Stars render as squares

jrienhardt · Post #1by **jrienhardt** » 11.02.2019, 17:50

I installed Celestia Ed 1.6.1 and the star fields looks like a lot of colored squares. Sorry if this has been covered, but I didn't find it. I am running Win10 on a Toshiba satellite laptop. Would like to be able to use this for some educational programs.

Post #2by **selden** » 11.02.2019, 19:08

That is a symptom of using Intel graphics hardware.

If you type Ctrl-S several times while running Celestia, that'll select other Star Styles, one of which might be better.

I've added an explicit entry for this in the FAQ, which can be seen at https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Celestia/FAQs#Square_Stars

jrienhardt · Post #3by **jrienhardt** » 12.02.2019, 14:52

Fixed. Thanks

Post #4by **onetwothree** » 12.02.2019, 21:02

jrienhardt wrote:I installed Celestia Ed 1.6.1 and the star fields looks like a lot of colored squares. Sorry if this has been covered, but I didn't find it. I am running Win10 on a Toshiba satellite laptop. Would like to be able to use this for some educational programs.

What kind of star drawing is broken for you and which works fine?

Post #5by **selden** » 14.02.2019, 14:08

On computers with Intel graphics hardware, stars are drawn as squares when using "Star style: points" while using "Render path: OpenGL Vertex Program" and "Render path: OpenGL 2.0".

Stars are drawn properly for "Star style = scaled discs" and for "Star style = fuzzy points".
Stars are drawn properly for "Star style = points" while using "Render path: Basic" and "Render path: "Multitexture".

Here's what the stars look like when drawn as squares:

Joey P. · Post #6by **Joey P.** » 20.02.2019, 03:46

Yes, I have been experiencing this problem as well. However, if the star style to something else, such as "Fuzzy Points" (which I wouldn't prefer), the problem will be decently solved.

Post #7by **Lafuente_Astronomy** » 26.02.2019, 12:07

Well, I did have the same problem, but I solved it by putting opengl32.dll in the Main Celestia file(I'm using 1.7.0 BTW). It works in such a way that it makes them work in x86 but in x64 and x32, it replaces the squares with circular lights, which appear and disappear everytime I move around. While at least better than the squares, if you have any better solutions to this, I'd gladly use them as well.

Added after 1 hour 27 minutes:

This is what it looks like when using x64 or x32 with opengl32.dll, at least for my PC