Varying transparency of star & galaxy labels

[t00fri]

There seems to have been alot of fixes and ofcourse Fridger's new fading star labels gone into the CVS.

Sorry for breaking into this thread like this but are we close to pre3 release?

Cheers, Anders

Yes, very close.

--Chris

++++++++++++++
Then please announce the date well beforehand.
++++++++++++++

I still have to commit my upgraded galaxy data base and various small fixes. Also I thought I look into fading labels for asteroids and comets as well. People request it...

How does one now display the orbit of the Pluto-Charon barycenter (without selecting it explicitly) in your fading orbit display??

(dense) Atmospheres & surface colors??

final DXT5nm definition??

Bye Fridger

[Cham]

There seems to have been alot of fixes and ofcourse Fridger's new fading star labels gone into the CVS.

Sorry for breaking into this thread like this but are we close to pre3 release?

Cheers, Anders

Yes, very close.

--Chris

Chris, I think that a close release is a bad idea for an official version. There are yet too much bugs to be squashed. We need more testings and fixes before that release.

[chris]

There seems to have been alot of fixes and ofcourse Fridger's new fading star labels gone into the CVS.

Sorry for breaking into this thread like this but are we close to pre3 release?

Cheers, Anders

Yes, very close.

--Chris

++++++++++++++
Then please announce the date well beforehand.
++++++++++++++

I would like to release pre3 this weekend and was planning to propose this on the dev list. There have been a huge number of changes and bug fixes since the last prerelease, so a new one would be a great benefit for those who aren't compiling Celestia themselves.

I still have to commit my upgraded galaxy data base and various small fixes. Also I thought I look into fading labels for asteroids and comets as well. People request it...

When do you expect that these changes would be ready? In time for a weekend release, close enough that the release should be postponed, or should they wait for a subsequent prerelease?

How does one now display the orbit of the Pluto-Charon barycenter (without selecting it explicitly) in your fading orbit display??

You currently cannot, though this problem isn't new with the fading orbit display. It was a consequence of redefining Pluto's orbit with respect to the Pluto-Charon barycenter instead of the Sun. We need to figure out the best way to handle this. In one approach, we could--for the purpose of orbit rendering--treat barycenters as having the same class as the largest object orbiting them. I think that the solution can wait until after 1.5.0pre3.

(dense) Atmospheres & surface colors??

In progress, but I'm waiting until a subsequent prerelease. I'm not planning on having atmospheres modify the surface color until post-1.5.0.

final DXT5nm definition??

I thought this matter was resolved. Did we not agree in the thread in the Developer Talk forum that the current code was correct? It adopts the same convention use in the old nvdxt tools, and the author of the new NV texture tools suite said that the break from this convention was unintentional.

--Chris

[Cham]

I would like to release pre3 this weekend and was planning to propose this on the dev list. There have been a huge number of changes and bug fixes since the last prerelease, so a new one would be a great benefit for those who aren't compiling Celestia themselves.

I suggest that you postpone the release a bit (one more week, at the very least). I believe that a release next weekend is a bit premature. We need to make further tests on the beast.

[t00fri]

I still have to commit my upgraded galaxy data base and various small fixes. Also I thought I look into fading labels for asteroids and comets as well. People request it...

When do you expect that these changes would be ready? In time for a weekend release, close enough that the release should be postponed, or should they wait for a subsequent prerelease?

My galaxy upgrade should definitely go into THIS prerelease. People should extensively test the many new galaxy data. I would have long committed the deepsky.dsc upgrade, but I am still trying to understand a

< 2 degree misalignment of the galactic plane

that I get with the (new) IAU definitions of the galactic plane and my sequence of quaternionic rotations relative to Selden's (semi-empirical) graticule!

I was working on this the whole evening and didn't solve the discrepancy yet. Of course I could always return to the previous MilkyWay data. Everything else is ready since a long time.

++++++++++++
So if you set the deadline for pre3 to some time on Sunday, this should be fine. If I manage earlier, I will anounce it, of course.
++++++++++++

final DXT5nm definition??

I thought this matter was resolved. Did we not agree in the thread in the Developer Talk forum that the current code was correct? It adopts the same convention use in the old nvdxt tools, and the author of the new NV texture tools suite said that the break from this convention was unintentional.

