CELESTIA IN THE FUTURE

[t00fri]

Janus,

already 15 years ago I asked myself what the purpose of Celestia really was...no answer ;-)

Cheers,
Fridger

PS: some women surely say: men like to play..

[FarGetaNik]

Janus, my purposes for Celestia are:
visualizing space, and in particular our solar system,
revisiting spacecraft exploring it
and using it as a planetarium.
I am constantly working on Celestia content so most of the time I launch and use Celestia I check my changes and archievements, or I am curious about certain things I cannot check otherwise (how does object X look from Y etc.).

Though updated graphics would be nice and are desperately needed, the problems I run into are mostly addon-related. I could give a more detailed but lengthy list if you are interested.

[Janus]

@FarGetaNik

Ok, I guess I should start this ball rolling.

Here I am referring to the version I used for my solar system tour dvd that so far only two people have commented on.
None of these exist outside that version because I am unsure if anyone else has any use for them.

1-> I moved the text from the edges so it was all visible. Projectors in particular have issues with this.
2-> I moved the observer distance distance display to LR for clarity/consistency.
3-> I added RaDecDist to star database to go with adding commands to Celx to use that information. Functionality to be added to planets.
4-> I added RaDecDist to star display, for astronomical ease and reference, and will to planets in their turn.
5-> I am working on adding pathing, based on/derived from astersims, so a script based path can be displayed, and later stored.
6-> I am working on designing commands for Celx such that every aspect of the database for stars, planets etc can be viewed/modified by script.
7-> I am also trying to (re)design time keeping to enable more stable time setting, and non realtime recording of video, while still using scripts.
{Currently adjusting one item in the time menu, adjusts others, meaning I cannot simply set/assign the time I want, only close.}

This is not a complete list, just the ones I am actively researching or have done for my own use.
I am sure others have many other pet peeves.
I will be doing all of these myself even if no one else does anything.

Comments/critiques welcome.
List(s) would be better.
We need to at least turn the cart in the direction of a target.


Janus.

[FarGetaNik]

Janus, I find it difficult to understand you sometimes. So your issues are related to scripting, but I am not sure if these can be fixed by more effort, or if the script limitations are holding you back? Improvements in that area would be beneficial, but I don't really script myself in Celestia, so I can't really point anything out here.

Well, here the issue I run into while creating Celestia content:

• Solar system browser is not compatible with multiple star systems, it only lists the object related to one star, or if a different ObjectFrame is defined, it lists nothing at all.
• Solar system browser does not classify objects (yet), everything from asteroid to major planet gets scattered there. This should be easily fixed, as there already exist tools that aquire something similar.
• The TwoVector property depends on the hirarchy of the object, making it impossible to use at certain occasions. I haven't checked if it is a problem still, because related issues disapeared with a particular build of 1.7 (but there are several bulds out there with different improvements)
• Celestia confuses objects with identical names when selecting them with the enter and search function. It lists say "Juno" 2 times, but when selecting either of those brings me to asteroid Juno, not the Juno spacecraft.
• No support for planetocentric coordinate systems (many texture are only avaliable planetocentric, also planetocentric grids are a helpful guide in certain occasions unlike planetographic ones)
• Reference points cannot get assigned an object class, so Celestia sometimes doesn't know how to classify it.
• There is no consistent way to simulate barycentric motion for any class of binary objects (planets, asteroids etc. )

There are more issues related to graphics, like the LunarLambert property that is not compatible with normal mapping on cmod or specularity, but this should be enough for the moment.

