Celestia Forums

I found this new project named Cosmonium.

The application uses YAML file to create the various bodies, but it can also read data from a Celestia installation or load Celestia Addons (SSC, STC, DSC, with some limitations). It can also execute simple CEL scripts (CELx is not yet supported).

https://discourse.panda3d.org/t/cosmonium-a-3d-astronomy-and-space-exploration-program/24764



It also has procedural planet generation:

https://discourse.panda3d.org/uploads/default/original/2X/e/e5231cf7561e0be48872503b6b10ac367ad5e676.jpeg

AND it is open source! What are we waiting for?

We should merge the two projects in some way!

What do you think?

john71 wrote:It also has procedural planet generation:

thats a must

This is not possible.

onetwothree wrote:This is not possible.

Because of coding (technical) problems?

This is not a celestia.Sci "my precious code" situation, so in theory you can use their code...

I'm not sure, the two projects use vastly different programming languages (one is mainly C++ and the other is Phyton+Panda3D), so compatibility issues will arise all over the place.

Gurren Lagann wrote:so compatibility issues will arise all over the place.

As I know, you can use C++ with Panda3D.

https://docs.panda3d.org/1.10/python/programming/using-cpp/index

There is a lot of 3D engines. And I suppose one day we'll start using one of them. So this is not a question. If panda3d is good for us we'll use it. But currently its support for Android is experimental and I have not idea if it supports GL2.1.

The main reason why El Dee started Cosmonium is because he sees it differently.

I think it is a shame, that so many talented programmers are kind of wasting their efforts, when in reality the separate projects (Celestia, celestia.Sci, Cosmonium) - in my opinion - are not progressing quickly enough, compared to the early days of Celestia. Is it a lack of cooperation or coordination?

Celestia.sci has the problem of the we never get updates from anyone on it and Celestia's problem is a lack of developers. Celestia would develop faster if there more devs, or for Windows builds devs to build and test those builds natively on Windows.

Anthony_B_Russo10 wrote:Celestia would develop faster if there more devs

I just don't understand the rationality of the development.

1.) We ALL LOVE Celestia, we should be ONE community.

2.) We ALL want to use new features and more scientific options and new eye candies.

3.) We are NOT ACHIEVING ANYTHING by going separate ways. There is no celestia.Sci, there is little progress in Cosmonium, there is no Celestia 1.7 public release, and it is 2021.

Why are we doing this? This is not good for anybody.

john71 wrote:3.) We are NOT ACHIEVING ANYTHING by going separate ways. There is no celestia.Sci, there is little progress in Cosmonium, there is no Celestia 1.7 public release, and it is 2021.

Go ask the Celestia.sci and Cosmonium devs on github and the Celestial Matters forums (if it is back up).

john71 wrote:I just don't understand the rationality of the development.

Then why are you criticizing it if you don't understand them?

john71 wrote:1.) We ALL LOVE Celestia, we should be ONE community.

...we already ARE one community?

john71 wrote:2.) We ALL want to use new features and more scientific options and new eye candies.

insert SE fan boy complains here

john71 wrote:3.) We are NOT ACHIEVING ANYTHING by going separate ways. There is no celestia.Sci, there is little progress in Cosmonium, there is no Celestia 1.7 public release, and it is 2021.

3R-a) That heavily reminds me of Jujua's complains...
3R-b) "There's no celestia.Sci" Yes, I'm the youngling who literally calls Fridger a "refridgerator", but don't you understand that great things usually take the longest to make? Remember what Shigeru Miyamoto said: "A delayed game is eventually good, but a rushed game is always bad."
3R-c) "there is little progress in Cosmonium" Its literally just one developer who is likely learning, why are you expecting so much? Again, refer to Miyamoto above.
3R-d) "there is no Celestia 1.7 public release" Explain the 1.7 betas then. Explain how several dozen people already got the hands to, and use, Celestia 1.7. Explain the several dozen issues reported on GitHub for 1.7 bugs.

john71 wrote:Why are we doing this? This is not good for anybody.

From what I had seen, you are the only one who semi-actively complains about all 3 issues, so its only "not good" for you, apparently.

Oh, and also, do you even plan a release of the Celestia addons of your hi-res solar system VTs here on the forums someday? The Celestia Origin team (Art Blos to be more specific) asked you months ago to send those hi-res VTs, and to this day, I don't see any signs of it on CO.

https://bintray.com/celestia/celestia-builds/snapshots
Celestia 1.7.0's bintray releases.

