Celestia Forums

This has been brought up once before, a very long time ago, in the topic found here: http://www.shatters.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=5236, and maybe elsewhere, but that's the only topic I found when I Searched. I felt that I should bring it up again.

When I try to use multiple alt textures, it's like I'm only able to use one at a time. For example I'm looking at earth and the moon at the same time, and I put an alt texture on the moon, that works just fine. But when I then try to switch to an alt texture on the Earth, it switches the moon's texture back to it's default texture.

The way Selden described it in the mentioned topic (as I understnad it) is that when you switch to an alternate surface, Celestia applies that alt serface name to all the objects in Celestia. If there is no alt surface for an object with that name, it automatically goes to the default texture.

Is it possible to change the way alt textures work so that each object can have it's own alt texture displayed, each with different names? I think it would be a very nice feature for using multiple alt textures.

That alt textures work the way they do is intentional. The idea is that alternate textures often come in sets. One example in the base Celestia package is the 'limit of knowledge' set of alternate surfaces. Another example might be a topographic set of alternate surfaces with color coded elevation maps for a number of planets. Maybe there's a way to enhance the alternate surface feature to do what you want . . . There could be a per-object alternate surface setting as well as a global default surface. Pressing + to toggle limit of knowledge surfaces would change the default, whereas selecting an alternate surface for a planet would only change the setting for that particular planet.

--Chris