[Alexell]

t00fri, I do not quite understand what you can offer us?
Your help in the project would be priceless.
If you do not want to copy the code from celestia.sci, then you could help us with audio support. I'm sure that you did not do it in celestia.sci, so you will not have to copy anything.
We need to make a new OpenAL instead of FMOD and make audio support work on Windows, Linux and MacOS. As you know, the forum has patch created by Victor (vhpgomes), modified by Vincent, you just need to take the OpenAL library and build everything correctly.
https://github.com/CelestiaProject/Celestia/issues/6

In addition, I added a menu item that duplicates the keyboard command Shift +% (the color of the stars), but could not make the synchronization with new CELX commands:

Code: Select all

celestia:setstarcolor()
celestia:setstarstyle()

https://github.com/CelestiaProject/Celestia/issues/11

Can you help us with these two things? On GitHub with saving your name in the commits.

[t00fri]

t00fri, I do not quite understand what you can offer us?
Your help in the project would be priceless.
If you do not want to copy the code from celestia.sci, then you could help us with audio support. I'm sure that you did not do it in celestia.sci, so you will not have to copy anything.

Alexell,

In coming here a few days ago, I was mainly trying to find out whether among the celestiaproject members there might be people knowing a lot of C++ and|or Astrophysics / Astronomy and being potentially interested in participating in the challenge of celestia.Sci.

It is not my intention to participate in little fixes of Celestia code after developing celestia.Sci for so many years. Since our next major step is to prepare the celestia.Sci sources for public access and settle the (open source) license question, I have no spare time to give away...

As you correctly supposed, there will be no sound in celestia.Sci.

Good luck with celestiaproject. Perhaps we find a better basis for a joint venture at a later stage.

Cheers,
Fridger

[FarGetaNik]

I was mainly trying to find out whether among the celestiaproject members there might be people knowing a lot of C++ and|or Astrophysics / Astronomy and being potentially interested in participating in the challenge of celestia.Sci.

It is not my intention to participate in little fixes of Celestia code after developing celestia.Sci for so many years.

It was somewhat apparent that you don't want to participate in Celestia. You could have just said that from the beginning. But in return, you have to accept that most of us are not intereested in participating Celestia.Sci either, or at the very least, not fit your high demands. C++ programmers are sparce enough, I suppose finding people that on top of that are proficient enough in astrophysics is not realistic. Of course I have great interest in astrophysics, but I don't have any high education in that field.

[t00fri]

It was somewhat apparent that you don't want to participate in Celestia. You could have just said that from the beginning.

I said that quite clearly and quite early, yet still hoping that there were some interesting guys to be located for celestia.Sci:

...in my view this option that I or the celestia.Sci team members help here and there to find bugs or give coding hints will hardly work!

This was a longish version of "нет" ;-)
Your subsequent aggressive post then did the rest.

As to the participation of myself and also of the celestia.Sci team ( Dawoon Jung & Andrew Tribick) in Celestia: We are all Celestia Co-Authors since many years, as you can easily check in Celestia's AUTHORS list. This property of course persists in future releases of Celestia. ;-)
I never formally left Celestia Development, actually. The latter just fell into a Coma.

C++ programmers are sparce enough, I suppose finding people that on top of that are proficient enough in astrophysics is not realistic.

All team members of celestia.Sci satisfy this requirement perfectly. Dawoon Jung did his Master Thesis about Gravitational Lensing in celestia.Sci with me as external academic Advisor.
http://dwj.freeshell.org/work/file/djung_ipr.pdf
This resulted as a joint paper and was reported by Dawoon at the 65th International Astronautical Congress (IAC) 2014 in Toronto
http://dwj.freeshell.org/work/file/IAC2014-djung_fschrempp_hhill.pdf
Andrew has a (Univ. Cambridge) Master in Theoretical Physics and great experience in programming.. Occasionally things work ;-)

Fridger

[FarGetaNik]

This was a longish version of "нет" ;-)

I got that much, still you didn't actually say that but choose to leave an option for later, keeping this pointless discussion active.

Your subsequent aggressive post then did the rest.

How am I agressive? I am trying my best to stay polite, but you are so easily offended. Just putting a smiley at the end of your sentences doesn't make your posts any less insulting.