Gurren Lagann wrote:Then why are you criticizing it if you don't understand them?

Because by talking about the problems we are one step closer to solving them.

I will share my add-ons, if everybody can use them. It is not the case right now, 32 bit Celestia can't handle them and weak PCs can't handle them either.

On the other hand: "A delayed addon is eventually good, but a rushed addon is always bad."

I'm not satisfied with my addons, that's all.

Added after 1 minute 56 seconds:
And they are HUGE, 60GB.

Added after 10 minutes 11 seconds:

Anthony_B_Russo10 wrote:Celestia 1.7.0's bintray releases.

Thanx!

Anthony_B_Russo10 wrote:https://bintray.com/celestia/celestia-builds/snapshots
Celestia 1.7.0's bintray releases.

they are outdated. and bintray will be closed shortly

Gurren Lagann wrote:3R-a) That heavily reminds me of Jujua's complains...

By the way I don't get it. I don't find any messages from Jujua in this thread. So I don't think we should go offtopic.

Let's talk about merging this two projects.

I saw eldee a couple of times hanging around, and I would be very glad to read his point of view...

this remind me of some time ago, when someone posted in another forum asking if there were any celestia dev. he was using Unreal Engine as the render engine for his work. there are many 3D engines to choose from, but we need to better modularize our code to adopt any new engine. Language should not be an issue, most programming languages can be bridged with C.

This is essentially demanding that one of the projects (which one?) gets killed off. I don't see that's necessary, or that the momentum of a new project like Cosmonium should be sapped by tying it into a "legacy" project like Celestia: if Cosmonium has more momentum and development activity associated with it, more power to them. There's no reason that all open source space simulators must be done under one project.

And even if there is "political" will to merge, it's going to take a lot of effort to either port from Python to C++, or from C++ to Python (are you volunteering your time to do this?), and unless the creators of both projects are experienced in developing in both of the languages, you run the risk of essentially locking them out of developing their own applications.

ajtribick wrote:unless the creators of both projects are experienced in developing in both of the languages, you run the risk of essentially locking them out of developing their own applications.

Thank you for sharing this! I honestly had no idea that it can be a problem (I'm not a programmer).

Markerz wrote:but we need to better modularize our code to adopt any new engine.

Is it possible to agree on a "modular standard" or a "modular scheme"? I mean that every project could use the modules of others, which were not developed by the same team. This way the results would be interchangeable.

I mean there would be a "scientific module" (celestia.Sci), a "video module" (Cosmonium), and a "basic module" (Celestia DT).

To be clear, I'm talking about the standardization of Celestia.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standardization

You don't have to share your code, but at least it would be possible.

Hi all, and sorry for the late reply. First of all, allow me to put some context on why I started my app : a few years ago, around the time Celestia was apparently definitively dead, I wanted to learn more about 3D programming and OpenGL. I thought I would just do what almost everyone tries in his life, make a small solar system, watch the sphere orbiting around and move on to something else. But instead I kept working on it, and from a small toy app it grew largely out of my expectations.

When Celestia rose from the ashes, I did ask myself if I should stop developing it or keep going on. That's where I realized that I was no longer aiming at the same goal than Celestia, my interest had slowly moved from hardcore astronomy towards procedural generation, virtual worlds, physically based rendering, etc.. So, even though there is some overlap (we share after all the same universe ), I thought there was sense to continue on my own and focus even more on those topics.

That said, I would gladly discuss how to steer the two projects (and avoid a collision course) and benefit from each other, there has been some nice constructive suggestions in this thread already.

Merging the two projects, as someone mentioned, as it is an almost impossible task: there are huge differences in term of programming languages, architecture, and so on that the effort doing so would actually be similar to creating a third application.

On the other hand, more focused collaborations are, I believe, feasible. One of my ideas, that I think I discussed in the past with someone from this forum, is to provide the procedural generation code as a standalone app. So one could use it to generate virtual textures, meshed objects,... and use them directly in Celestia as add-ons (and perhaps in the future as a plugin for Celestia, as the dependencies would be minimal)

The idea of a common core or libraries used then by several apps targeting different usages is really enticing, and it could indeed be a good way to combine our respective efforts. Though, this will still require some non-negligible amount of discussion, work and the balance of benefit should be carefully evaluated; and if it happens it will take time too.