Celestia Forums

What the freak heck is wrong with this program?
1. Orbits lines are half missing or the graphics are screwed up. ISS and Hubbel orbits pass behind the planets.

2. My text graphics are square boxes not letters so I can only read some of the program text.

3. It is almost impossible to get an add-on to work. you have to place files in specific directories. Get instruction on how, and they are useless becaues the file extensions dont match what they say the should.

4. THIS STUPID WEBSITE IS SO PAINFULLY SLOW IT IS IMPOSSIBLE TO SEACH FOR ANY INFORMATION UNLESS YOU WANT TO DEDICATE THE REST OF YOUR LIFE TO WAITING FOR THE PAGE TO LOAD. AND I AM ON BROADBAND!!!!!!!!!
Who is the idiot who messed this forum and website up with billions of dumb graphics that dont help solve the problems of this totally inadequately documented program??????????

It took me 10 minutes to to register!!!!!! The form fields are freaking BLACK on a BLACK background.. What kind of freaking moron would make all the form fields hidden???

Its all evident as the forum is a screwed up as the program.

Can you tell I am very VERY VERY fustrated at this ??????

Great Idea for a program.. Nice try.. But I think the creator needs to go back to the drawing board and make some documentation that gives answers rather than pointing you to more documentation that does nothing but re-direct you to find even more documentation that does nothing.

Things might be easier if this forum was properly organized and set up in a professional way. But no, the creator needs to get all artistic, add billions of stupid graphics that do not help. Furthermore, a programs documentation should be located all in the same place instead of spread out into 500 billion different links.

Like I said.. the author had a great idea.. To bad they didnt spend as much time thinking about how to properly execute that great idea.
This program will eventually end up in histories waste bin because it has way to many bugs that require WAY WAY WAY to much time to learn and fix.

Sad..

You know, I read this post and at first I started to get a little twitchy... and then I simply started laughing. It's painfully obvious that you haven't played with the program nearly enough, and indeed it sounds like you might have some graphic card issues.

My suggestions? Pick an immediate problem that you are having with the program (that's *one* problem; others can be addressed later), and we'll go from there.

You'll probably get several helpful responses if you ask in a civil manner, and not like a petulant child.

...John...

Murphy wrote:What the freak heck is wrong with this program?
1. Orbits lines are half missing or the graphics are screwed up. ISS and Hubbel orbits pass behind the planets.

These are known problems that probably will be fixed in the next major release

2. My text graphics are square boxes not letters so I can only read some of the program text.

What version of Celestia are you trying to run?
What type of computer and which operating system are you running it on?
Exactly what kind of graphics card do you have?
As John suggested above, it's most likely a 3D graphics issue.

I'm not entirely sure what you mean by "the program text". It can mean too many different things. However, if you mean the symbols that Celestia draws on the screen, then this is a problem I've never seen. When I configure Celestia to use a font that doesn't have Greek letters (for example) Celestia doesn't draw them at all on my Windows system.

3. It is almost impossible to get an add-on to work. you have to place files in specific directories. Get instruction on how, and they are useless becaues the file extensions dont match what they say the should.

Too many Addon authors only know how to use whatever system they have. They don't have access to the other types of systems that Celestia runs on, so they can't test their Addons on them, and they really don't know what the different restrictions are. This is a particular problem for authors who use Windows.

4. THIS STUPID WEBSITE IS SO PAINFULLY SLOW IT IS IMPOSSIBLE TO SEACH FOR ANY INFORMATION UNLESS YOU WANT TO DEDICATE THE REST OF YOUR LIFE TO WAITING FOR THE PAGE TO LOAD. AND I AM ON BROADBAND!!!!!!!!!

It works fine for me. There was a network hardware problem a week or so ago that seems to have been fixed.

Who is the idiot who messed this forum and website up with billions of dumb graphics that dont help solve the problems of this totally inadequately documented program??????????

*shrug* so don't look at those pages.

It took me 10 minutes to to register!!!!!! The form fields are freaking BLACK on a BLACK background.. What kind of freaking moron would make all the form fields hidden???

I agree that it was a mistake to make the Solaris style the default. Hopefully Chris will change it back to subSilver, which is what I've always used. It's much more readable.

Its all evident as the forum is a screwed up as the program.

Can you tell I am very VERY VERY fustrated at this ??????

So it would seem.

