Spacecraft orbit rendering, possible bug?

[alan_federman]

I can only see a spacecraft orbit if the backround is deep space. The orbit disappears if the planet (Day or night) is in the background. Not sure if this is a bug or if the orbit reads so close as to be behind the planet surface, and OpenGL sensing a conflict.

I tried this on two different machines using the 1.3.1 pre 7 release.


Thanks.

[selden]

Alan,

Unfortunately, as best I can tell, Celestia does not depth-sort orbit tracks and 3D objects. Orbits are always drawn first and objects (like planets) afterward (i.e. in front of orbits). This has been the case since at least v1.2.4.

I agree, it'd be nice if they were properly depth sorted.

[HankR]

I think this may be difficult to fix because of the way Celestia manages the depth buffer. But I agree it would be nice.

- Hank

[alan_federman]

I thought orbits were vectors and had properties like text. The location text for planet surfaces doen't get written on the far side of the planet, does it? ANy way to include collision avoidance POV? I would think that this would be built in to OpenGL.

Oh well, build a system that even a fool can use, and only a fool will use it.

[selden]

Alan,

If you really feel that strongly about it, why don't you learn how to do the 3d programming and contribute to making it work right? I'm sure it wouldn't hurt your resume.

Unfortunately, I'd guess there's something else going on that's making you so unhappy about the current state of the software.