Celestia Forums

I just upgraded from version 1.4.1 to 1.5.1, and in the old version you could take your cursor, move it over a star, planet or other destination, select "go to" and it would fly there seamlessly. Now, as soon as you put your mouse over it, it seems like Celestia is already "flying" to it (but not visibly, in the background), and once you finally select "go to", it "cuts" to the flight already in progress... or it just cuts right to the star or planet, if it's already completely loaded. So, what you see is sort of like the "flight" animation is edited or "censored".

Is this a new feature? If it is, it's highly annoying.. it really takes you out of the experience of the program, or at least the experience I had with 1.4.1.
Is there a way to fix this by changing the settings? If not, I'll probably just go back the older version.

It's working seamlessly for me.

What's your system configuration?
(CPU/OS/Graphics hardware/software)

Please provide an example which shows this problem.

Perhaps you're being confused by "star style: scaled discs". (Type Ctrl-V to change it.) There's a brightness change when it switches from a point sprite to a visible circle which isn't as smooth as it should be.

Don't forget that Celestia takes a while to load textures. If you're Going to an object that has large textures, Celestia will pause while they load the first time. Flight will be smooth the second time.

Nope, it's not on Scaled Discs.

Also, I switched back to the old version and it works fine, no "skipping", so it's probably not my setup. I'm using Vista, 3 gigs ram, 2.5 ghz, nvidia gforce 8800.

Maybe I'll make a movie so you can see what I'm talking about... because this really sucks and I'd love to use the new version.

It's doesn't seem to be a video problem, it's like once you move your cursor over your destination, even before you select "goto", it's sort of "loading your fly to animation in the background.. then you select it, and BAM, you're in the middle of the flight, or you're already there.

Ok that's weird.

When I record a movie, the "fly to" animation is shown (although in slow motion, due to the recording). When I stop the recording, it goes back to the "pre-load" skipping.

Great... Celestia is officially acting like the singing frog from that Looney Tunes cartoon.

Any ideas? I'm stumped.

I'm just grasping at straws here...

Do you have any programs running in the background?
Programs that use CPU cycles, I mean, not service jobs that just sit there waiting for something to happen.
They might cause Celestia to drop frames.

You didn't say what kind of CPU you have. If it's multi-core, try associating Celestia with a specific processor to see if that makes a difference.

Also, check in the Nvidia control panel to make sure Vertical sync is set either to "Force on" or "Use 3D Application setting".

Sounds like your fps is dropping for some reason. I've noticed this too sometimes. Type the "`" key. It is the lower case "~" key. This will show the frame rates. Your frame rate may drop when near a planet that renders atmospheres in OGL2 or has a VT or High resolution textures, etc. There are many other things that may be on causing the frame rates to temporarily drop. There are a lot more features in 1.5 that may cause your frame rate to drop that was not available in 1.4.
cartrite