Celestia Forums

Hi Chris,

I have enormous perfomance problems with Celestia1.3.2pre4 and all sphere objects (the build in sphere mesh). I used the complete install version without any addons and the pre3-exe copied into the pre4 folder for some test.

My sytem and settings
Win98SE, Duron900, 512mb ddr ram, Geforce3 TI200 64mb, 1024x32 (no AA), Nvidea driver 52.16,
Celestia settings: OpenGl vertex/Nvidea combiners, Stars as points, Galaxies of, Magnitude 6.0, no Ambient light.

Here are my resultes:

Mars (after start):
pre3: 80 fps
pre4: 15 fps
Eros (3ds):
pre3: 73 fps (no texture, because bug)
pre4: 73 fps

Another problem is that in "solarsys.ssc" cmod-models for Deimos, Phobes, Amalthea and Eros are defined but only 3ds models can be found in the model folder.

Further I miss Kendrix's Celestia improvements:
- smooth orbits
- smooth rings
- better shadow texture (Saturn on rings)
I really hate this low poligon orbits and rings. ( Shall I post some extrem ugly examples? )

Finally a question, I thought one of the reasons for the new model format was that bump maps and secular maps can be used. Will this feature come?
Nevertheless the cmod format works fantastic.

Bye Jens

Hello Jens,

Hopefully this will be of some help for two of your questions.

From a message in the developer's list, from Chris, when I reported problems with spherical objects ... "I modified lodspheremesh.cpp to take advantage of the vertex_buffer_object OpenGL extension to render planet spheres faster."

This didn't work on my ATI card and he suggested adding the following line to the celestia.cfg file:

I placed the new line below the existing, commented out line:

This addition got spherical objects displaying properly on my system. So, you might try it as a temporary measure to see if it helps your FPS.

Regarding the missing cmod models, the next pre-release fixes this. In the meantime, they can be downloaded directly from CVS.

Cheers,

-Don G.

Just to highlight the problems Jens is having viewing spherical objects, here are some screenshots showing the Earth in wireframe from my system;

Firstly taken from 1.3.2.pre3 : 20.8 FPS


Secondly taken from 1.3.2.pre4 : 4.9 FPS


Dramatic slowdown, but with all the extra facets/ faces in the spherical model, then it's no wonder this is the case !?

After trying Dons change to the celestia.cfg file, I don't see any improvement ; (ignore the relative FPS, I had other applications open at the time, but it should still highlight the slowdown)

Firstly taken from 1.3.2.pre3 : 17.6 FPS


Secondly taken from 1.3.2.p4 : 4.8 FPS


regards
TERRIER

Celestia 1.3.2pre4 is broken. Don't use it. 1.3.2pre5 will be ready later today.

--Chris

jim wrote:Finally a question, I thought one of the reasons for the new model format was that bump maps and secular maps can be used. Will this feature come?
Nevertheless the cmod format works fantastic.

Bye Jens

Yes, the new model format will support both bump and specular maps. I'm still working out the details of this. It would be simple to add specular map and bump map material properties, but I'm trying to design a system that's somewhat more flexible.

--Chris

chris wrote:Celestia 1.3.2pre4 is broken. Don't use it. 1.3.2pre5 will be ready later today.

Chris,

Please forgive the anticipation, but is it ready yet?

Thanks, Bob