VT: Present and Future

[Raul.]

First, i'd like to congratulate Chris and all of you who helped for v1.3.1, amazing stuff.

Onto business: although i first tried VirtualTextures a month ago it wasn't until this last weekend that i really got into it. I wanted to download the highest resolution VT and see how my video card (GF4 Ti4200) could handle them. Boy, what a nightmare. I reckon i've been out of the loop for some time (so forgive and ignore this message if this has been discussed before) but i couldn't imagine getting VT running would be this hard. First you have to find where to download the VT from (after spending some time searching the forum you'll eventually figure it out), then you have to actually download them (at sloooow speeds unless it's the BM VT at NASA) and finally you'll most likely have to end up messing with the .ctx and .ssc files. I'm fine with that (it was kinda fun actually) but forgive if i dare to say there's no way a newbie (average user) can get this thing running.

I think we should discuss this topic and try to make life easier for those who want to enjoy gorgeous textures but lack some tech. abilities. My point is: wouldn't be great if we could make very high res VT available as ZIP files that you just extract to extras and display as Alternate Surfaces (nice feature, BTW)?. I know, i know, you'll say there're such ZIP files here and there (and i really appreciate the effort some of you have put into it) but wouldn't be great if there were some kind of central VT repository so you wouldn't have to dig N diff sites?.

t00fri did a great job with the Celestia Texture Foundy but this VT madness is relegating it and it's a shame. I guess bandwidth issues prevent t00fri from uploading VT to the TF, right? But people, we've got to come up with something. It would be great if you could find very high rez VT for as much planets as possible on the Texture Foundry, even if the download URL are not hosted on shatters.net (in fact, they shouldn't be). Maybe via?: elinks (i wouldn't mind sharing the files), bit torrent, dedicated hosting (hard to find free), you name it. Or what if we ask NASA or ESA for some bandwidth? (afterall they're using Celestia for their PR stuff ).

I guess you get the picture, i just wanted to express my opinion on this. I think is good for Celestia if we could shed some light upon this VT madness. We are so involved that we tend to lose perspective sometimes.

Hold your fire!

[selden]

I agree that it'd be nice if the VTs could be better packaged. The real problem is that a complete VT set is gigantic. Each VT designer has come up with a different packaging scheme, attempting to make them less painful to download.

FWIW, more than just the BlueMarble VTs are on the NASA site, but they're somewhat disorganized. I suspect Alan's priorities are elsewhere.

It may be that if someone has the time and disk space available to organize all of the VTs "properly" and then make them available, Alan might be willing to put those reorganized archives on the NASA site. Of course, whoever wants to do that should contact Alan first to find out if it's possible.

Unfortunately, I cannot provide either the time or the Web space to help

[Paul L]

I just went through the same thing (having just come back to Celestia after a few months off) - but understand fully that freeware like this is very much an 'at your own risk' deal - so don't for a minute hold anyone responsible for hand holding me through the process. For that, we have this excellent set of forums.

However, I would like to suggest that anyone submitting new work (either via announcement - or URL) can make it easier for all by considering the inclussion of a clear and detailed readme.txt with the package. All to often, and understandably, we assume that even the most simple of procedures is well understood. Of course, thanks to all who already do this.

[Raul.]

Alan might be willing to put those reorganized archives on the NASA site. Of course, whoever wants to do that should contact Alan first to find out if it's possible.

That'd be great. All we'd have to do is "choose" among the VT textures out there which are the best to set as "standard" VT textures. Make some "easy to install" (TM) packages and we'd done.

I just went through the same thing (having just come back to Celestia after a few months off) - but understand fully that freeware like this is very much an 'at your own risk' deal - so don't for a minute hold anyone responsible for hand holding me through the process. For that, we have this excellent set of forums.

Well, that's my point. I don't have a problem at all since i enjoy digging the forums, downloading serveral VT and messing with the config files BUT some people don't have-time/want to spend hours doing this or simply lack the basic tech abilities. I feel we can do a lot to improve current VT status. It's not only about making the VT easier to download/install, it's also about having all the stuff well-organized. VT are way cool, IMHO it's a pivotal improvement in Celestia and seems like it's something you can only get in the black-market when they should in the frontpages, you know what i mean?

[alphap1us]

Hi Everyone,
I think Raul is really on to something here. VTs are somewhat hard to find hard to find and exteremly difficult to host. It's not a problem if you are experience but it is for newbies which I guess I still am. I really think the solution to the problem is hosting on ibiblio.org. They have a really big collection and a big pipe. This way eveyone could get the VT's quickly and there would be a standard place to go for all the big files necessary to really make Celestia scream. You can view their collection policy here I think Celestia would qualify as a loud YES to each of their criteria and they woudl be very happy to help the project along. My only concern is that everything there must be in the public domain, and I am not sure how the texture artists feel about that. Presumably that means someone would be able to use the textures without credting the artist, which is bad manners, but I don't know if it makes any real difference from now. All we need is someone to contact them and manage an ftp site on their server. I've never managed ftp before but it looks trivially easy and I'll give it a shot if enough people respond and tell me they are interested (especially people who have made textures.)
Cheers,
Joe[/url]

[Ross Campbell]

I've just come back to Celestia after a system rebuild and upgraded from 1.2.1 to 1.3.1 -- there's been a lot of changes and updates...

I already had a number of add-ons, and I'm downloading/updating more of them now.

Judging by this thread, I believe Celestia could benefit from a better distribution method for "extra" content, and it would be nice to have a 'lite' version of celestia that is 12 meg or so, and then a MASSIVE version of Celestia that took up multiple CDs and had all of the "good stuff" already there, in place, and configured.

What are the options?

- Someone maintains 'packages' or a package structure for celestia (individuals could manage their own packages, but we need a *CENTRAL* source for current package infor
- build a distribution of Celestia-FULL
- develop or adapt a pacakage manage to allow users to check for new packages to download to update their install
- leverage P2P networks or newsgroups for downloading of large files.

I have this vision that someday, I will be able to run Celestia at 3200X2400 resolution on my massively powerful home system with terabytes of storage, and click on an 'update' button to grab the latest data, tables, graphics, weather data, etc.

Right now, there's a lot of great stuff available and a lot of people have done fantastic work, but the next step really needs to be to make it easier for the new user to get the 400mb or so of "extra" stuff that makes Celestia really interesting...

[Guest]

I've just come back to Celestia after a system rebuild and upgraded from 1.2.1 to 1.3.1 -- there's been a lot of changes and updates...

I already had a number of add-ons, and I'm downloading/updating more of them now.

Right now, there's a lot of great stuff available and a lot of people have done fantastic work, but the next step really needs to be to make it easier for the new user to get the 400mb or so of "extra" stuff that makes Celestia really interesting...

It really funny. I downloaded Celestia for Mac OS X two weeks ago, for the first time. I never heard of Celestia before. Now, I already have 600 MB of addons in my extras folder ! All of them were fully tested and are nicely working on my system.

It was fun (and still fun yet) to search, download and install all the stuff, I dunno why. It's like a game.

[Guest]

As others have noted, start providing ed2k links (which won't point to any specific machine, just a certain file on the p2p network), etc.