Vendor: ATI (0x1002)
Device ID: 0x4966
Revision ID: 0x0001
ROM Revision: 113-99702-127

Any suggestions would be very welcome. Celestia looks like a wonderful program; I hope I can eventually enjoy it as much as you do!

Sincerely,

Larry Pope

[TERRIER]

I don't know how to follow either of these suggestions in the Read Me file:

* Edit the file "celestia.cfg" in the "CelestiaResources" folder and remove the # from the beginning of the line that says:

# IgnoreGLExtensions [ "GL_ARB_vertex_program" ]

To do this you need to open the celestia.cfg file which is found in the main Celestia directory, with a text editor. My operating system is Windows XP, so I usually use notepad.

Find this section; (it's fairly near the end.)

Code: Select all

#------------------------------------------------------------------------
# The following line is commented out by default.
#
# Celestia enables and disables certain rendering features based on
# the set of extensions supported by the installed OpenGL driver and 3D
# graphics hardware.  With IgnoreGLExtensions, you may specify a list of
# extensions that Celestia will treat as unsupported.  This is useful
# primarily for the developers of Celestia.
#------------------------------------------------------------------------
# IgnoreGLExtensions [ "GL_ARB_vertex_program" ]


Remove the "#" as you have stated, then save your new setting, and see if it helps !

regards,
TERRIER

[Scott Heath]

To do this you need to open the celestia.cfg file which is found in the main Celestia directory, with a text editor.

I just had to say that Celestia froze on my Mac in exactly the same way MapleLeafMerc described, so I looked here to see why. I found the suggestion above, appliied it, then everything worked!

Thank you, Terrier.

[eburacum45]

I know this has been pointed out before, but Celestia draws things in the order they are written, and opens folders in the Extras folder in aphabetical order; I could not understand why all my spaceships disappeared when I put them in a folder named 'oaspacecraft';

this is because they were earlier in the alphabet than the folder marked 'oauniverse', and the planets they were supposed to be orbiting had not been drawn yet!

Renaming the folder 'oauspaceships' has fixed the problem.

Heh heh..

[ahuramazda]

Hi all.
It seems I have a problem with graphics card memory amount (32Mb) - too small for Celestia. Some of planets have corrupted textures, still some are normal.


On another videocard with 64Mb RAM all's well.
I don't use any add-ons that use memory.
How can I manage this problem? How can I say 'use smaller textures' or 'delete unused textures if NO_VIDEO_MEMORY'?
May be idea of checking textures upload result is more acceptable?

My config:
Celestia 1.3.2 for Windows
Vendor: ATI Technologies Inc.
Renderer: Radeon 9000 DDR x86/MMX/3DNow!/SSE (32Mb)
Version: 1.3.3561 Win2000 Release

[t00fri]

Hi all.
It seems I have a problem with graphics card memory amount (32Mb) - too small for Celestia. Some of planets have corrupted textures, still some are normal.
...
On another videocard with 64Mb RAM all's well.
I don't use any add-ons that use memory.
How can I manage this problem? How can I say 'use smaller textures' or 'delete unused textures if NO_VIDEO_MEMORY'?
May be idea of checking textures upload result is more acceptable?

My config:
Celestia 1.3.2 for Windows
Vendor: ATI Technologies Inc.
Renderer: Radeon 9000 DDR x86/MMX/3DNow!/SSE (32M
Version: 1.3.3561 Win2000 Release

It's not your card memory,

a) since I used Celestia 2.5-3 years ago successfully with a 32MB Geforce2 card. My wife still uses that card on her machine and all is still well with (the latest) Celestia (within the limitations in rendering that such an old card imposes).

b) I do have your 32MB card on my DELL Latitude C600 laptop. It works fine with Celestia under XP using the latest drivers from DELL.

The Problem is that it's an oldish/lowcost ATI card, the drivers of which are often buggy. So in the first place, try to install the very latest ATI driver for your card. ATI is using Celestia recently to bugtrack their drivers ...If you have a laptop, you might have to use the drivers from your vendor, though...

Bye Fridger

[SubPitcher]

Hi! I'm new to this forum, I downloaded Celestia yesterday and I love it ... great work!

But there's something strange going on when switching from windowed to fullscreen and back.

Normally I run Celestia windowed. When switching to fullscreen the ISS looks this way: http://schrubben.de/ISS_bug.jpg

After switching back to windowed mode, it looks this way or worse (a grey/white mess): http://schrubben.de/ISS_bug2.jpg

Don't know if this bug affects other spacecrafts, just saw it concernig the ISS.

Celestia 1.3.2
Windows XP
NVIDIA 4200Ti (64 MB)
256 MB RAM

Sorry for my bad English, I'm German

Greets!

[selden]

What version of Nvidia graphics drivers are installed on your system?

I used a Ti4200 for a long time and never saw that problem, so I suspect you have some very old and buggy drivers. Current drivers are available at http://www.nvidia.com/content/drivers/drivers.asp

[SubPitcher]

selden, you were right,
I installed the newest NVIDIA-drivers, the bug is gone. (I didn't know that my drivers were sooo old ... )

Thanks for the quick answer

[ar81]

August 03, year 7200.
Go to Earth, then go to the moon, moon has the wrong side visible. It is either rotation or orbit, but something is wrong as far as I know. Or is it that moon will show a different face in 5000 years?

[selden]

The orbit of the moon is defined accurately in Celestia only for about +/- 3000 years. Beyond that it switches to a simple Keplerian orbit. If the period of the orbit is not an exact multiple of the rotational period, then the image of the moon will rotate slowly. I suspect something like this may be happening.

[ar81]

Indeed if you go to year 6000 it seems Ok, but if you go to 7200 and then back to 6000, moon is not properly oriented towards earth.

[nr77vd]

The program starts normally, it shows the sun then it goes to the earth, when i choose Go To Object : Moon the computer freezes and i have to shut it down



Machine Name: iBook G4
OS: Mac OSX 1.4.1
CPU Type: PowerPC G4 (1.2)
Memory: 256 MB
Graphic: ATI Mobility Radeon 9200
VRAM 32 MB
Celestial Version 1.3.2

[dirkpitt]

The program starts normally, it shows the sun then it goes to the earth, when i choose Go To Object : Moon the computer freezes and i have to shut it down

Machine Name: iBook G4
OS: Mac OSX 1.4.1
CPU Type: PowerPC G4 (1.2)
Memory: 256 MB
Graphic: ATI Mobility Radeon 9200

Thanks for the bug report. It is due to a very long standing bug in the ATI video driver for Radeon 9200 models. It just means I'll be sending ATI yet another embarassing reminder note to fix their bug. In the mean time, please read the Celestia FAQ on how to workaround the issue by editing celestia.cfg.