Can't go near planets!

[maxim]

don,

about 3/4 of the installed addons are active, and it's certain that the error will vanish if I'd deactivate most of them. I've tested that before (I think I don't need to install the 132p3 version to proof that again). But that's not the solution I want to have, because that would mean, that I have to switch things on and off, depending on what script I'm currently running, or what I currently want to see. And that would mean that I'd have to start over at least twice every time, because it will be shure that those things I want to see are typically deactivated at that moment I'm trying to go there.

That's what my extras directory currently looks like:


I'm starting to suspect that celestia doesn't do a sophisticated memory management, and that it doesn't even organize textures in a LRU-Stack manner.

I was playing with the idea of granting celestia an own 4-stripe RAID partition with my new RAID controller, but that wouldn't give much benefit that way.

maxim.

[maxim]

selden, don,

I also don't like copying. As you see above, it took me some time to get things organized in a way I feel comfortable with. So I strongly want to avoid moving file around.

My Celestia directory looks like this:

As you can see, the extras directory is linked into it (what NTFS allows as linking).
Same way it can be linked into any other parallel installation simultaneously. So nothing has to be moved at all, and every installation accesses it's own virtual (identical) extras-dir.

Deactivating things inside that extras-dir is then done like that:


maxim

[selden]

Maxim,

I'm not sure what you mean when you say you've set the pagefile to be "full memory size". By "memory" do you mean your system's RAM or disk? If you mean the RAM size, then your system's pagefile is much too small.

The pagefile size should be set to about 3x the size of the RAM. It actually should be set to be large enough to hold all of the programs that will be running at the same time, including all of the data that they would have loaded into RAM if it was large enough. 3-4x main memory size is a traditional "rule of thumb" when you don't know how much memory actually is needed.

If you really are using most of your Addons, then you need to make the pagefile more than 3x the size of all your addons. Among other things, you need to allow for the decompression of JPEG and PNG images. You can use the SSC directive "CompressTexture true" to minimize this expansion for planet surface textures, but that doesn't work for images used by DSC Nebula models.

I hope this helps.

[maxim]

selden,

I haven't been aware of that. I've set my pagefile to 4xRAM size now, but that didn't prevent Celestia from crashing.

I've decided to deactivate about 1/3 of my addons (driven by the knowledge that most of you seems to have far less addon installed than I - I always thought to be only moderade). Now Celestia is running again without crashes. But I'm not very happy with that solution. I still think it's a severe bug of Celestia itself.

maxim

[chris]

maxim,

Just so you know, there are developers reading this, but it's very difficult to debug a problem like yours, because it seems to rely on a particular collection of add-ons. I'll see what I can do though . . . I'll try and install a ton of add-ons as a sort of stress test for Celestia. You may want to see if there's a particular add-on causing a problem for you. Enable your deactivated add-ons one by one until Celestia starts crashing again. If you can narrow it down to a single add-on, it would help me out immensely. And if you can't, then it would indicate a general failure of Celestia to deal with very large numbers of add-ons, and that's also useful to know.

--Chris

[maxim]

Just so you know, there are developers reading this...

Nice to hear that ...

Enable your deactivated add-ons one by one until Celestia starts crashing again. If you can narrow it down to a single add-on, it would help me out immensely.

I'll gonna do that. It will take, however, some time. Perhaps 'till begin of next week.

maxim

[maxim]

chris,

I just ran the test with following results:

Test scenario flythrought Io-Jupiter-Sol. Crashes occured nearing Jupiter or Sol, NOT Io.
Timeline goes down. Switching one addon on, resp. off, watching Celestia behaviour.
All are fantasy systems, because these had been the ones I switched off before.

Code: Select all

Alrescha            on    -> crash
Alrescha            off   ok
Altair              on    ok
Vulcan Star System  on    -> crash
Altair              off   ok
V380                on    ok
Gateway Kokaubeam   on    -> crash, hard reset
Vulcan Star System  off   -> crash, hard reset
V380                off   -> crash, hard reset
Gateway Kokaubeam   off   ok
Ringworld           on    ok
Star Wars System    on    ok
Babylon 5 System    on    -> crash, hard reset
Ringworld           off   ok
2001 Space Odysee   on    ok
Space Lift          on    ok
Altair              on    -> crash
Star Wars System    off   -> crash, hard reset
Babylon 5 System    off   -> crash
2001 Space Odysee   off   -> crash
Space Lift          off   ok
Altair              off   ok


maxim

[Rassilon]

Well coming back to this thread Ive has similar problems but not quite as bad...It seems the problem lies mostly with my addons...Well as Im pretty much the only fantasy addon listed in maxims list theres a chance it may be due to Celestia handling a large amount of addons...Im sorry to say I still get the crash even when I have only one addon loaded...And for me its only in pre 5 and only with emissive objects...

