Celestia Forums

I really have no idea if this goes here, or what, but, I have a problem. I'm also new, so please be easy.

I have been using Celestia for about 2 years now, and I really like it. Since I recieved a new hard drive for my almost full computer, I went ahead and downloaded Celestia-ED 1.4.1 and all of the educational activities except 8, which, for whatever reason is corrupted when I try to download it. But that's not my problem. My problem is, that for a certain addon that I created, it won't render two of my planets.

My system, which will hopefully consist of 15 worlds, is a completly ficticious system around a ficticious star I named "Vita Cancri", Vita Cnc in the .stc and .ssc. In position #4, or 3 (due to something similar to and anti-earth), are two earth-like worlds and their moon (though, technically, they are moons). These two share the same orbit around a torn-up moon which came to a rest in their center of gravity.

These two worlds, Redi and Peii, a sound-shifted pair of names meaning left and right respectively, won't show up. Actually, they show up, but disappear at roughly 366,550 km. It isn't a texture problem, as I've even used Earth's textures, which show up perfectly. I typed it all personally, and used SystemMaker v14 to proofread, and help to create stable orbital characteristics (yes, I know of the limitations). There are no typos. I've done all I could think of to at least identify the problem. It isn't my graphics card (I don't know what I have, but it does the same on one that's able to show everything, I forget the name). I can render an extremely hires Earth complete with bumpmap, secular texture, cloudmaps, and just about anything else you can think of.

When I get close to them, their enlarging spheres simply disappear. There isn't a blank or black model left, I can see stars on the opposite side, but when I click there, they register. No atmosphere is left, either. They don't show orbits (though they move if I press "l") and only Redi shows it's name. I've left out all I could in the .ssc file, including class, so, they are, by default, moons. I've even made extra .sccs from scratch, and they don't show up. The oddest part, though, is that every other object in the .ssc shows up, including their moon-parent.

I use an IBM Thinkpad T60 (a laptop) and store every thing Celetia in an external harddrive (my other interests, mostly my Finale-made .wavs, .midis, and .muses take up too much room) so I can also use it on a few other computers in the house. If you need extra info, or a copy of the .ssc file, don't hesitate to ask. I need help!

Thank you in advance.

Edit- Oh yes, and I'm using Windows XP, but I don't know if it's pro, office, or what, I got it for school, though.

Deku-Oji,

Welcome to the Celestia Forum!

It's generally best to post new questions as a new topic, so I've given your question its own thread.

Unfortunately, there are many different things that could cause the symptoms you describe. Too often I've found mistakes I've made which I'd classifiy as "That couldn't possibly be a problem!" except that it was.

If you could post the contents of the SSC catalog that you've created, someone here might be able to help determine what's going wrong.

Okay, thanks!
Here's the .ssc (I'll just post the whole thing(Please remember, I used SMv14, so I have extra data)):



I worked on it again, and ended up filling up all I could. (still won't work). Oh, yes, I understand two planets can't exist in the same orbit, much less be composed of different material. All for the sake of art .
Also the .stc:


I'm terrible at textures, and am using Paint.NET to edit the textues, along with Microsoft Office Picture Viewer. But the basic textures came with Globular Clusture Generator (google it) and, incedently, solargen, albeit with different names. Thank you for you're help .

0.
You should inspect Celestia's "console log" for error messages. You can turn that log on and off by typing a ~ ( type a space after the ~ if your computer uses diacritical marks). Use the arrow keys to navigate in the log.

1. non fatal:
CustomOrbits refer to specific orbits which are predefined in Celestia's code. They're ignored if you don't specify a name of one of those predefined orbits. Although they don't cause problems for Celestia, they do cause problems for people, since they're a confusion factor.

2. fatal:
Your STC file is missing a magnitude declaration: either AbsMag or AppMag.
AbsMag 4.83 is reasonable (like the Sun).

After adding AbsMag, I have no problems viewing your planetary system.

Wow. I mean, really, wow. I thought it was the .ssc that was causing problems. Vita Cnc showed up, and celestia gave it a random AbsMag, equal to the sun. As for the custom orbits, System Maker put them in there and I was only just using it when I made that post. Thank you, selden! Now to get back to work.

3. check to make sure you have only one STC and one SSC file. You seem to have several files, which is causing some confusion.

After rereading the symptoms you report, I realized that you must have another STC catalog that Celestia actually is using to define the star. If the only STC were the one that you posted, you wouldn't be able to see the sun or any of its planets.

I've noticed a few other problems:

4. You have negative values for the SemiMajorAxis of two objects: Ruan and Pei The SMA should always be positive. It's a measure of the distance from the body it's defining to the body it's orbiting around. (They don't seem to be causing viewing problems on my system, though.)

5. Which version of Celestia are you actually using right now?
What model of graphics hardware does your system have?
What is the version number of the graphics drivers that are installed?
Celestia's menu Help/OpenGL info includes some of this information. Display Properties has the rest.

Which Render Path is Celestia using?
Type a Ctrl-V to step through them.

When viewing Redi, my system draws it bright red. (I'm using Celestia v1.5.0 pre3) This happens when there are more surface texture options selected than Celestia's code and the graphics hardware can handle. When I disable cloud shadows (new in v1.5), the red goes away. (This is a limitation that Chris is working on.)

You might be seeing a side effect of a similar problem which is drawn differently because of your graphics hardware and drivers.

If you haven't already done so, update the graphics drivers on your laptop to the most recent version available from its manufacturer. They shuold be downloadable for free from their website.

I'm not having any problems viewing Pei. However, being in the shadow of Ruan, during a solar eclipse, might be enough to push it over the surface texture rendering limit.

Response to 3:
Yes, I am only using 1 .stc file, but I'm using two .sscs, one for the planets and their moons, and one for a set of five Vulcan Asteroids, collectivly inside the Roche Limit of Vita Cnc (I think that's applicable to stars), to fall and be obliterated.
If there is another star defined, I'll be surprized. Set at both the exact random distance, RA, and Dec? (I was actually going for as far as possible, but I was trying to line it up with a ficticious nebula that is giving me a headache.) As per how it showed up, I haven't the faintest clue. A mystery to say the least. However, once I did put in an AppMag, but I deleted that days ago.

Response to 4: I know about the problem of negative Semi-Major Axises, but honestly, it's the only way I know how to get an object to orbit on the exact opposite side as the other, at least without going in epochs or whatever it is (I always get that term confused). While I've been doing this for a couple of years, I took a bit of a break a month or two ago due to school... and the fact that, with celestia, my computer was skipping around 500KB of free space. Celestia was 3.4GB, so I did a sweep of things which wern't omni-important, such as stuff for school, my music (I'm a pianist and am going to try to make a career out of it). With every thing else I have, and stuff I can't delete for whatever reason, after the clean I was left with 6.78GB of free space. So, I took a break from those terms. They were, and still are, a little bit too technical to me (yet something like "co-articulated voiceless velar-alveolar plosive" is clear as crystal ).

Response to 5:
Celestia ED v1.4.1 (I re-got it a few days ago from CM)
Intel 945GM
I think the version is 1.4.0, with the build being 4.14.10.4450
At the time, basic (that solves my night texture problem ).

By the way, it was working at the time of my previous post. Thanks again!!!

OK, if it's working for you now, that's what matters: have fun!