Celestia Forums

Can the sounds of planets, moons and other objects be added to Celestia? Is there a download or is it possible to do it yourself?

In space... no one can hear you scream (or narrate or sing). Planets, moons and other objects are generally celestial bodies of few words. They speak softly and carry a big gravity field. Talk to Morgan Freeman. Only He can narrate things in and out of existence. Lol.

TobiSwia11102001 wrote:Can the sounds of planets, moons and other objects be added to Celestia? Is there a download or is it possible to do it yourself?

If you're on Windows, Celestia 1.6.1-ED has sound. At one time there were plans to add sound to Celestia 1.7.0, but I think that's no longer planned.

SevenSpheres wrote:At one time there were plans to add sound to Celestia 1.7.0, but I think that's no longer planned.

If it's no longer planned to be added, why is it still a feature listed on the main website?

I've removed it from the site. Maybe one day we return this feature back.

There's not really much sound when there are no air molecules to carry it in space. Perhaps one day music can play depending on which object you orbit but that would just bloat the memory taken up by Celestia's install.

TheLostProbe wrote:If it's no longer planned to be added, why is it still a feature listed on the main website?

The main website hasn't been updated outside of the news for the 1.6.2.x version release news.

Edit: And I didn't scroll down far enough to see that it was already removed, though the features need to be centered to make it less jaring to look at.

Shadow-Dragon-777 wrote:Perhaps one day music can play depending on which object you orbit but that would just bloat the memory taken up by Celestia's install.

Perhaps Celestia could pull music from YouTube- oh wait no because then Celestia would have the same fate as Rythm

Anthony_B_Russo10 wrote:The main website hasn't been updated outside of the news for the 1.6.2.x version release news.

I'm learning HTML (along with CSS and JS because both are basically mandatory to learn when learning HTML), perhaps when my skills get better I could maintain the Celestia website alongside whoever is already maintaining it?

TheLostProbe wrote:Perhaps Celestia could pull music from YouTube- oh wait no because then Celestia would have the same fate as Rythm

Well, there's always Spotify to listen to. They have no problems in playing their music on Discord anyways. Theoretically that could be applied to Celestia as well, or adapt it with some kind of Web Radio file

TheLostProbe wrote:perhaps when my skills get better I could maintain the Celestia website alongside whoever is already maintaining it?

OneTwoThree is the main site maintainer, I think.

TheLostProbe wrote:I'm learning HTML (along with CSS and JS because both are basically mandatory to learn when learning HTML), perhaps when my skills get better I could maintain the Celestia website alongside whoever is already maintaining it?

any contributions are welcome

Hi.
Being a high school science teacher, I was particularly interested in educational improvements, and many years ago my very kind friend Vincent Giangiulio created a 1.5.1, then a 1.6 and finally a 1.6.1 version of Celestia, incorporating the visibility of the images, and the possibility to play external audio files when desired, using simple cel commands for both.
But now the developers of Celestia 1.7 have decided to remove from the lineup the capability to use sound.
Of course sound is absent in space, so many say it is useless in Celestia.
I disagree and I'll explain why.
Try to imagine a class of students, eg. 18 years old, during an astronomy lesson, where the teacher shows the wonders of the Solar System using a Celestia script .... they can see small and huge objects rotate and move along their orbits, in the total silence of space.
Scientifically fine, obviously, but not very addicting!

Now please try to imagine the same scene with background music such as eg. "Planesr" by Holst, or any other musical theme that you think be right for what we are showing ... do you think the students attention will be the same?
No, they will like what they are watching much more, because music encourages participation, involvement, addiction and immersion in the magical world they are looking at, and helps them to feel emotions that silence cannot give.

Imagine the same scenario with another script, e.g. "The monsters of the sky".
No, I'm not talking about aliens, but all those incredible, wonderful, terrible objects that populate the Universe.
Looking at a pulsar and listening to its sound at real and reduced speed can make the term "pulsar" better understood, just as a dramatic theme will greatly increase the attention on black holes and the explanation of their incredible properties, given by the teacher.
Or during the show "The space conquest", the thrill of listening to the voice of Neil Armstrong who says "...that's a small step for man...".

I have the experience of a lot of lessons given with this system to high school students, lectures in schools with students of 10 and 13 years, and many lectures for adults, and I have ALWAYS seen high interest and participation thanks to the presence of music and sounds, as many students and adults have told me.
I'm sure Frank Gregorio, who is another science teacher and creator of Celestia Educational Activities, could say the same thing, because he too uses a Celestia version with the same features.

So now I'm asking all of you:
why can't Celestia's immense educational skills be enhanced with sound?
And let me say this: so far the didactic use of Celestia is the only really practical and useful one.
Thanks for reading my long post in bad English.

Goofy (AKA ANDREA, Celestia user n.125, April 2002, for those who remember me )

Sound support never was a part of a mainline Celestia. If we add it back we need to make this in cross-platform way so i'd like to use ffmpeg for this. But ffmpeg support is reverted in windows builds due to some issues nobody volunteered to fix. Without windows devs we're unable to make a truly cross-platform desktop application.

So sorry for this... my only hope is that a windows developer may join the team soon...
Crossed fingers!
Bye
ANDREA (AKA Goofy)

fyi, sound support in scripting has been added via miniaudio now.

command description can be found here:

https://celestia.mobi/resources/guide?guide=6F7D2F2A-BD35-924D-D068-2B7E61022445

Hi Markerz, thank you for yur reply.
But is it for Celestia Mobile only, or applies to Celestia 1.7, too?
And, anyway, it's available for CELX scripts only, correct?
If yes, could it be made available for CEL scripts, too, as in 1.6.1?
Thank you once again.

ANDREA (AKA Goofy)

ANDREA wrote:is it for Celestia Mobile only

I wrote "Mobile" in that website because most of celestia.mobi users are on mobile. The audio support is not limited to platforms so if you compile it on Windows with the right options, then the windows build will also have audio support. CEL script is also supported. If you scroll the page down, you'll see...

CEL commands
play { channel [int] volume [float] pan [float] loop [int] filename [str] nopause [int] }
Commands for playing an audio file, please see to celestia:play in CELX commands.

Thanks a lot for the explanation, Markerz, appreciated.
The CEL commands are the same of 1.6.1, but my problem is always the same: till when someone will compile the thing, I cannot use it (Cartrite, where are you?!? )
Bye

ANDREA (AKA Goofy)

ANDREA wrote:till when someone will compile the thing

You don’t need anyone to do it. every time code change is made to celestia, a new build will be compiled automatically, the newest include this ability already, which you can download binaries here, put the extracted dlls and exe in a celestia folder and you are good to go

https://github.com/CelestiaProject/Celestia/actions/runs/2725607374

Thank you Markerz, but I'm a noob and when in that page I opened the
build-windows (x64, x64) link, I found a series of links to code lines, only.
You said I had to "download binaries here, put the extracted...", but I don't see binaries and anyway, if I will find them, I don't know how to extract them...
As I told, I know nothing about all this stuff.
Sorry to bother, but could you upload a .zip/.rar file with the files I (we!) need to add to my 1.7.0 installed release, that Cartrite builded a lot of time ago?
Please!
Thanks a lot, whatever will be your reply.

ANDREA (AKA Goofy)