[Alexell]

t00fri, I've never been aggressive towards you. I have a good attitude towards you and celestia.sci
But I honestly do not understand the following: you see that we are trying to revive the project and we are not helping anything. Could not you really spend at least 1 hour of free time to help a bit with our project? After all, you are one of its authors.

Added after 7 minutes 12 seconds:
Help the project with kindness - I do not see anything wrong with this. This does not prevent the development of celestia.sci

[t00fri]

t00fri, I've never been aggressive towards you. I have a good attitude towards you and celestia.sci

Alexell,

I appreciate your sensitive approach to this non-trivial problem. But i am afraid I simply have no spare time to give away. My two collaborators are busy through most of the summer as it seems, i.e. I am working alone towards publishing the celestia.Sci sources. I can promise that I continue thinking about a feasible approach (, despite this unfriendly Welcome by one of the celestiaproject members..)

Fridger

[Alexell]

t00fri, Good. Thanks and on this)
I apologize for the harsh expressions of one of the participants in our forum.

[Art Blos]

Celestia is going nowhere. It's a dead app, pure and simple. Nobody will be competent enough to understand its code, modify it, and make it to evolve. The only "future" I could foresee is on the addons front, while Celestia is still running on current hardware and OS.

I completely agree. Alexell nothing can help. Be realistic and stop "to wait by the sea for the weather". No one will modify the complicated code. Addons - that's what we need to develop.

[Fenerit]

This discussion recall to me the attempts done by the trueSpace folks to develop the program through the plugin API and their fault to get Micro$oft (buyer and quitter of tS) releasing the source code for free; with the difference that in Celestia's case the source is freely available. None the less, after long ruminating I got the basic issues which - I think - both celestia and celestia.Sci would have addressing and that would make the difference between the two softwares once solved:

1) more projections, expecially those for planetarium mode;
2) the infamous "depth sort bug".

How celestia.Sci does handle the "depth sort bug"? This is a bug concerning the 3D models and as long as celestia.Sci allows their insertion, it will be affected. There are plans in both softwares to develope the planetarium mode?
The add-ons point. Still there isn't an add-on which shows the global (88) constellations artistic figures. Maybe it is not scientific but I can assure you that here Stellarium got the point ahead between people that used to use both.

[selden]

It shouldn't be too hard to adapt the Stellarium Hevelius constellation project for use in Celestia. You might consider contacting Mark Crossley about you doing that. See http://www.wilmslowastro.com/software/software.htm

[john71]

Cham wrote: ...while Celestia is still running on current hardware and OS...

Well, I can still play 20+ years old software games on my 64 bit Windows 10 OS...

[t00fri]

Massimo,

as an old CelestialMatters user, you sure know that I always try to give detailed info about technical questions related to celestia.Sci. Right now I also recommend my recent and quite active thread "Glancing at celestia.Sci"...Since the celestia.Sci Development site is CelestialMatters (CM) and NOT celestialProject, I ask to pose such questions at CM and NOT here...

Cheers,
Fridger

[Fenerit]

Ok, ok... Sorry, but CM login is not secure. Is there a way to fix that?

[t00fri]

Massimo,

yes I am working towards a more secure https access for the CM site. But it turns out to be involved, since CM is part of the very large ibiblio cluster. Just make sure to choose a CM login password that you do not employ elsewhere. Then nothing bad can happen to YOU, at least ;-) Note that also the CelestiaMotherlode site on ibiblio is formally insecure ...

At CM you should be entitled to read the forum: "CM administration". There look into "Using https for login pages". Therein you can see what I did initiate so far and why the task is complex. Also our friend and Web expert Runar Thorvaldsen wrote there a longer respective post.

Fridger

[Tetanurae]

All I really want at this point is a built in system generator that you can edit yourself. That is, create your own stars, planets and other system bodies etc.... from scratch. Universe Sandbox 2 has one, and it's easy to use, although the simulator itself is getting rather dated. I just wish other simulator developers would code in the ability to create your own star systems from the get go.