Great Idea for a program.. Nice try.. But I think the creator needs to go back to the drawing board and make some documentation that gives answers rather than pointing you to more documentation that does nothing but re-direct you to find even more documentation that does nothing.

The place to start is with the "Users Guide" by Frank Gregorio. It was designed to be used by his high school students. It's at the top of the documentation page on Shatters and the documentation page of the Celestia MotherLode.

Things might be easier if this forum was properly organized and set up in a professional way. But no, the creator needs to get all artistic, add billions of stupid graphics that do not help.

Celestia's Web forum has two different "stylesheets" available to you in your Profile. Unfortunately, the default is Solaris. subSilver is much easier on the eyes. Both are freely available styles from the phpBB Web site. Neither were designed by Celestia's author. It used to be that only subSilver was available. Solaris was added at the clamoring of people who use the Forum.

Furthermore, a programs documentation should be located all in the same place instead of spread out into 500 billion different links.

Most of it is collected on the documentation pages mentioned above. They've been written by different individuals or groups of individuals. Nobody has had the time to take on the formidable task of organizing the effort of combining it all into a single document -- remember that it also has to be made available in multiple languages.

Like I said.. the author had a great idea.. To bad they didnt spend as much time thinking about how to properly execute that great idea.
This program will eventually end up in histories waste bin because it has way to many bugs that require WAY WAY WAY to much time to learn and fix.

Sad..

Please remember that all of what you see is provided free to you by the efforts of many people working in their little free time. Maybe you could help?

Ok.. Lets start with the first problem..

This website..
PING TIME 1 = 250ms
PING TIME 2 = 270ms
PING TIME 3 = timed out
PING TIME 4 = timed out

I click on my bookmark to this form.. Time to page load = ~45 seconds.
Time to page load last night at 2am in the morning = >1 minute

Time to page load at this post (the smiley faces are still loading as I type this) Total time to page load = Greater than 2 minutes.

Time to access a single post = Greater than 45 seconds on average.

Lets fix the first problem first.. In order to fix the bugs or work around them, we must get the information required.

If every search takes an average of 2 minutes for a page to load, how long do you think it will take to get the program working?

I understand programs get bugs.. As a database programer, I understand the why and the how.

But when a simple website takes an average of over a minute to load a page, that website becomes useless.. I tried accessing on Friday and it was slow.. (Ok, sometimes the internet is like that).. Saturday was slow also.. And today, nothing has changed.. It is always painfully slow.
I didnt get broadband so I can sit here and waste my life looking at a page.

My connection is fine.. Ping times to all other sites on the internet that I visit are very low and I get download speeds that normally approach 300 - 500 KBS.
Not with this forum..

What is your suggestion to fix this first most important problem??

Dear Murphy,

I am one of the authors of Celestia (yes there is more than one!). All of us are highly professional characters, each one having his strong area of competence. The professional associations range from NVIDIA software engineers, to theoretical physics Professors...Both NASA and ESA have been using Celestia in public. NASA is so fond of it that they even devoted a WEBsite to Celestia...

As Selden wrote already, we are of course aware of some left-over buggies here and there. But really, given Celestia's complexity, excellent overall performance and unprecedented astronomical accuracy & 3d graphics, these are of minor importance! They will just vanish soon or later...

Now, why don't you let us know WHO YOU are?

Can we perhaps have a look at some 'professional software "creation" of yours' somewhere? Just to normalize a bit with what kind of software genius we are talking here?

I am sure you must have a real solid software engineering background, given your quite arrogant introducion in this community! Let me just emphasize once more: apart from the very familiar orbit bug (which has an obvious OpenGL explanation, of course), I do not encounter the slightest problems with my version of Celestia . Millions (?) of users don't either, by the way. My typical performance is >95 fps and I use texture tiles cut from 2-4 GB sized files.

The forum is indeed slow from time to time. So what. This
may have a number of reasons. Chris may be off climbing for example. . This forum also has been hacked several times. Also many people tend to download HUGE textures... After a little while it's back up at normal speed.

Relax...

Cheers,

Bye Fridger

Murphy wrote:But when a simple website takes an average of over a minute to load a page, that website becomes useless.. I tried accessing on Friday and it was slow.. (Ok, sometimes the internet is like that).. Saturday was slow also.. And today, nothing has changed.. It is always painfully slow.
I didnt get broadband so I can sit here and waste my life looking at a page.

