New Earth Texuture 8k,4k,2k Take Your Pick

[Don. Edwards]

Well I have finished putting all the New Earth textures together. I have broken them down according to size so you will not have to download the whole thing. Only the texture sizes you want. So here we go.
To get the big 8k NewEarth texture in DDS format only.
http://63.224.48.65/~impulse/NewEarth8k.zip
For those who want the 4k version with both DDS and PNG Format the file is bigger believe it or not because there is more in it get it here.
http://63.224.48.65/~impulse/NewEarth4k.zip
And for those who are limited by there video card in one way or another there is the 2k version which you can get here.
http://63.224.48.65/~impulse/NewEarth2k.zip
Well I am ony about 4 days latter than I had planned. I hope everyone enjoys these and if you have any qestions or comments please feel free to post here or PM me. I always answer back.

[Darkmiss]

The best i have seen so far.

Thank you Don

[Calculus]

Very nice indeed Don.
I just have 2 comments:
- the clouds are very cloudy! (though it is nice to have different clouds texture)
- the auroras are still centered on the north/south geographic pole instead of the magnetic ones.
But again, great job!

[Vicware]

For those of us that can afford the overhead, why not a 16k version?

Vic

[bh]

Nice work Don...

Truly outstanding.

Thank you.

[Don. Edwards]

Thanks for the kind words everyone.
I am aware of the aurora issue and I am still working on it. I just used the original I released with the 8k texture. As for the clouds. Actualy the clouds still are not cloudy enough. Earths cloud cover is actualy pretty high. All the cloud maps I have seen have been based on infarred photos of the clouds and because of this warm cloud formation apear gray and get lost in the creation of the cloudmap. I was able to bring some of these lost clouds back into the cloudmap. This gives the clouds a much more realistic apearance. Seriously take a look at the photos of Earth that NASA has up and you can plainly see that Earth's cloud cover is still heavier than what my cloudmap makes it.
As for a 16k version. The origianl texture size was 10k. I would have to increase the texture size and this would loose some quality actualy. Besides I did try to create one this way but my system just doesn't have the horse power to this. I do have a gig of ram but its just PC133 and not the faster DDR variety and my proccesor is just a P3 1.3GHz. When I try to asemble the images together GIMP just crawls and in the end it just crashes out. More RAM might help but I can see putting out more money on this system when a newer motherboard/cpu and memory combo wopuld probably do me a better job. If I can I will try again with the 16k but I am definetly not making any promises and if I do get it made it will be only a DDS file.

[Michael]

I am one of those who are "graphics card challenged". Can't upgrade, already tried!
To everyone, please include info on how to make your textures work.
To Don, I downloaded your 2k textures, how do I make the aurorae, (really cool!!), work??
The other comment I have is that there seems to be a difference in color perception, depending on video card?? I am using an Earth texture- earth fg- which gives me colors similar to Don's pics. Don's Earth colors, in his 2k, to me, are too gray (as mentioned in another post) and the Blue Marble colors are too dark blue. I have also seen mentioned that galaxies look like gray/green "fuzzy blobs"- that's what they are on my system. I never use the galaxies option because of this, they look silly!
I love this program and wish I had the graphics capability to use the textures available, please don't forget about us "graphically challenged"!

[Don. Edwards]

Well Michael,
The auroras are psrt of the night texture. You simle have to turn on the night lights option in the rendering menu. If they don't show up then I would have to point to another weakness of your videocard. as for the NewEarth texture looking gray. The answer I can think of is the gama is set to high and for some reason you card is muting color somewhat when it renders OpenGL. These are things you will probably have to live with till you can afford a better graphics card. Sorry about that.
If you having to much trouble with the 2k texture I could scale it down another notch to say 1k. Your are going to really loose alot of detail but this might help with the color problem. It could be your card is simply runnig out of memory. I will check back to see if you want a smaller texture.

[Guest]

why is the 4k TWICE the size of the 8K file?

[Don. Edwards]

The 4k texture pakage contains multiple version of the texture at 4k. There are .dds formats and .png formats inside and a few .jpgs as well. This is why its larger. So more people with various video cards can use them. The 8k pakage only contains .dds files so its substantially smaller. I hope this answers your question.

[fsgregs]

Hi Michael:

I tend to like the Earth bluer myself. That is why I originally created Earth.fg. However, I have found Don's textures to be a quite reasonable blue, based upon the original texture he started with. The one thing I still change, however, is the atmosphere. Recent shuttle photos show it much bluer than is the default color in Celestia (which tends to give it a purplish tint). Here is an edit to the solarsys.ssc file that creates really nice blue atmosphere:

Atmosphere {
Height 80
Lower [ 0.3 0.70 0.95 ] # recolored to reflect true blues of atmosphere
Upper [ 0.3 0.5 1.00]
Sky [ 0.3 0.60 0.95 ]

}

Enjoy.
Frank G

[Michael]

Thanks for the replies!
Don, I appreciate very much the offer to create a 1k texture, but it is not necessary. I am running your 2k textures now (really like the "cloudy" earth) Just can't use specturals, dds and all the other goodies! As to the aurora- just plain "brain block" on my part, I did not install it correctly! I think earth color is my preference, not necessarily correct!
I am downloading and saving much of what you folks create, I am certain I will use it when upgrade (new computer) becomes possibel.
Thanks again!

