start.cel problems

[BobHegwood]

Dunno if this is a genuine bug or not, but it seems that Celestia (via 1.6.0) is going to the Sun
regardless of instructions included in the normal start.cel file.

In other words, if I remove ALL commands from the start.cel file which reference any travel to
Sol, the program still starts out at Sol and then moves to whatever location(s) I have scripted it
to go to.

Is this a bug? Or is this an unknown feature?

Thanks, Brain-Dead

[chris]

Dunno if this is a genuine bug or not, but it seems that Celestia (via 1.6.0) is going to the Sun
regardless of instructions included in the normal start.cel file.

In other words, if I remove ALL commands from the start.cel file which reference any travel to
Sol, the program still starts out at Sol and then moves to whatever location(s) I have scripted it
to go to.

Is this a bug? Or is this an unknown feature?

The starting position of the observer is at the origin of the universe, which in Celestia is the Solar System Barycenter, or SSB. The SSB is the center of mass of the solar system. Because most of the Solar System's mass is concentrated in the Sun, the SSB lies quite close to the Sun.

The observer has to be located *somewhere* at startup, and the origin is the obvious default. If you want to avoid seeing the Sun at startup, the observer position can be set to some other point in the startup script. The trick is that this must be done instantaneously. The script must set the new observer position before it returns control to Celestia by calling wait(). This isn't a bug. But, the fact that the default start.cel does show the Sun is a bug, I think. Or at least, Celestia would look more polished if this didn't happen. Also, there should be a builtin script command that makes it easier to set the observer position instantaneously.

--Chris

[BobHegwood]

Okay, thanks for that information Chris...
Have re-arranged my start.cel to bypass Sol and to go straight to Earth.

Again, many thanks, Brain-Dead