OK, right now the site is not particularly fast for me, but it's for sure WAY better compared to what you desribe here! I am away about half the globe from the server (!) yet my page build-up is just a few seconds with my 3Mbit DSL line.

Sure Chris' server is not laid out for 400KB/sec download speeds. We are not a commercial company, after all. Who is going to pay for such a high performance server that could support 300-500KB/sec speed given the pretty HIGH average load on the server??

And for your "pleasure" and information, here is the official download statistics of Celestia from SourceForge, just displaying the recent results as of Jan. 1st 2005: As you may see the top ranges around 80000 downloads/month! In 2005, the SF downloads total 318 000 so far!

In fact, I have noticed that Mozilla Firefox is more faster than Internet Explorer when I went to this forum.
Try Firefox if you use internet explorer.

Fightspit wrote:In fact, I have noticed that Mozilla Firefox is more faster than Internet Explorer when I went to this forum.
Try Firefox if you use internet explorer.

While I also use firefox ( of course ), this is surely not our friend's main problem...

Bye Fridger

t00fri wrote:

Fightspit wrote:In fact, I have noticed that Mozilla Firefox is more faster than Internet Explorer when I went to this forum.
Try Firefox if you use internet explorer.

While I also use firefox ( of course ), this is surely not our friend's main problem...

Bye Fridger

On verra... / wait and see...

[quote]I am one of the authors of Celestia (yes there is more than one!). All of us are highly professional characters, each one having his strong area of competence. The professional associations range from NVIDIA software engineers, to theoretical physics Professors...Both NASA and ESA have been using Celestia in public. NASA is so fond of it that they even devoted a WEBsite to Celestia... [/quote]

I apologize for my disrespect and obnoxiousness.. It was a general rant and not meant to attack you. Now that I've had my coffee, I feel better..

However, if NASA is involved, this explains things.

Murph

Murphy wrote:

I am one of the authors of Celestia (yes there is more than one!). All of us are highly professional characters, each one having his strong area of competence. The professional associations range from NVIDIA software engineers, to theoretical physics Professors...Both NASA and ESA have been using Celestia in public. NASA is so fond of it that they even devoted a WEBsite to Celestia...

I apologize for my disrespect and obnoxiousness.. It was a general rant and not meant to attack you. Now that I've had my coffee, I feel better..

However, if NASA is involved, this explains things.

Murph

Hi Murph,

I am sure with your background you could make valuable contributions e.g. on how to make the site's response faster without investing more money...

Bye Fridger

PS: I should perhaps add that I have strongly optimized the TCP parameters (TCP receive window & MTU, etc) of my DSL setup for high-speed & high-latency transfers!

In my case with 375KByte/sec target download speed, this made a HUGE difference in the long-distance, high-latency performance...

I am sure you know all these things by heart, and I am sorry to even mention such trivialities to you

Yes, I can be of assistance.

1. Improve the website by loosing all the fancy stuff that gobbles bandwidth and creates software problems. Graphics are great but not when every single button, icon, menu, etc etc on the site is crammed with them.

2. Organize the information in a useable format that doesnt require a person to go to every page on the site to find what they are looking for.

3. Stop trying to make things fancy and make them functional. "All show and no go" is an old quote and an old problem.

This program is a fantasitc idea and has allot of potential. Just like NASA in the old days.

Murphy
(Anything that can go wrong, will go wrong)

I've never delved into it, so I'm not certain, but.... There must be a setting under the user preferences for what type of format the forum appears in, because it has *always* been the standard silver setting for me. I didn't even know people were seeing it in the Solaris style (which I am familiar with in other forums I belong to).

...John...

Murphy wrote:Yes, I can be of assistance.

1. Improve the website by loosing all the fancy stuff that gobbles bandwidth and creates software problems. Graphics are great but not when every single button, icon, menu, etc etc on the site is crammed with them.

2. Organize the information in a useable format that doesnt require a person to go to every page on the site to find what they are looking for.

3. Stop trying to make things fancy and make them functional. "All show and no go" is an old quote and an old problem.

This program is a fantasitc idea and has allot of potential. Just like NASA in the old days.

Murphy
(Anything that can go wrong, will go wrong)

Clearly "long-distance guys" like myself are using since 3 1/2 years (!) the silver setting that does not have all this graphics blurb! The structure of these forum boxes are otherwise sort of standard. We have not coded them. It's just the usual, very well known PHP package. We deal with Celestia development in the first place, the forum is definitely second!

