Celestia Forums

Hello Celestians,

I had always assumed that specular textures cannot be handled by my graphics card. Specularity never appears on Celestia's Earth whatever I do. I also noted that my card does not have the "GL_ARB_vertex_program" mentioned in Selden's 'Preliminary User's FAQ' and which apparently permits the use of specular maps.

However, I have been playing around with the Orbiter space flight simulation program, and I have noticed that the planet Earth shows specularity in this program. It then occurred to me that I also observe what I think are specular effects on some spacecraft models in Celestia, e.g. the antenna of the Cassini probe.

All of this suggests that my card is capable of showing specular highlights. So is there anything obvious that I'm doing wrong? Or does Celestia simply have limitations that Orbiter doesn't have?

I would be grateful for any advice.

Details: My card is an ATI Radeon 7000, and I'm using Windows XP.

Orbiter uses Microsoft's proprietary DirectX graphics routines that are available only under Windows. Celestia uses cross-platform OpenGL graphics routines that are available under all operating systems. Both sets of routines are implemented in the graphics hardware and in the software drivers provided by the graphics card manufacturer. If the manufacturer didn't bother to provide the functionality in OpenGL, then Celestia can't use it.

Sorry.

I suspected it would be something like that. Thanks for the info...