Celestia Forums

When on the surface of the earth or any planet with an atmosphere I have some problems.

1. the surface seems to dance up and down sometimes disappearing altogether.

2. When on the surface I can't turn off the atmosphere. I still
see a blue sky but I can see a few stars. When off surface it works good.

3. The time has problems when I type in a date over a hunderd years or so and it goes back to present day. However using the keys it wil;l go back. I just have to wait.

Also the time does not indicate A.D or B.C

4. The sun and Moon look very small from the surface of Earth. Even if I change the FOV it still does not look right. (i',m not sure
if that's a bug or not)

I have a feeling this is because of my graphics card


Vendor: Intel
Renderer:intel81X
Version 1.1.0 Build 4.11.01.1361
Max: simultaneous texture 1
Max: texture size: 1024

Supported Extensions
GL_EXT_abgr
GL_EXT_bgra
GL_EXT_packed_pixels
GL_EXT_paletted_texture\
GL_SGI_compiled_vertex_array
GL_SCI_cull_vertex
GL_EXT_compiled_vertex_array
GL_EXT_cull_vertex
GL_WIN_swap_hint

I don't think downloading the more modern drivers will help.
I was hoping that a program a s good a Celestia could be
viewed by most people, not people with the most modern
hardware as Starry night, another astronomy program.

Anonymous wrote:When on the surface of the earth or any planet with an atmosphere I have some problems.

1. the surface seems to dance up and down sometimes disappearing altogether.

2. When on the surface I can't turn off the atmosphere. I still
see a blue sky but I can see a few stars. When off surface it works good.

3. The time has problems when I type in a date over a hunderd years or so and it goes back to present day. However using the keys it wil;l go back. I just have to wait.

Also the time does not indicate A.D or B.C

4. The sun and Moon look very small from the surface of Earth. Even if I change the FOV it still does not look right. (i',m not sure
if that's a bug or not)

I have a feeling this is because of my graphics card


Vendor: Intel
Renderer:intel81X
Version 1.1.0 Build 4.11.01.1361
Max: simultaneous texture 1
Max: texture size: 1024

Supported Extensions
GL_EXT_abgr
GL_EXT_bgra
GL_EXT_packed_pixels
GL_EXT_paletted_texture\
GL_SGI_compiled_vertex_array
GL_SCI_cull_vertex
GL_EXT_compiled_vertex_array
GL_EXT_cull_vertex
GL_WIN_swap_hint

I don't think downloading the more modern drivers will help.
I was hoping that a program a s good a Celestia could be
viewed by most people, not people with the most modern
hardware as Starry night, another astronomy program.

Come on, an intel 810 or 815 onboard chip is not a real 3d graphics engine! Celestia definitely deserves something better. Most of us (with real 3d cards) experience very little problems, indeed.

Celestia works marvelously, e.g. on my very old GeForce 2 GTS/32MB card, but really an Intel81x chip...
this is "applied castration";-). Your chip does not have any of the required extensions...

Bye Fridger

you talk about the "Starry night"
i have downloaded but not installed yet. i read that its not free, it has an expiration day???

4. The sun and Moon look very small from the surface of Earth. Even if I change the FOV it still does not look right. (i',m not sure
if that's a bug or not)

It's not a bug, its a feature! Actually they are the correct size, its your perception that's wrong. In real life the sun and moon "look" bigger than they actually are, because of distorted visual clues around you (just like the moon looks 5 times as big on the horizon than it does overhead, when its actually the exact same size). You get the same problem with most other software that renders the solar system, such as Orbiter.

about moon being too small

45deg is definitely too large for most users. you can easily compute the correct setting for your environment, just measure the angle between the two lines from your eye to the left and right side of the screen. my monitor is 17" and the distance is about 12-14", so my correct FOV is about 17deg. the sun and the moon looks good with that FOV.

That's actually around 33 degrees, calculated from 2*arctan(8.5/13).

Grant

granthutchison wrote:That's actually around 33 degrees, calculated from 2*arctan(8.5/13).

Grant

Grant:

Celestia uses the OpenGL widget /height/ in your formula above which will lead to a considerably smaller FoV. As you will remember, in Christophe's recent CVS code to correct the vertical multiview field display, the FoV is actually computed for a fixed distance of the observer from the screen of 400 mm and the actual screen resolution (DPI) as

FOV = 2 x arctan(height / DPI / 2 / DistanceToScreen) / zoom

In addition one may set a zoom factor >1.

Bye Fridger