[Guest]

I'm sure its nice, but how the hell does one install these textures & addons ?

[billybob884]

very simple:
all picture files (.jpg, .dds, and .png) go into C:\[celestia root]\textures\medres\
all .3ds and .cms files go into C:\[celestia root]\models\
all .ssc files (unless instructed otherwise) go into C:\[celestia root]\extras\
all .dat and .xyz files go into C:\[celestia root]\data\
all .cel files go into C:\[celestia root]\

[Cruachan]

I have downloaded some high resolution bump mapped textures ( earth8k-BM-col-bmp-um.dds and redmars8k-bmp-um-redcorr.dds ) to be applied to the Earth and Mars. They came with no instructions and, being a bit of a novice, I have not yet been able to work out how to use/install them. They come in DDS format, i.e. the files each have a .dds extension. Unfortunately, their creator does not have a contact address on the site.

Placing the extracted files (each 21,846k in size) in the texture folder, either medium or high res, seems to make no difference to Celestia. The program does not see the new textures. I tried changing the file name reference in the solarsys.ssc file, but still no joy. Clearly I am misunderstanding something. Can you help?

I have a P4 2.2 with GeForce4 Ti4400 (30.82 driver set)

Thanks!

Mike

[selden]

Mike,

There are many equivalent ways to make it work, but here's one:
(My example uses Fridger's textures, not Don's)

1) put the "8k" dds (21KB) in the textures/hires directory, "4k" (5.4KB) in medres, "2k" (1.3KB) in lores
2)rename the 3 dds files so that they all have ths same name (e.g. earth.dds)
3) change the earth's entry in solarsys.ssc so its initial lines look like this:

Code: Select all

   #Texture "earth.png"
   Texture "earth.dds"
   NightTexture "earthnight.jpg"
   # SpecularTexture "earthspec2k.jpg"


In other words, put a crosshatch in front of the png texture declaration(commenting it out) and remove the crosshatch from and change slightly the dds declaration. Now Celestia will be looking for the three texture files named earth.dds

4) Then start Celestia and goto Earth.

You should see a significant difference in how the Earth looks. The oceans will be rather more grey, for example. You can use "R" and "shift-R" keyboard commands to switch among the three resolutions.

I hope this helps.

[fsgregs]

Mike:

First, to make things easier, shorten the name of each file (right-click and rename). Call it Earth_hi.dds, or something like it. Place both the Earth and Mars files in the Hires Folder in the Textures folder in Celestia.

Next, open solarsys.ssc with wordpad and go to the section on the Earth. One of the first lines will be:

Texture "earth.png" or one of the other available Earth textures specified. The quotes are important. They must be there.

Change the name of the texture to your dds file, as follows:

Texture "Earth_hi.dds". Again, the quotes must be present. Also, Celestia does not like spaces in file names. It requires continuous letters. If a space is desired, use the _ key.

Make sure there is only one texture statement active. If a second one is present, make sure there is a # in front of it. Celestia will mess up if two texture statements are attempting to call two different textures for the same object. The # symbol blocks the second one from being read.
For example:

Texture "Earth_hi.dds"
# Texture "earth.png"

will work fine.

Do the same thing for Mars.

Launch Celestia and go to the Render Options menu. Make sure such features as Clouds, Atmosphere, Nightlights, Stars as Points, eclipse shadows, comet tails and galaxies are selected. Then, in the same Render menu, make sure that antialiasing, pixel shaders and vector shaders are selected.

Go to Earth by pressing the "3" on the keyboard and pressing "G" (for go) on the keyboard. This is a shortcut way of going there. If your GeForce 4 is working properly, you should see a beautiful earth texture covered in clouds. Your graphics card is one of the best. If this still doesn't work, let us know.

Frank G

[t00fri]

I have downloaded some high resolution bump mapped textures ( earth8k-BM-col-bmp-um.dds and redmars8k-bmp-um-redcorr.dds ) to be applied to the Earth and Mars. They came with no instructions and, being a bit of a novice, I have not yet been able to work out how to use/install them. They come in DDS format, i.e. the files each have a .dds extension. Unfortunately, their creator does not have a contact address on the site.

Placing the extracted files (each 21,846k in size) in the texture folder, either medium or high res, seems to make no difference to Celestia. The program does not see the new textures. I tried changing the file name reference in the solarsys.ssc file, but still no joy. Clearly I am misunderstanding something. Can you help?

I have a P4 2.2 with GeForce4 Ti4400 (30.82 driver set)

Thanks!

Mike

These files are from my TextureFoundry site. Note they do not represent bumpmap files (i.e. files with level info). The above files are standard earth/mars textures that incorporate color corrections (col, redcorr), /static/ bumpmapping (bmp) and unsharp masking. You can see what they look like by pushing the red button to the right of the file listing.


With good reason I left out my email address on the site;-). Given the 31000 visitors/downloaders since August last year, I prefer to see people asking questions here...

Bye Fridger