Celestia Forums

Hey guys... I had a question I wanted to pose....

As you all know, Celestia weighs in at about 20-30 megs. It includes medium res textures and a few spacecraft but nothing too big.

As you also all know, several people have created higher res versions of various of the spacecraft that comes with Celestia.... there is a higher res ISS, a higher res Cassini and others.

I thought it might be useful if all of the people who have created higher res models of some of the stuff ALREADY included in the basic package released a combined "Celestia Spacecraft Hi-Res Expansion Pack". I've picked spacecraft because there are usually only one choice for each spacecraft (whereas a similiar scheme wouldn't really work well for textures because too many would have to be excluded).

I can host it if such a thing were to come to pass...

Thoughts?

It is long overdue to create a higher resolution texture pack for Celestia.

Sorry for repeating myself with this allegory:

Celestia is like an expensive Hi-Fi set: Even the best electronics (<=>Celestia's engine) is not worth much if the loudspeakers (<=>textures) are mediocre and if the media for playing (star data, binary orbit data, galaxies , clusters, nebulae, asteroids...!) are lacking!

On the practical side this is a most challenging task! In the default distribution the average textures are only 1k x 0.5k in size! So one might typically talk about an average 4k x 2k resolution pack, for example.

This would be a lot of work however. It needs some people who really can judge texture quality and truth of rendering. It implies that we deal with additional Copyrights and all that...

If you count the number of textures Celestia uses, it's easy to guess what a huge amount of work and coordination this would be.

Bye Fridger

Don't worry about the repetition. It is the highest form of flattery. Actually, I made that up. So never mind...

Back to the topic... yes, I hear ya on the copyright and judgement issues. Combined with the number of bodies and types of textures (normal, specular, etc), it seems a Herculean task - and one that would take a LONG time to accomplish.

However, that is why I thought we could start with just the spacecraft....

Hubble, Gemini, Friendship, ISS, Galileo, Cassini, Mir... maybe a few others not included in the main distribution... or maybe just those seven ALREADY included in the main distro to keep it simple.

It seems it could be as easy as:

1) The 5 or so artists involved agreeing to be involved
2) Someone being declared the Main Architect
3) The artists communicating with the Architect to make sure the Architect has the latest models
4) The Archtect compiling all of the models into one ZIP file and hosting it

Yeah, it would be cool to have something for textures as well, but this could be a start. As Dad said... "Baby steps, Ellie..."

(first prize for whoever can name the movie!)

Artists... you listening?

Steven, I plan to redo most important crafts, but this will take a loooonngg time unfortunatly as I don't have lot of free time, specialy for the 2/3 months to come...

The default package is becoming too huge for my taste, and I'm wondering if we should not release it without any models at all and create official expansion packs (asteroids/spacecraft/galaxies templates /etc...) downloadable directly from the official Celestia site...

Too big? I got a better idea than a model-less package... how about we lobby the Paraguain govermentment to provide broadband for all!

Or at least for you... it pains me to think of such a graphical-oriented contributor held back by dial-up...

BlindedByTheLight wrote:Too big? I got a better idea than a model-less package... how about we lobby the Paraguain govermentment to provide broadband for all!

Or at least for you... it pains me to think of such a graphical-oriented contributor held back by dial-up...

... Well this is not really the problem... I think it would be better to increase catalogues (star/galaxies/nebulaes etc...)in the default package, and create several official packs (LowRes/HighRes) to match your idea...

Also the cool point is to release a "free from human polution" universe...

ElChristou wrote:I think it would be better to increase catalogues (star/galaxies/nebulaes etc...)in the default package, and create several official packs (LowRes/HighRes) to match your idea...

Also the cool point is to release a "free from human polution" universe...

Yes, I agree completely. That is what I'm saying... release an Expansion Pack for the spacecraft... (glad to make you laugh BTW)