Celestia Forums

I apologize if this has been brought up before, I'm new to the group...

First, wow. Celestia is astonishingly cool...

I would find it very cool if there was a way to select a visualization toggle based on proximity. Something like 'only show objects within 100 lightyears' or something similar. Among other things, it'd make hunting for specific stars a bit easier, and would also be a cool way to visualize local space.

Another thing that might be neat is an 'oscillation.' That is, have the camera point wobble over a distance. The advantage, again, is visualizing where stars are. Those stars wobbling a lot in your field of view are, clearly, closer than those that don't.

Thanks.

You can wobble stars yourself by pressing the right mouse button and moving the mouse...

Celestia already includes a "show stars closer than X light years".

Just open the menu Render/ View Options and move the
"Filter Stars" Distance slider back and forth. Or type in the specific value you want.

It only works for Stars, though, not for Deep Space objects like Nebulae and galaxies.

p.s.
I am rashly assuming you're using the Windows version of Celestia. The user interface is somewhat different for the MacOS X and Linux versions.

Alas, MacOSX.

Only option I have that's close is 'show more/less stars,' and that's based on magnitude.

I guess I'll hope that's a function that is planned to be migrated into OSX version at some point.

The problem with that wobble, Buzz, is that you are moving very small distance. You need to wobble a good few lightyears to see any parallax (effectively)

I often wobble (Mac OS X too) back and forth a lot by keeping an object selected and centered, and than drag the mouse up and down while keeping cmnd pressed down.

Well, there's always VirtualPC for the Mac. It's only about *choke* $200 US including XP. I dunno if it includes support for 3D graphics hardware.

If you first zoom out a few light years, you will see the stars recede and the effect of a small wobble will be visible! (with cmd-click on Mac... )