Celestia Forums

When I Run Celestia all the planets and other objects are all messed up, their layers are everywhere!

Earth has all the countries but it is white, then if I zoom out enough the proper earth comes into view, so i now have two earths (sigh)

Mars seems ok except when you rotate it, somtimes a black blob blocks it out

These are just some examples

Im a newbie with celestia so any help would be appreciated

Im running windows 2000 professional on an A531
- Transmeta Crusoe TM5800 1000MHZ
- 256 MB RAM
- SiS 315_315E

Thanks in Advance

Please follow the advice in the first four Q&As of the "Preliminary User's FAQ" at http://www.shatters.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=2291
and let us know what happens.

SIS graphics chips are not the best, but they should work in Celestia's "Basic" rendering mode if you have their latest graphics drivers.

Hello, the first entry was mine - i've got a username now

Thanks Selden, Ctr+V worked and the file gave me some useful info, Celestia looks nice again.

So does that mean my sis graphics card has no openGL support?

Thanks for your help

VlaamseKiwi,

Look in Celestia's Help menu. It'll tell you what level of OpenGL support your SIS graphics chip has. I'm sure it has some, so that it's faster than if you had none at all, but the company hasn't bothered to try to keep up with the newest improved standards.

Features like "specular reflections" require a calculation be done for every visible pixel on the body's surface. Essentially, the graphics card has to call a subroutine to modify the color of each such pixel. Older chipsets, like SIS, don't have the ability to store subroutines internally. So Celestia can't ask them to draw the reflective hightlights.

In principle, SIS could provlde an OpenGL graphics library that did those calculations using your system's main CPU. It'd be much slower, but it'd work. But they haven't bothered.

Sorry.

Dear Selden

Thank you very much for your help, it was really appreciated.

Its a pity I guess about the OpenGL, but celestia still looks awesome in my opinion, so I fine with it.

Thank you so much