Celestia Forums

tech2000 asked to see a development roadmap for Celestia. This is the contents of my Celestia todo list, with tasks roughly prioritized highest first.



Feel free to comment and make suggestions. I will probably put this on the Celestia Wiki so that updates are visible to everyone.

--Chris

Thank you very much for that.. please make it a sticky.

And I would like to suggest this:

1. Multithreading support since almost all new processors are quadcore it would be great if Celestia uses abit more of the systems resources.

2. Start looking at x64 bit migration.

Cheers,
Anders

Asked many times years ago........

Better late than never....

Thank you very much.

Yes, Tx Chris!

tech2000 wrote:Thank you very much for that.. please make it a sticky.

And I would like to suggest this:

1. Multithreading support since almost all new processors are quadcore it would be great if Celestia uses abit more of the systems resources.

Multithreaded texture loading will be start.

2. Start looking at x64 bit migration.

I believe that Celestia can already be built 64-bit for Linux and Mac OS X. You're right that I should add a todo item for Windows, as well as a move to using VS2005.

--Chris

Chris, I see for 1.5prev4 newISS and Mir models; are those new models already available? (I'm curious to see the level of optimization of such...)

chris wrote:Feel free to comment and make suggestions. I will probably put this on the Celestia Wiki so that updates are visible to everyone.

Any chance to see a unified UI sooner or later?

What about an improved data format and object model to support add-on management?

I have so many ideas... And now the competence too to help the development... Unfortunately is the time that is lacking...

Paolo,

Vincent's Edu Tools provide a platform independent GUI written in Lua. Maybe an extension to that with more functionality plus a flag telling Celestia not to display its default menus would be a reasonable way to go.

chris wrote:Multithreaded texture loading will be start.

Excellent!

Bye,
Anders

Chris,

this sounds like a very sensible TODO for you...

Here is something we might not want to forget:

http://www.celestiaproject.net/forum/viewtopic ... c&start=15

My TODO list is short and ends around 1.5.0final. Not that I am running out of ideas...to the contrary

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

1.5.0pre3/4/final:
---------------------

1) commit & further test my vastly upgraded galaxy database including the complete local group of galaxies.

Here is the impressive log. Note the large number of merged catalogs and good distance data



Before only 60% of the 10000+ galaxies in deepsky.dsc involved good distance measurements.

2) Release my new txtools achieving a completely automatic generation of highest quality monster texture sets (VT's) in cross-platform setting as before

3) Elimination of binary star double from visualbins.stc (Del Equ). Cf. our discussion here:

http://www.celestiaproject.net/forum/viewtopic ... sc&start=0

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++


Here is a no too serious rough time extrapolation until Chris' projected version 2.0



Bye Fridger

t00fri wrote:Here is a no too serious rough time extrapolation until Chris' projected version 2.0

Code: Select all

...
Celestia 2.0.0       =>  2011?


Bye Fridger

Are you kinding? Everybody knows 2012 is the end of the world, only one year to play with Celestia at this level would be a real shame... Please guys, 2.0 in 2009!

ElChristou wrote:

t00fri wrote:Here is a no too serious rough time extrapolation until Chris' projected version 2.0

Code: Select all

...
Celestia 2.0.0       =>  2011?


Bye Fridger

Are you kinding? Everybody knows 2012 is the end of the world, only one year to play with Celestia at this level would be a real shame... Please guys, 2.0 in 2009!

Really? 2012?? Didn't know. Yet, I felt something bad was approaching...

Cheers,
Fridger

What's happened in 2012 ? A big solar eclipse or something astrological ?

selden wrote:Paolo,

Vincent's Edu Tools provide a platform independent GUI written in Lua. Maybe an extension to that with more functionality plus a flag telling Celestia not to display its default menus would be a reasonable way to go.

Oh yes I know, I'm using all the Vincent's Edu tools since the first release and I foud them useful.
But I would like to see much much more. More than the KDE interface that since now is the most advanced one.

Several of the tasks planned by Chris will require at least a minimum of GUI, some dialogs and so on. And IMHO the development of 3-4 different versions of the GUI is not very smart.

Merging to a unique GUI perhaps will shorten the development time and we will be able to enjoy Celestia 2.0 for a couple of years before 2012.

Paolo wrote:

selden wrote:Paolo,

Vincent's Edu Tools provide a platform independent GUI written in Lua. Maybe an extension to that with more functionality plus a flag telling Celestia not to display its default menus would be a reasonable way to go.

