Celestia Forums

Would just like to say how MUCH I'd like to see Vincent's overlay function
incorporated into the official Celestia releases.

Don't know if you realize it or not, but the image overlays are a fantastic
way to install another dimension into planetary tours and other scripts.

In other words, a scripter can point to a location on Mars and then show
a beautiful panorama shot of the area being described. Here's where
"Opportunity" or "Spirit" is currently located, and Oh by the way, here's
what it is looking at.

Please give some consideration to adding this feature. Would make a
wonderful addition to Celestia's capabilities in my opinion.

Respectfully, Bob

HI All

I Agree with Bob also because Vincent has started a world of possibilities for future enhancements in this direction.

There are other interesting activities evolving in background that should be considered for a future inclusion in the standard distribution, and even more interesting ideas such the new 3D planetary nebula rendering through math functions that should even allow to see the evolution in time of those objects via some kind of blob animation.

What is clear is that the official development is interrupted again.

My fear is that the excessive closure of the development team in conjunction with the very high difficutly of the matter ( from a scientifical point of view) are going to kill any future developent of this application. In fact everything depends upon Chris. The other developers except some cases (like the one for the new galaxy rendering that I've pursued a lot in order to consider and implement the Toti's initial idea), should be considered alomost as GUI maintainers and debuggers. So if Chris is not involved nothing happens. And Chris seems everything else except involved.

Something has to change. Perhaps Celestial Matters is going to move in this direction. I'll stay tuned.

Kind regards

Just one further aside here...

If we don't get these enhancements in an official release, then we're
given a choice of simply doing without, or downloading and installing
a completely separate version of the same program.

Again, just my opinion, but I personally think that Vincent's additions
are worth some effort here. Shall I now create two different
versions of a tour? I know many people don't really care, but do we
need to create one version for Official Celestia and another version
for Vincent's Celestia?

I'm willing. Again with all respect, this is just a suggestion.

Thanks, Bob

Paolo wrote:HI All

...

What is clear is that the official development is interrupted again.
...

Kind regards

Paulo,

no really not, despite the relative quietness in the dev list. Chris is working on several projects: new stars, non-power-of-two textures, bugs-fixes,...

I am working (with ElChristou) on PNG templates for galaxies and other DSO's, a gigantic 64k matched earth texture set, mass rendering of planetary nebulae ...

All these things are a lot of work. Since this forum has become very boring again, I only tend to visit here briefly.

Christophe and Pat are also up for things at times.

Bye Fridger

Paolo wrote:...What is clear is that the official development is interrupted again...

I must add that Dirkpitt has been a bit deconnected recently due to his settlement in Japan, but he has been quite active on the osX side with internationalization, FSSA implementation and so on...

ElChristou wrote:I must add that Dirkpitt has been a bit deconnected recently due to his settlement in Japan, but he has been quite active on the osX side with internationalization, FSSA implementation and so on...

Well that just reinforces the fact that I'm really just a GUI maintainer and debugger...

dirkpitt wrote:Well that just reinforces the fact that I'm really just a GUI maintainer and debugger...

Oops
Then I will ask you for some new real stuff!!