1.2.5 prerelease 3 bug report

[billybob884]

I've noticed that the favorite list still hasen't been fixed. Also, Ctrl + A is supposed to switch on and off the atmosphere, it does that, but it also speeds up the mph in the bottom left-hand courner at the same time.

[chris]

I've noticed that the favorite list still hasen't been fixed. Also, Ctrl + A is supposed to switch on and off the atmosphere, it does that, but it also speeds up the mph in the bottom left-hand courner at the same time.

That favorites list should be working now . . . What problems are you seeing?

--Chris

[Rassilon]

The only one I have to report is the same one I posted in the prerelease thread....fullscreen menus...Other than that looks fine...

[billybob884]

When I click an item in the favorites list, it zooms out really far, doesn't select anything, and sets the time to somewhere in the -4000's. Its really odd.

[selden]

Mike,

Can you share your favorites.cel with us? (It's just a plain text file in the root of the Celestia directory tree.) My guess is that it's gotten corrupted somehow.

I have just Eatth, Toutatis and Dactyl in mine. Selecting any of them causes 1.2.5b3 to go there immediately.

[oggnotloggedin]

First up, thanks so much for the amazing work - being able to request a feature and see it implimented so well is just a fantastic experience.

Now onto the bug nags.

1) Turning on constellation lines forces antialiasing on and keeps it on (for orbits as well as constellation lines) until Celestia is quit and restarted. Unchecking it on the menu (they look great by the way) doesn't make a difference.

2) Not a bug but a question about the usage of the new star distance filter. Is it necessary that the filtering be centred on the 'camera' position? Could it be made to snap around a selected or followed object so as to see a sphere of stars around that star/object?

[selden]

Ogg,

Could yuu specify a sequence of commands which results in anti-aliasing turning on? When I try turning on any of the line drawing options (orbits, constellation outlines, etc) none of them turn on the Render menu flag that says that anti-aliasing is on. Is there some other way you've determined that anti-aliasing is being used?

I turned off rendering of everything but planets and moons and also disabled anti-aliasing, then exited from Celestia 1.2.5b3. I restarted Celesita and turned on all of the line drawing options individually, exiting from the View Options menu each time. Every time I opened the Render menu, anti-aliasing was still turned off.

What graphics card are you using and which driver release?

Each vendor provides their own OpenGL libraries, sometimes different libraries with different bugs for different operating systems.

I'm using an Nvidia GF Ti4200 128MB with Nvidia's "Detonator 30" driver package.

[ogg]

Behaviour not quite what I first noticed.

ctrl-X turns antialiasing on an off ok *for orbit lines* as long as constelation lines are not also being rendered. If constelations are being rendered then ctrl-x still toggles the check on the menu entry for 'antialiasing', but does not actually turn it off in the program: it is always on as long as constellation lines are. Turn the constellation lines back off, and the orbit lines can be de-antialiased again as normal. Note this rendering of lines is forced by constellation borders as well as the stick-figures. This behaviour did not occur in previous versions - I used the previous 125pre's extensively and they did not have this problem. I assume it's something to do with the introduction of the borders feature.

OpenGL info follows:

Vendor: Trident
Renderer: Blade XP/AGP
Version: 1.2.1
Max simultaneous textures: 2
Max texture size: 1024

Supported Extensions:
GL_ARB_multitexture
GL_EXT_abgr
GL_EXT_bgra
GL_EXT_compiled_vertex_array
GL_EXT_packed_pixels
GL_EXT_paletted_texture
GL_EXT_vertex_array
GL_WIN_swap_hint

[ogg]

I've noticed that when the Celestia window opens with part of the window extending above (ie outside) the desktop, the contents of the window and to a lesser extent the whole desktop get painted with diagonal static. Maximising the window by rightclicking on the Celestia slug in the taskbar sorts this out.
The window 'walks' upwards each time celestia opens, I think because I have my Start button and taskbar positioned along the top of the screen. It's not a big problem of course.
My openGL info is posted above, I use Windows XP professional on a Toshiba Satellite laptop.

[billybob884]

"Black Hole Parent Star" {
isFolder false
parentFolder ""
base [ 105667.318078018 146452.9950642632 44991.59695517346 ]
offset [ 0 0 0 ]
axis [ 0.358071 -0.433617 0.826898 ]
angle 3.847
time 2452491.464159137
selection "#104214"
coordsys "ecliptical"
}

"test" {
isFolder true
}

"Death Star" {
isFolder false
parentFolder "test"
base [ -73.93434352547982 36.57212006880209 307.6568993767369 ]
offset [ -1.531691111293122e-009 -2.092548178787498e-009 7.480249978350333e-009 ]
axis [ -0.330448 0.578158 -0.746014 ]
angle 2.5122
time 2452522.390377901
selection "#83514/Yavin/Yavin IV/Death Star"
coordsys "ecliptical"
}

see anything?

[selden]

This is just to confirm Ogg's bug report: I see the same symptoms with my Nvidia 4200 and Detonator v30.

Instructions to reproduce:

Disable all view options except Planets.
Disable anti-aliasing.
exit from Celestia
start Celestia 1.2.5b3
turn on orbit lines
pull back from Earth so you can see several diagonal orbital lines. Observe the tiny stairsteps in the orbital lines.
Type Control-X a few times, watching the steps come and go.
Stop typing Ctl-X with the steps visible.
turn on constellation borders
notice the steps are gone
turn off constellation borders
notice that the steps are still gone
type Ctrl-X several time, noticing that the steps do not return.

[billybob884]

Honselty, I think it looks better with out the steps.

[selden]

Mike,

You're right, but turning off anti-aliasing can improve performance significantly with some graphics cards.

I've been trying to reproduce your problem with your "favorites", but I haven't located the right add-on. Which one includes the Death Star system that you're using? The StarWars set that I have has it at Endor.

The Black Hole location you have is out in the middle of nowhere for me, too. The one I have orbits 61 Cyg A.

[billybob884]

Well, I'll think I'll just uninstall celestia and reinstall it. Anyway, about the starwars thing, its my own coustom made one. I put the Death Star around Yavin IV because that is where it was when it blew up Princess Leia's home planet.

[selden]

Mike,

reinstalling sounds reasonable.

What I've done is have one directory with a mostly vanilla Celestia and another directory with Celestia plus lots of addons. That way it's easy to test something "as shipped".

To do this, after you've installed Celestia, just drag its folder while holding down just the right-mouse-button. When you release the button, it'll give you a pop-up menu with various options, one of which is "Copy". Select that and it'll create a second complete copy of Celestia's folder and all of its contents.

To run the second copy, just double click on its Celestia icon. It'll only use the files in its specific directory tree. (Apparently most of the rendering settings are stored in the per-user registry, though, so they'll carry over from one version to the other.) Or you can right-drag the second Celestia's icon to your desktop and select "Create Shortcut here". Change its name so you know which program it'll run.

This method works fine for me for lots of software I have a 4GB system disk that I'm constantly using Ghost to restore from backups without whatever package just trashed everything. I install things that work, like Celestia, on a second larger drive and just run them from there. (As best I can tell, using a packaged Install program really isn't necessary in most circumstances.)

I hope these suggestions help a little.

[billybob884]

Nevermind, I fixed it. I guess the old one wasn't written right or something. Thanks anyway though!

[Don. Edwards]

I thought when Chris said he implemented ring shadows he ment he got ring shadows to show up on the planets surface not the planets shadow being cast on the ring.
Chris we need rings to cast shadows on planets as well.