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No stars when using ATI X1600 propriotary linux driver

Posted: 08.09.2008, 17:04
by kolAflash
I have a german openSUSE 11.0 Installation and in Celestia I can't see any stars.
The planets, the Sun everything else is visible but there are no stars.
I found out that openSUSE uses some kind of KDE version of Celestia. But I couldn't find a website or bugtracking system for this version. Maybe somebody can tell me.

Now let's talk about the bug:
In the menu "Options" at "Star Style", I can set
it to one of the following values:
Fuzzy Points
Points
Scaled Discs
For all three possibilities the sun looks different.
But if it set it to "Fuzzy Points" or "Scaled Discs" I can't see any stars.
Only if I set it so "Points" I can see stars.

So in the openSUSE version of Celestia (this KDE version I talked about). But it really needs this option. And
maybe it would be also an good idea to put "Points" as the default value.


Just some ideas I'm thinking of:
Maybe this all has something to do with my graphics card. It's an "ATI Radeon
1600 Mobility" and I'm using the ATI proprioritary drivers version
8.493.1-1-i386.
Maybe because of some anti aliasing I can't see the stars if they are "Fuzzy
Points" or "Scaled Discs"...But I didn't activated anti aliasing. Maybe it's
the default somewhere.

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Later I found out some more.

In the german openSUSE repo-version of celestia I changed "Optionen" ->
"OpenGL-Render-Pfad" from "DOT3 ARBVP" to "Einfach". In the english version it
should be called like:
"Options" -> "OpenGL-Render-Path" changed from "DOT3 ARBVP" to "simple".
This option isn't existing in the original Celestia. Could you also provide it?

After changing that, I could see the stars while the setting for "Star Style" is "Fuzzy
Points".
In the KDE version of Celestia, I couldn't see that "Star Style" setting in the GUI but I found it in the
~/.kde/share/config/celestiarc config file. There is written: StarStyle=0

If I change the render setting to "Multitextur" (in english should be quite the
same) I could see the stars too. But when switching it to "DOT3 ARBVP" or
"OpenGL 2.0" the stars disappear again.
The other rendering options seem to be deactivated so I can't use them.

Maybe an solution to this problem is, to make the "simple" rendering default!
The stars look very ugly when using "DOT3 ARBVP" and "Star Style"="Points".
They look quite better when using "Fuzzy Points" and simple rendering.

At least:
- This is not just a problem for the KDE version of Celestia. If you think something else read again.
- If you can, tell me where I can find the webpage for the Celestia KDE version.
- The "OpenGL-Render-Path" option as it's in the KDE version, should be added to the Celestia menus and set to "Simple" or "Multitextur". Because at the moment it's the best way and best looking way to fix the problem! Setting the "Star Style" to "Point" makes the stars looking very bad.

Re: No stars when using ATI X1600 propriotary linux driver

Posted: 12.10.2008, 20:56
by John Van Vliet
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