Celestia 1.7.0 Development Thread

[TheLostProbe]

For those whose videocards support GL >= 3.2, please check these artifacs. Do you observe any galaxy rendering speedup (FPS increase)?

using commit b4dee08 (Qt6) to set a baseline, i tested and here are the results for that:

- intergalactic space with no galaxies or just the Milky Way in the frame: around 30 FPS (varied from 27.5 to 32)
- intergalactic space with lots of galaxies in the frame: 15 FPS at lowest but it stuck around 20 FPS most of the time
- near a galaxy: 25 FPS but it sometimes jumped up to 30 FPS

i tested the new artifacts using both Qt5 and Qt6.

on Qt6 i get this bug:

on Qt5 i get the same thing:

turning the magnitude limit up makes them more opaque:

also, star rendering seems to be affected by this as well
fuzzy points, galaxy rendering off:

fuzzy points, galaxy rendering on:

(skip points because its the same as fuzzy points)

scaled discs, galaxy rendering off:

scaled discs, galaxy rendering on:

the odd bug with the star texture happens on other stars too, but making the window small enough, or doing split screen like in the following screenshots, gets rid of both bugs
fuzzy points:

scaled discs:

[onetwothree]

@Lepestronik
Is it something reproducible with all xyzv or only with Laomedeia and Neptune? How older Celestia version behave?

Added after 6 minutes 4 seconds:
@TheLostProbe
Are you using custom models for the Milky Way?

Could you test with default resources only?

Could you also provide output of Help->OpenGL Info?

And for any bugs please provide cel URLs.

[TheLostProbe]

Are you using custom models for the Milky Way?

only a modified version of the "Tandrixis : Milky Way" addon from the motherlode, it shouldnt interfere with galaxy rendering at all since it is just a nebula model, but yes i can test without it

no Milky Way model, galaxies on:

no Milky Way model, galaxies off:

celURL (only one because both use the same camera positioning):
cel://Follow/Milky Way/2023-02-04T10:24:45.12695Z ... 7&nrf=255&lm=2048&tsrc=0&ver=3

OpenGL info, part 1:

OpenGL info, part 2:

Added after 10 minutes 54 seconds:

also, star rendering seems to be affected by this as well

celURL for these two screenshots:
cel://Follow/Sol/2023-02-04T10:27:23.43537Z?x=AOg ... 7&nrf=255&lm=2048&tsrc=0&ver=3

the odd bug with the star texture happens on other stars too, but making the window small enough, or doing split screen like in the following screenshots, gets rid of both bugs

for some reason im no longer able to recreate this, it just shows the bug regardless of window size or split screen, but here is the celURL anyway:
cel://Follow/Denebola/2023-02-04T10:29:41.54896Z? ... 7&nrf=255&lm=2048&tsrc=0&ver=3

[Lepestronik]

How older Celestia version behave?

If you mean the previous builds for 1.7.0, xyzv worked correctly after your edits made for ArtBlos,

In version 1.6.2.2 text xyzv works correctly:

with all xyzv or only with Laomedeia and Neptune?

I'll try later.

[onetwothree]

@TheLostProbe

please also provide your shaders.log file

Added after 34 minutes 55 seconds:
@Lepestronik, I've found the bad commit 90bd5827ea5c6599e8a0f1a53147725eeeebe44d. It looks like conversion to internal coordinate system is forgotten or applied twice somewhere.

Andrew, could you check?

Added after 15 minutes 57 seconds:
Fix is here - https://github.com/CelestiaProject/Celestia/pull/1538

[TheLostProbe]

please also provide your shaders.log file

shaders.log

(60.59 KiB) Downloaded 630 times

[onetwothree]

It look like this shaders.log was created when galaxy display is disabled

[TheLostProbe]

strange, i will see if i can get one created while galaxies are enabled

[Lepestronik]

Fix is here - https://github.com/CelestiaProject/Celestia/pull/1538

It seems like this fix works, tested on Windows and Linux. Thanks!

[onetwothree]

strange, i will see if i can get one created while galaxies are enabled

Actually I understood the root cause - you don't have required shaders installed. Please put the following files into shaders/ dir:

https://raw.githubusercontent.com/CelestiaProject ... v2/shaders/galaxy150_frag.glsl
https://raw.githubusercontent.com/CelestiaProject ... v2/shaders/galaxy150_geom.glsl
https://raw.githubusercontent.com/CelestiaProject ... v2/shaders/galaxy150_vert.glsl
https://raw.githubusercontent.com/CelestiaProject ... rs-v2/shaders/galaxy_frag.glsl
https://raw.githubusercontent.com/CelestiaProject ... rs-v2/shaders/galaxy_vert.glsl

TODO: add shaders to generated artifacts.

[TheLostProbe]

i suspected it was because of something like this. after installing the shaders it works fine

when looking at just the Milky Way, it hovers around 30-31 FPS, and will sometimes drop down to 29. when near Andromeda, the FPS is anywhere from 30 to 44, depending on angle and distance from the galaxy. Triangulum is similar, but the difference between highs and lows is smaller; 34 FPS min to 42 FPS max.

in intergalactic space, with a lot of galaxies in the frame, it drops down to 16-19 FPS (example: cel://Follow/Milky Way/2023-02-06T02:10:31.19985Z ... 1&nrf=255&lm=2048&tsrc=0&ver=3)

overall im seeing a lot better performance in most cases. there are some pretty big FPS drops sometimes when a new galaxy comes on screen or when you go to visit a different galaxy, though

[onetwothree]

Good to hear.

[onetwothree]

One big project started in 1.7 is making output gamma corrected. To have a proper image we need to refactor shading implementation to be per pixel instead of per primitive (triangle). This significantly increases GPU load, as pixel shaders have much more invocations comparing to vertex shaders.

Please test this build for any artifacts and/or slowdowns (fps drop):

https://github.com/CelestiaProject/Celestia/actions/runs/5321976696

[onetwothree]

Updated build https://github.com/CelestiaProject/Celestia/actions/runs/5354420554