I am beginning to wonder if its an issue with a service pack from microsoft...As in the past there was that big issue with 3d studio max inability to open saved files saved under service pack 4 for win 2000 and xp...microsoft made a quick fix that seemed to remedy this issue for now...As far as I know Celestia pre 3 works fine for me...pre 5 doesnt...And in pre 5 I have no problems with planets...just emissives...

I know I wouldnt want to track this problem down as it seems far to intermittent to be an easy fix...And it seems the problem varies from system to system...

I think everyone that has this problem needs to post here with what is crashing thier system and thier specs...If its just me and maxim...we both may have other unforseen issues that personally I cannot afford to have at this time...

My system is a fairly new install Win 2000 service pack 4 with MSI GeForce Ti4400 128 megs drivers 53.03 1024 megs virtual memory. 20 gig HD with only 50% used...1.3 gigs of ram...

[Rassilon]

btw I tried this line in my cfg file:

IgnoreGLExtensions [ "GL_ARB_vertex_buffer_object" ]

No dice...

I think I should let you all know I was in error...I am using pre 2 not pre 3...I labeled the wrong disk!

So the problem lies from pre 3 to 5 for me Unfortunately since I have neither pre 3 or 4 I cannot tell you where it begins...

[maxim]

It seems the problem lies mostly with my addons...Well as Im pretty much the only fantasy addon listed in maxims list theres a chance it may be due to Celestia handling a large amount of addons...

To my current opinion it's probably the amount of objects that causes the crash - so it isn't due to your addons, but to the size of them.

I'm suspecting that a kind of overflow could be a canditate for the cause. Unfortunately the debug console of Celestia don't give informations about the sum of stars, planets, textures, models, ... that are recognized and loaded, or a more comprehensive overview of the current inner data structures that where build - and no way to get things logged into a file. So I would strongly recommend to enhance the debug capabilities of celestia before further developing.

I`m currently still running v1.3.1, but I remember having that bug in 1.3.1p9 and 1.3.1p11 also - it was seldom these days, but it occured now and then. Also working on W2kSP4, I'm not sure if this could be a cause.

Had a bad day yesterday. I installed the newest NVIDIA drivers, GIMP, gtk+ runtime, IE6 security updates and jestrs moons (mimas, majormoons, phobosdeimos, ...). Celestia crashed! Uninstalling things didn't help:

Jestrs Moons - NVIDIA drivers - reinstalling old ones - gtk+ - GIMP - ... still crashing!

While deactivating addons means for me, that I rename all definition files (.ssc, .stc, .dsc, ...) to .no-files, I now physically removed addon-subdirectories from the extras folder. Now Celestia runs again. Does that mean that Celestia is still loading models and textures, even when the adressing definition files are unavailable????

Ok, that was a whole day of waste, when I planned to do some more serious work. I was angry enought to do a full hour of heavy 3D gaming to calm down. After reinstalling the new drivers the game didn't complain anymore about obsolet driver versions and seemed to be even slightly smoother - and no crashes here. Celestia still worked after the gaming session.

Haven't tried it today, so no idea if Celestia likes sundays.

maxim.

[Rassilon]

Well since the problem is with memory I think you could be right somewhat...I know onw thing maxim if you have very low virtual memory you have problems...Reading earlier you mentioned a high hard disk usage amount that left you close to a gig? I try to give a 2 gig or more grace to windows jic things get hairy...And it wont matter if you load things on an alternate hard disk...if your still low on hard disk space on your primary partition windows will still have issues...

On the other subject of Celestia's memory handling of textures...The Doctor Who Universe program which is a offshoot of the Infinite Universe Engine has similar issues with very high resolution textures....It will crash if I use too many 2048 x 1024 textures...It is possible an open gl texture function is being overloaded with these texture loads and places a call to the emissive channel and says enough is enough...considering Im using now textures on a regular basis of 2k in size...since they look better...I unfortunately dont use dds due to the amount of artifacts it leaves in the texture...As far as Im concerned it looks as good as a jpeg compressed 50% using -dxt5 compression...

Considering the emissives I have also dont crash in version 1.3.2 pre 2 I am obliged to say something has changed in the way Celestia handles planets/texture loads since then...which is the case as forementioned earlier...BUT to the conclusion of the developers that this CAN be disabled...I did and no change...I still get crashes in the same manner...so there seems to be a problem in the disabling OR the actual rendering of this ectention...And since alot of others are having problems in various aspects of this same device...I think the problem lies in that particular section of the sourcecode...

I suppose alot isnt the right description since its only me maxim and jens Ive noticed so far...