Celestia Forums

Though it might all just be my fault.

I have a p4 1.2 Ghz with 384 meg of ram running what used to be Slackware. I have however gone though three kernel upgrades, X 3 -> X 4 upgrade and various graphics subsystem recompiles. I don't think it's much of Slackware anymore.

I'm running X 4.2.0 with DRI and the tdfx driver for my poor, poor overworked voodoo3. When I had X 3, Mesa was being used in software mode. After the upgrade to X 4/DRI buches of OpenGL stuff broke that I had to patch togeather using symlinks and such. Everythings happy happy except for the fact I can't run OpenGL apps in full screen and it's slow as a dog unless the OpenGL app is touching either the right or bottom edge of the screen, but thats with every OpenGL app and not any problem with Celestia. (Unless you guys can tell me how to fix that)

My desktop runs at 1248x1024 at 16bit color. Ctrl-Alt +/- does nothing.

Anyway the problem is thus:

If I go to a ringed planet, such as Saturn or Uranus, I segfault. Do not pass GO, do not collect $200. I'm simply greated with a bash prompt. That the most annoying "bug" I have.

Other wierdness:

The planets have "seams" . and the textures "panel" around the planet. Earth is the worst offender. Others only have a seam around the equater.

Adding clouds to earth turns it into a white ball in space.

Going to other stars results in the solar aura around them to be mis-aligned. Sol looks good though.

Another thing. I run enlightenment and if I go to another desktop with Celestia running, the whole X server crashes and locks me into graphics mode. (I can restart X by logging in on another computer, but I lose my local TTYS) This is not fault of Celestia I think though.

Any Ideas how to get it to run better?

Also a little FYI, when I compile Wine I'm told that I'm using a "Thread Safe OpenGL" that may cause crashes in wine. Can it be the same thing here too? Another side note, is there a way I *can* get Celestia to run in a lower resolution in full screen? Just wondering.

-halkun

Hi.

I have the same problem. When I go to Saturn or Uranus, Celestia crashes. I also have this annoying seam around earth, so it might be a general problem.
And of course, selecting clouds turns earth into a white ball too.
All problems are independent of the selected resolution.

Linux 2.4.19
XFree86 4.2.0 + DRI
Matrox G400
Glibc 2.2.5
gcc 2.95.3

I forgot: Celestia 1.2.4

I fear that the problens you are seeing are a combination of bugs in the OpenGL library you're using plus its attempts to use "advanced hardewre features" that have their own bugs on the graphics card itself.

My understanding is that 3dfx tended to be more open with their hardware APIs than some of the other card manufacturers, but I don't know if you're willing to try to track down the specs and work on the libraries yourself. Communicating with the authors of the libraries wouldn't hurt, though.

Search the forum for saturn and fault and you'll find posts like:
"1.2.4preview (Linux): crashes on ring planets"

These tell you how to fix


Slackware is so great, I ran with an upgraded like your's for ages, did a fresh install of 8.1 a while ago, works fine for me, you'll be surprised how quickly you got all your "old" stuff back. On the other hand, it doesn't give me that much more than I allready had