--Chris

That means that

Celestia NOW: red -> alpha
green -> green

nvcompress still todate: green -> alpha
but will change to red -> alpha

Old NVIDIA tools: red -> alpha

Right?

Bye Fridger

[tech2000]

There seems to have been alot of fixes and ofcourse Fridger's new fading star labels gone into the CVS.

Sorry for breaking into this thread like this but are we close to pre3 release?

Cheers, Anders

Yes, very close.

--Chris

Thanks Chris, that sounds great.

Bye, Anders

[chris]

I still have to commit my upgraded galaxy data base and various small fixes. Also I thought I look into fading labels for asteroids and comets as well. People request it...

When do you expect that these changes would be ready? In time for a weekend release, close enough that the release should be postponed, or should they wait for a subsequent prerelease?

My galaxy upgrade should definitely go into THIS prerelease. People should extensively test the many new galaxy data. I would have long committed the deepsky.dsc upgrade, but I am still trying to understand a

< 2 degree misalignment of the galactic plane

that I get with the (new) IAU definitions of the galactic plane and my sequence of quaternionic rotations relative to Selden's (semi-empirical) graticule!

I was working on this the whole evening and didn't solve the discrepancy yet. Of course I could always return to the previous MilkyWay data. Everything else is ready since a long time.

++++++++++++
So if you set the deadline for pre3 to some time on Sunday, this should be fine. If I manage earlier, I will anounce it, of course.
++++++++++++

Excellent news. Then we'll definitely wait for it, and I'll spend the next few days working on bug fixes and improving atmospheres (though I will wait until post 1.5.0pre3 before checking in the atmosphere changes.)

final DXT5nm definition??

I thought this matter was resolved. Did we not agree in the thread in the Developer Talk forum that the current code was correct? It adopts the same convention use in the old nvdxt tools, and the author of the new NV texture tools suite said that the break from this convention was unintentional.

That means that

Celestia NOW: red -> alpha
green -> green

nvcompress still todate: green -> alpha
but will change to red -> alpha

Old NVIDIA tools: red -> alpha

Right?

Yes. Though I find it less confusing to think of it as:
x <- alpha,
y <- green.

But, same thing . . .

--Chris

[t00fri]

This weekend is quite suitable, since it is a LONG one over here. Today is a public holiday (father's day ), tomorrow I took off and then Saturday & Sunday.

Bye Fridger

[chris]

There seems to have been alot of fixes and ofcourse Fridger's new fading star labels gone into the CVS.

Sorry for breaking into this thread like this but are we close to pre3 release?

Cheers, Anders

Yes, very close.

--Chris

Chris, I think that a close release is a bad idea for an official version. There are yet too much bugs to be squashed. We need more testings and fixes before that release than the CVS version.

This is a prerelease version: making a compiled version available will allow more people to test it. Also, there was a lot broken in 1.5.0pre2 that has since been fixed. There are probably a few new bugs, but I think it would be difficult to argue that 1.5.0pre2 was a better release.

--Chris

[chris]

Still playing with the orbits, but now it's about the planet's dots; at aprox 7 ua of distance, they disappear abruptly... someone confirm?

I'm not seeing this on my Windows system; I'll have a look on my MacBook.

--Chris

[Cham]

Still playing with the orbits, but now it's about the planet's dots; at aprox 7 ua of distance, they disappear abruptly... someone confirm?

I have the same (except that they disappear at a much larger distance), but I never bothered much, since I always presumed it was the normal way of displaying them. Should the dots fade away in some smooth way ?

[neo albireo]

In 1.5.0pre3, the fading is almost perfect now. However, the orbit of 2003 WT42 still disappears abruptly. I suggest to further increase the distance allowing fading. Maybe it has to do with the very strong elliptic shape of its orbit.

Also, I have not tried a fictional comet at the Oort cloud because somehow all comet addons I had got messed up during the program development of last year. Obviously the orbit parameters are handled differently now, unfortunately I do not have the time to go into it right now. An Oort cloud comet is important for education, so I hope that it works well for it. Maybe the Oort come would be no problem because the orbit does not need to be elliptical.