Celestia Forums

Hi,

I'm quite interested in celestia, because it's really nice how accurate this simulation is! In standard-mode everything works fine so far... but:

Now I'm having trouble. I own a ATI 9700 with 128 MB and thought it shouldn't be too hard to get some hi-res textures (8k) into celestia. Unfortunately ATI's now don't accept *.dds files. What can I do, to get these textures loaded? Even if I try, my machine crashes completely and I have to make a reset.

By the way: I tried to load the hi-res textures on my second pc with a nVidia GF2 MX-400 with 32MB RAM. It didn't work at all. A soon as celestia is loaded, it crashes and closes itself.

Maybe someone give some really new advice? I often recognize lots of people who think they all know better and telling diferent things - but nothing worked so far, even after a few hours I tried. The forum gives lots of new ideas, but so far nothing really worked. In celestia I'm noob, but there's really nothing informative in the FAQ for me, except the ATI/nVidia-part. Maybe there is a more detailed FAQ to find somewhere? Or a complete how-to for ATI-cards?

Need help! :o)

Thanks in advance!

:bj:

DDS files only work with Nvidia cards. Sorry.

When Celestia v1.2.5 crashes immediately, that's normally an indication that you're trying to use Microsoft's OpenGL v1.1. You need to upgrade to Nvidia's most recent drivers, which include OpenGL v1.4. They are available at http://www.nvidia.com/content/drivers/drivers.asp

Hi Selden,

that's the point. Is there really no possibility make it run on ATI-cards? What's the difference exactly? Could the tex's be converted or is it a "feature" of celestia itself?

I already do have the latest drivers 41.09 for windows. Might it be, the 64 MB are not enough?

:bj:

selden wrote:DDS files only work with Nvidia cards. Sorry.

DDS files should work with NVIDIA, ATI, or any modern graphics card. DXT1 textures (which is what the DDS files used by Celestia really are) are no NVIDIA-specific. I'm afraid that I'm not sure what's causing the problem.

--Chris

Chris,

Please define "modern."

I have never seen anyone with an ATI card post to the forum that they've been able to use DDS files.

They certainly don't work with the RAGE PRO ULTRA 128 card in my system at work.
(I just get a white globe when I specify a small one for Mars.)

bj,

Have you tried running Celestia v1.2.4?
It seems to be more stable than v1.2.5 in some systems.
You could also use its help menu to verify that the OpenGL 1.4 drivers actually loaded. It's available at http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=21302 down near the bottom of the page.

Chris,

A quibble: my understanding is that many of Fridger's and Don Edwards' DDS files are DXT3 format, containing multiple textures.

I got a Radeon 9000 Pro 128MB with DX9 and Catalyst 3.0 (latest Radeon drivers): DDS textures work well (even 16k-sized), question is I've not Bump Mapping or Shaders support. I think they'll be supported in 1.2.6 release, won't they?

selden wrote:Chris,

Please define "modern."

I have never seen anyone with an ATI card post to the forum that they've been able to use DDS files.

They certainly don't work with the RAGE PRO ULTRA 128 card in my system at work. :(
(I just get a white globe when I specify a small one for Mars.)

I have an ATI Radeon mobility card with 16M RAM with a driver dating nov 2001! I use dds files easily. Even the earth 16k works (slowly but it's OK). Most of my pictures involving Earth in my gallery use 16K dds files.
But I have neither ring shadows nor bumpmaps. I just hope it'll work in 1.2.6.

Well unless one of you is going to give Chris one of those new Radeon cards don't hld your breath. Time and time again he has stated that he can't afford to go buy one so he can't work with what he doesn't have. If I had the cash I would buy one for him just so all the ATI users could see Celestia the way it should be seen. Until Chris has the newer ATI cards in his system there just isn't going to much of a push to get Celestia to work 100% with them. Them is the breaks folks.

Hi,

@chris: I'm sorry, but I have tried to get these *.dds-files again and they didn't work. I tried the 2k as well as the 8k, it's always the same: as soon as the texture is being loaded, system hangs, althought earth is ten thousands of kilometers away.

When I activate bumpmapping on earth it looks snowy, just a white globe with clouds on it I think. But I can handle it without bumpmapping, too, I guess! :o)

Do you want to have my RadeOn 9500 for development-purposes? I sure would lend it to you. How long would it take approx. to get rid of this problem, you think?
-----------------------

@selden: I'm running Celestia 1.2.5 on WinXP, DX9.0, 256MB PC-400, raid 1 80gb, P4 2.4GHz, ATI 9500 Pro 128MB with driver catalyst 7.81, RivaTuner Soft mode RadeOn 9700 8-Tex-Pipe, 12700 3D-Marks. I'll have a try with 1.2.4 now, I'm downloading yet. The Celestia-1.2.5-info shows the following:

Vendor: ATI Technologies Inc.
Renderer: Radeon 9500 Pro x86/SSE2
Version: 1.3.3508 WinXP Release
Max simultaneous textures: 8
Max texture size: 2048

So, is that 1.3.3508 the OpenGL-Version I'm using? It's not 1.4! What can I try next, please?
--------------------

The *.png's work fine. Can somebody give me a link to either one of the 8k or 16k-file don created as a .png-file?

So far...
:bj:

bj,

Hmmm. I was under the impression that I was repeating Chris' party line -- namely that Radeon is supplying OpenGL v1.4 for their new cards.

FWIW, the ATI web site seems to show that they just released Catalyst 3.1 v7.83 for XP for the 9500 cards a couple of days ago on Feb. 10th. See http://www.ati.com/support/drivers/winxp/radeonnowdm-xp.html?cboOS=Windows+XP&cboProducts=RADEON+9500+PRO&eula=&choice=agree&cmdNext=Next

I haven't found any ATI pages that say more than "supports the latest version of OpenGL" which really doesn't help. Sorry.