Actually, apart from some very recent localized speed problems and a few explicit hacks, the forum runs pretty well since > 3 1/2 years without intermission.

Bye Fridger


Bye Fridger

What kind of jacka$$ would hack this site?

Jeez.. If I'm going to risk going to prison for computer hacking, this site would not be anywhere near the top of my list...

If your getting hacked then I totally understand your problems so far as website speed.

The site is speeding up as I write this however... I'll wait until monday and do more research on the program... Maybe by then I will be able to click on something an actually have it work.. LOL

The only thing that makes posting in this thread tolerable is the fact that I can find it in my history and avoid all the clicks and page loads to get to this thread.

How is it possible a person is intelligent enough to be able to hack websites, and yet be stupid enough to hack something with almost no value.. Its not as if you hold a billion credit card numbers right?

Murphy wrote:2. My text graphics are square boxes not letters so I can only read some of the program text.

Sounds like either a driver issue, missing fonts, or insufficient VRAM. Are the square boxes light-purple rectangle outlines, or are they solid rectangle patches? In Celestia, please choose Help > OpenGL Info and post your findings.

The setting for changing your forum style can be found under your forum profile settings - I'm also a subsilver fan.

Murphy,

honestly, something must be fishy with your system. Since some time my forum pages are building up again in less than 1 second! That's perfect for being >8000 km away. The build-up time is close to the ping latency now.

Bye Fridger

[quote="dirkpitt"][quote="Murphy"]2. My text graphics are square boxes not letters so I can only read some of the program text.[/quote]

Sounds like either a driver issue, missing fonts, or insufficient VRAM. Are the square boxes light-purple rectangle outlines, or are they solid rectangle patches? In Celestia, please choose Help > OpenGL Info and post your findings.

The setting for changing your forum style can be found under your forum profile settings - I'm also a subsilver fan.[/quote]

Oh my god.. the SUBSILVER setting makes it run SO SO MUCH faster...

Whew... I didnt know this forum software did that...

Murphy wrote:

dirkpitt wrote:

Murphy wrote:2. My text graphics are square boxes not letters so I can only read some of the program text.

Sounds like either a driver issue, missing fonts, or insufficient VRAM. Are the square boxes light-purple rectangle outlines, or are they solid rectangle patches? In Celestia, please choose Help > OpenGL Info and post your findings.

The setting for changing your forum style can be found under your forum profile settings - I'm also a subsilver fan.

Oh my god.. the SUBSILVER setting makes it run SO SO MUCH faster...

Whew... I didnt know this forum software did that...

That's nice to hear, but I don't understand that the effect in your case is THAT big. If I switch to the style you were using before, the turn around is somewhat slower, from here, but not really dramatically so!

Bye Fridger

Maybe 16MB is not enough?

Vendor: 3Dfx Interactive Inc.
Renderer: 3Dfx/Voodoo3 (tm)/2 TMUs/16 MB SDRAM/KNI/ICD (Jan 16 2001)
Version: 1.1.0
Max simultaneous textures: 2
Max texture size: 256


Supported Extensions:
GL_ARB_multitexture
GL_EXT_abgr
GL_EXT_bgra
GL_EXT_clip_volume_hint
GL_EXT_compiled_vertex_array
GL_EXT_packed_pixels
GL_EXT_point_parameters
GL_EXT_stencil_wrap
GL_EXT_texture_env_add
GL_EXT_vertex_array
GL_SGIS_texture_edge_clamp
GL_EXT_paletted_texture
GL_EXT_shared_texture_palette
GL_SGIS_multitexture
GL_EXT_fog_coord
WGL_EXT_extensions_string
WGL_3DFX_gamma_control
WGL_EXT_swap_control
WGL_ARB_extensions_string

Murphy wrote:Vendor: 3Dfx Interactive Inc.
Renderer: 3Dfx/Voodoo3 (tm)/2 TMUs/16 MB SDRAM/KNI/ICD (Jan 16 2001)
Version: 1.1.0
Max simultaneous textures: 2
Max texture size: 256

While 16M vram is ok, 256K of texture size looks pretty tight. I think you might be able to at least run Celestia with text by switching to the software renderer (that's how I'm running Celestia on my old Vanta chipset) but that would be unbearably slow.