1.2.5b3 low priority bug: initial logo not drawn

[selden]

If one is using stars.dat v1.2, Celestia v1.2.5b3 takes a while to load. By the time the display window is drawn, the "Celestia" logo does not appear on the screen. This same problem is seen with v1.2.4.

[selden]

I've realized that this is a side effect of the more generic problem that the display freezes while new textures are being loaded. The larger the texture, the longer the freeze. Preaumaby there is no easy fix for this.

Preloading textures asynchronously (e.g. starting as soon as "center" or "goto" has been pressed) might help. Of course, multi-threaded asynchronous I/O isn't easy to prrogram and may not be supported by current graphics cards.

[Don. Edwards]

I think I have soved this. Rename the star.cel to star.bak and inport an older one from 1.2.4 and start Celestia.
B I N G O !
Problem solved.

[chris]

The new start.cel stars the camera off at Earth, which requires more and larger textures to be loaded. That's the source of the long delay . . . In any case, I should be able to find some way to keep the timer from starting until the logo is first displayed.

--Chris

[Don. Edwards]

I modified my start.cel so that it loaded with earth a while back. The logo and and the system flyby all look fine. There just a mild delay to load earth with mine. I think the main diference is when earth is finished loading in mine it is farther away from the planet than your new default. I have noticed a defenite speed up in Celestia's startup with my old start.cel. Maybe you should have it load the earth from a greater distance. Not sure if thats going to make any changes though. My earth texture is 4096x2048 with a cloud texture the same size. The nightlights texture is 2048x1024 and so is the bumpmap. Go figure ever system is diferent.

[Darkmiss]

here is my Start.cel
it waits for 5 seconds then the logo fades, then it sets off for Earth.
then rotates around it for 5 seconds.
works perfect

{
wait { duration 5.0 }
timerate { rate 100 }
select { object "Sol/Earth" }
follow {}
goto { time 5 distance 3.5 upframe "equatorial" }
wait { duration 0.5 }
orbit { axis [ 0 1 0 ] rate 5 duration 15 }

}