textures problem with xfree 4.1.0

[gian]

first, thanks for this GREAT program !

I'm using Celestia 1.2.0 on linux (debian woody with xfree86 2.1.0 and matrox Marvel G400, K7-900, 521Mb) compiled from the download page version, AND Celestia 1.2.2 on windows (same machine). With the linux version I can't see many textures (in the solar system all planets except saturn and a few moons are plain white) while all textures show up in the windows version.
Does anyone has any clue whether the problem is some misconfiguration in the xfree86 linux driver OR I just have to wait for the 1.2.2 Linux version ?

[dramsey]

I'm using Celestia 1.2.0 on linux (debian woody with xfree86 2.1.0 and matrox Marvel G400, K7-900, 521Mb) compiled from the download page version, AND Celestia 1.2.2 on windows (same machine)...
Does anyone has any clue whether the problem is some misconfiguration in the xfree86 linux driver OR I just have to wait for the 1.2.2 Linux version ?

I'm using Celestia unde Xfree4.1.0
and Suse Linux 7.3, under either Mesa or the Nvidia divers. On both, textures have been working for me since before 1.2.0, so I guess you can't just blame Xfree4.1.0 for it

Deon

[Rassilon]

first, thanks for this GREAT program !

I'm using Celestia 1.2.0 on linux (debian woody with xfree86 2.1.0 and matrox Marvel G400, K7-900, 521Mb) compiled from the download page version, AND Celestia 1.2.2 on windows (same machine). With the linux version I can't see many textures (in the solar system all planets except saturn and a few moons are plain white) while all textures show up in the windows version.
Does anyone has any clue whether the problem is some misconfiguration in the xfree86 linux driver OR I just have to wait for the 1.2.2 Linux version ?

Did you download the lo-res textures?

[gian]

... I tried version 1.2.2 for linux and most problems have gone away...

I just had to __enlarge__ the textures of Pluto and Mars from 1000x500 to 1024x512

(it seems the G400 has problems with non power of two texture sizes ??!!??! )

still some problems with earth clouds ... but if I'm not wrong there are some other posts addressing that.

[Rassilon]

Yes all textures must be powers of 2... 1024 x 512, 512 x 256 etc seem to work best...I think its the way Chris coded the software...but it might also be your card...

[chris]

Yes all textures must be powers of 2... 1024 x 512, 512 x 256 etc seem to work best...I think its the way Chris coded the software...but it might also be your card...

It's actually a hardware limitation on nearly all graphics cards . . . It is possible to rescale the textures as they're loaded, but then you're either wasting texture memory if you upsample or throwing out data if you downsample. I decided it would be best if Celestia rejected all non-power of two textures, because it will force people to create textures that load with the best possible quality.

--Chris

[Rassilon]

Yes all textures must be powers of 2... 1024 x 512, 512 x 256 etc seem to work best...I think its the way Chris coded the software...but it might also be your card...

It's actually a hardware limitation on nearly all graphics cards . . . It is possible to rescale the textures as they're loaded, but then you're either wasting texture memory if you upsample or throwing out data if you downsample. I decided it would be best if Celestia rejected all non-power of two textures, because it will force people to create textures that load with the best possible quality.

--Chris

Yeah good idea there...I know Voodoo cards won't allow above 256 x 256 texes so how does it affect texes at 512 x 256 I wonder? I would suspect it makes them 256 x 128...

Besides off scaled texes dont blend well and sometimes look awful...

So Chris in your opinion, what is the BEST, money not being an object, video board out there...I am sure theres some with up and above 512 megs of vid RAM, and maybe close to a 1gig on board video accelerator... Now that would be a beast But Im sure thats used with Multimedia design platforms, companies like Pixar etc...

[chris]

Yeah good idea there...I know Voodoo cards won't allow above 256 x 256 texes so how does it affect texes at 512 x 256 I wonder? I would suspect it makes them 256 x 128...

The Voodoo3 will convert them to 256x128. Voodoo4 and Voodoo5 cards can handle textures up to 2048x2048, I believe. As of version 1.2.2, large textures are split into smaller chunks if they're too big for the hardware to handle. That means that you'll be able to get a fairly sharp looking Earth even on a Voodoo3. And on cards with more memory and support for texture compression, you can go as high as 8192x4096.

So Chris in your opinion, what is the BEST, money not being an object, video board out there...I am sure theres some with up and above 512 megs of vid RAM, and maybe close to a 1gig on board video accelerator... Now that would be a beast But Im sure thats used with Multimedia design platforms, companies like Pixar etc...

I think that the best card out there now is the GeForce4 Ti 4600 . . . it's got 128MB of RAM on board, so it can hold a lot of very large textures for use in Celestia. I just got one last week and it rocks--I can run at very high resolutions with antialiasing enabled and huge textures. It's pretty expensive--the lowest price they sell for right now is $380. Any GeForce3 card is a good bet too. I just accepted a job offer from nVidia, however, so I may be biased :>

The professional cards with more graphics memory actually aren't so great for Celestia. They typically have very low fill rates compared to even midrange consumer cards, and they're also likely to have very limited support for the OpenGL extensions that Celestia uses.

--Chris

[Rassilon]

Naw I wouldn't say biased, they out perform just about anything standard I can think of...Hands down

What would you think of a system like this one... http://www.sgi.com/workstations/octane2/ << I'll be willing to bet this will cost you your first born but its always good to wonder...SGI has been around for a while, and you do get what you pay for...but as far as coming up with the money, well thats another story...