Celestia Forums

i was recently introduced to Celestia through a friend, and decided to download it on to my own computer, I'm not a computer wiz but there seems to be a problem with Celestia, all of the plants "skins" are not attached to the planets and they distort as I move around, it a problem with my video set up or video card, i have an integrated card, on a compaq presario SR1536NX series computer. or is it a bug that is part of Celestia, if you can help me i would appreciate it.

Can you post a screen shot? That might help...

Failing that, check the "solarsys.ssc" file to make certain that it's not
corrupted somehow. If the SSC file points to a texture that can't be
found in the Celestia textures directory (on Windows) then you'll also
get some very screwy images.

That's all I can suggest. Others?

It would also be very helpful if you could more accurately describe
your system. See my signature for an example.

Thanks, Brain-Dead

Unfortunately, problems with Celestia's onscreen display are usually caused by obsolete or buggy graphics drivers. You might want to consider upgrading your computer by installing a dedicated graphics card. Entry level Nvidia and ATI cards are available for less than U.S. $50.

Updated drivers for Compaq computers should be freely available for downloading from HP. Firmware and software downloads are available by selecting your computer model on the Web page
http://h20000.www2.hp.com/bizsupport/Te ... sId=470574

Unfortunately, browsing that Website reveals that your model of computer uses SIS graphics chips. They frequently have problems like what you describe.

Sorry.

I took the advice and updated my graphics drivers, but now celestia crashes when i reach the earth on start up! i may go the route and buy a cheep graphics card see if that helps.

Well, that's annoying. (the crash, I mean)

My guess is that it might be due to bugs in the vertex shader code in the driver. That's a common problem. (The Earth's surface texture uses vertex shaders to display a specular highlight on the oceans.)

What you might try doing is switching to a different default render path:

Start Celestia
Type an escape ( the <esc> key) before the Earth comes into view. The viewpoint will stop moving.
Type a Ctrl-V several times to see what render paths are available. Celestia will step to another render path and flash its name on the screen each time you type a Ctrl-V. (Please let us know what ones they are.)

Selecting the Multitexture render path won't show highlights but (I'm guessing) will avoid the crash. When it exits, Celestia will record in the registry the last Render path you had selected and will use it the next time you run the program

Does this help?

GREAT! it appears that the problem is with running open GL, when i use BASIC or MULTITEXTURE the planets and moons appear fine.

I uninstalled Celestia and found a couple of "left over files" deleted them and reinstalled, it no longer crashes when i reach the earth and pressing Control + V and setting it on multitexture fixes lines up the skin with the planet!

thank you.