Oh yes I know, I'm using all the Vincent's Edu tools since the first release and I foud them useful.
But I would like to see much much more. More than the KDE interface that since now is the most advanced one.

Several of the tasks planned by Chris will require at least a minimum of GUI, some dialogs and so on. And IMHO the development of 3-4 different versions of the GUI is not very smart.

Merging to a unique GUI perhaps will shorten the development time and we will be able to enjoy Celestia 2.0 for a couple of years before 2012.

Hi Paolo.

If you are able to provide a patch like Vincent and if the community like it Chris would probably integrate it into Celestia. There is no reason for him not to do so..

And ofcourse are you right that the same GUI for all platforms really should be used.

Regards,
Anders

tech2000 wrote:

Paolo wrote:

selden wrote:Paolo,

Vincent's Edu Tools provide a platform independent GUI written in Lua. Maybe an extension to that with more functionality plus a flag telling Celestia not to display its default menus would be a reasonable way to go.

Oh yes I know, I'm using all the Vincent's Edu tools since the first release and I foud them useful.
But I would like to see much much more. More than the KDE interface that since now is the most advanced one.

Several of the tasks planned by Chris will require at least a minimum of GUI, some dialogs and so on. And IMHO the development of 3-4 different versions of the GUI is not very smart.

Merging to a unique GUI perhaps will shorten the development time and we will be able to enjoy Celestia 2.0 for a couple of years before 2012.

Hi Paolo.

If you are able to provide a patch like Vincent and if the community like it Chris would probably integrate it into Celestia. There is no reason for him not to do so..

And ofcourse are you right that the same GUI for all platforms really should be used.

Maintaining the four separate GUIs has become a real obstacle. It's prevented new UI features from being introduced because it's so difficult. Qt seems like the best one to use, and that toolkit also provides a lot of other useful functionality.

A Lua based approach like Vincent's Edu tools is another possibility. They have the advantage of working even when Celestia is running in full-screen mode.

--Chris

chris wrote:Maintaining the four separate GUIs has become a real obstacle. It's prevented new UI features from being introduced because it's so difficult. Qt seems like the best one to use, and that toolkit also provides a lot of other useful functionality.

A Lua based approach like Vincent's Edu tools is another possibility. They have the advantage of working even when Celestia is running in full-screen mode.

--Chris

Okay, that sounds great, but in that case I think Vincent's lua edu tools should be better integrated into Celestia, that would also make it very easy to translate Celestia's GUI.

Chao,
Anders

chris wrote:...A Lua based approach like Vincent's Edu tools is another possibility. They have the advantage of working even when Celestia is running in full-screen mode...

Yep, I find Vincent's UI quite promising; I wonder about the possibility to remove completly the hard coded UI and release Celestia with a simple Lua UI similar to the actual one, then some specialized UI(s), for education, DSO survey or else...

ElChristou wrote:

chris wrote:...A Lua based approach like Vincent's Edu tools is another possibility. They have the advantage of working even when Celestia is running in full-screen mode...

Yep, I find Vincent's UI quite promising; I wonder about the possibility to remove completly the hard coded UI and release Celestia with a simple Lua UI similar to the actual one, then some specialized UI(s), for education, DSO survey or else...

ElChristou,
I agree with you on that.

And I have a small request for Vincent: why not change the naming of the direcory that contains the language files to this ISO standard (I can't remember which ISO number ) sv_SE, en_US and es_ES...

Cheers,
Anders

I doubt that Lua can handle all the forthcoming GUI tasks that eventually need to be incorporated.

E.g. we do need to integrate a graphical data-set manager such that one may select, load and unload more specialized catalogs of DSO's , radio sources,...whatever /on the fly/. Same for managing specialized textures! Moreover, we urgently need (to integrate) a further browser for binary/multiple stars with complete orbits. Same for stars with exoplanets.

Then there are the existing GUI browsers that we don't want to miss. Then there is the bookmark facility, including a special toolbar, which the Linux guys are tremendously enjoying since a long time etc.

Personally, I find vincent's overlay way too crowded already NOW, since proper widgets are missing in Lua.

Already more than 5 years ago, I was advocating the Qt toolkit (I still got that mail ).

Chris dismissed it at the time, with the (sensible) argument that it was "early times" for the free Qt version. It's future was admittedly uncertain at that time. This is all different 5 years later...

Bye Fridger