Out of date tour guide!

[ajtribick]

Some of the descriptions could be updated...

(emphasis mine)

Pluto orbits our sun at a average distance of nearly six billion kilometers. Its single known moon Charon is so large, that the two are often referred to as a 'double planet'.

Gliese 876 b is a giant planet orbiting a red dwarf star. It is in a 2:1 orbital resonance with the other known planet in the system.

[chris]

The tour guide is due to be removed. As far as I know, it's only supported on the Windows version of Celestia right now, and scripts and cel URLs can do the same things that the tour guide does.

--Chris

[Adirondack]

Though I don't use this feature for a long time I think that this
feature is a good start for newbies and astronomy novices.
So why should it be removed?

Adirondack

[chris]

Though I don't use this feature for a long time I think that this
feature is a good start for newbies and astronomy novices.
So why should it be removed?

Adirondack

First, I'll take back my statement about only one version of Celestia supporting the Tour Guide: it's implemented on both the Gtk and Windows versions. But the capabilities of the tour guide are very limited compared to what is possible with scripts. There's also no way to add new tours without replacing the entire guide.cel file.

Instead of going through the effort of porting the tour guide to a new UI, we should instead develop something similar that's basically a list scripts. The fact that the tour guide file hasn't been updated in nearly six years (!) is a good sign that the current approach isn't that interesting to people. Sorry: I didn't mean to imply that there would be nothing to replace the Tour Guide. In fact, I think it would be very cool if Celestia could fetch new scripts and add-ons from the web, sort of a dynamically updated tour guide.

--Chris

[chris]

Some of the descriptions could be updated...

(emphasis mine)

Pluto orbits our sun at a average distance of nearly six billion kilometers. Its single known moon Charon is so large, that the two are often referred to as a 'double planet'.

Gliese 876 b is a giant planet orbiting a red dwarf star. It is in a 2:1 orbital resonance with the other known planet in the system.

On second thought, I decided to update the tour guide file, since it will still be in 1.5.0. Thanks for pointing out the out of date descriptions.

--Chris

[Adirondack]

Chris,

thanks for clarifying what you exactly meant.

Adirondack

[ajtribick]

In the Windows version the scripts menu currently only uses the scripts folder in the Celestia installation folder - it would be very useful if it also scanned scripts directories in the extras folder/subfolders.

[Vincent]

Instead of going through the effort of porting the tour guide to a new UI, we should instead develop something similar that's basically a list scripts.

I like this idea.
And since we haven't agreed on a new demo script so far - because of the difficulty to show all the Celestia capabilities at different scales in one single script - what about replacing it with the scripts in the list you've suggested ? These scripts could be played either randomly or in a row...

[Brendan]

Code: Select all

Description "One September 22, 2001, Comet Borrelly became the second comet to be imaged at close range by a spacecraft.  Despite not being designed for a comet flyby, Deep Space 1 approached within 2200 kilometers of the Borrelly's nucleus to return the highest resolution pictures we have of a cometary core."

Aren't the images of Tempel from Deep Impact of higher resolution?

[danielj]

A LOT of scripts are outdated.Let??s see,for example,Saturn??s tour.The more recent one is about Huyghens descent.After that,Cassini visited several big and small moons and there is nothing about that.Until 2009,we will need a new tour for Mercury and maybe update Venus tour.
But why we received recent images of Mercury,but none from Venus?Does Venus Express have a visual camera or radar?

[BobHegwood]

A LOT of scripts are outdated.Let??s see,for example,Saturn??s tour.The more recent one is about Huyghens descent.After that,Cassini visited several big and small moons and there is nothing about that.Until 2009,we will need a new tour for Mercury and maybe update Venus tour.
But why we received recent images of Mercury,but none from Venus?Does Venus Express have a visual camera or radar?

Daniel,

I haven't done any revised tours of the planets simply because I've
had my hands full in trying to update the Motherlode. Once I get
finished with that (or if I get FIRED ) I plan on revising ALL
of my scripts. I'm also still waiting new images from the Mercury
Messenger, and other spacecraft. Just FYI...

By the way, you've been awfully nice lately... What the Hell is
WRONG with you?

[danielj]

I will defend my Mastery??s Degree at the end of February!

A LOT of scripts are outdated.Let??s see,for example,Saturn??s tour.The more recent one is about Huyghens descent.After that,Cassini visited several big and small moons and there is nothing about that.Until 2009,we will need a new tour for Mercury and maybe update Venus tour.
But why we received recent images of Mercury,but none from Venus?Does Venus Express have a visual camera or radar?

Daniel,

I haven't done any revised tours of the planets simply because I've
had my hands full in trying to update the Motherlode. Once I get
finished with that (or if I get FIRED ) I plan on revising ALL
of my scripts. I'm also still waiting new images from the Mercury
Messenger, and other spacecraft. Just FYI...

By the way, you've been awfully nice lately... What the Hell is
WRONG with you?

[t00fri]

I will defend my Mastery??s Degree at the end of February!

My God!

Don't shout at your Professors that they are lazy bastards

F.

[Pxtl]

New user here. Guide.CEL doesn't work for me at all. There are three CEL files included with celestia 1.4.1, and Guide.CEL gives me an "invalid parameter" error when I run it.

[ajtribick]

New user here. Guide.CEL doesn't work for me at all. There are three CEL files included with celestia 1.4.1, and Guide.CEL gives me an "invalid parameter" error when I run it.

That's because it isn't a CEL script. At least, not a normal one. (Which brings up the question of why use the .cel extension for it?)

You access it by choosing "tour guide" from one of the menus in Celestia (can't remember which one, and I'm on the wrong operating system right now).