WMAP... Selden are you holding out on us?

[maxim]

Are there any error messages in Celestia's console log?

No. The only reference there is:

...
Loading deepsky catalog: ./extras/....../h-alpha.dsc
...

Since both versions work perfectly for me, it's hard for me to guess what might be going wrong.

A typical debugging reason would be about:
Wrong texture definition in mesh-file that isn't recognized on developement system because the correct texture is also available there.

One problem for some cards is that V1 contains 4K surface textures. The jpeg expands to about 32MB.

It's only 4k - so no problem here - I use lot's of them. Things slow down for me from 8k upward.

h_alpha is loaded, I see it in the target popup and I can go there - only there is absolutely nothing to see


maxim

[selden]

Maxim,

I have to admit that I don't know what's going wrong for you. If it couldn't load one of the images, there should be an error message in the log.

If you can Select and GoTo the name, that only verifies that the dsc catalog file loaded.

I've now uploaded http://www.lns.cornell.edu/~seb/celestia/h-alpha_v2.zip (350KB, 12Mar04)

It has 1Kx512 images and a new spherical model.

On my system (running Celestia v1.3.2pre6) the log says

Code: Select all

Loading solar system catalog ./extras/minormoons.ssc
Loading deep sky catalog ./extras/Addons/h-alpha_v2/h-alpha_v2.dsc
Loading image from file textures/flare.jpg
Loading image from file textures/logo.png
Loading model ./extras/Addons/h-alpha_v2/models/h-alpha.3ds
Loading image from file ./extras/Addons/h-alpha_v2/textures/medres/h-alpha.dds
Loading image from file textures/medres/gstar.jpg
Loading image from file textures/medres/mars.jpg
Loading image from file textures/medres/marsbump.jpg

(I typed this by hand so there could be some minor typos.)
The model and image should load early, before the sun's gstar image, because they're visible in all directions.

Have you tried the h-alpha Addon by itself?

My tests have been done with the h-alpha addon by itself and with only a few other addons (like the Galactic coordinate sphere). Maybe some other addon is interfering somehow.

[maxim]

I don't get a message like

Loading image from file ./extras/Addons/h-alpha_v2/textures/medres/h-alpha.dds

but I don't get any error message either.

I'll try the new version tomorrow.

maxim

[don]

I've now uploaded http://www.lns.cornell.edu/~seb/celestia/h-alpha_v2.zip (350KB, 12Mar04)

Howdy Selden,

Sorry I've been away.

Just tried your v2 and it works fine on my ATI card with 1.3.2 p6, although it seems a bit lo-res. Hope that tells you something.

[maxim]

'h-alphav2' is working well when used as only addon, but makes ugly square blobs out of other DSOs (both transparent and opaque map cause that effect) when used with all addons :



v1-textures still refuses to work when used as replacement. Don't know why. Your microwave background addon doesn't do those things.

maxim

[selden]

maxim,

What version of Celestia were you running?
The "square blobs" bug was fixed in one of the early v1.3.2 pre-releases.

The square blobs bug is seen as a side effect of the presence of an object in the model which has a fully transparent material. And the transparent object is in the model to give the model a large enough radius to work around a clipping bug I dunno if the clipping bug is fixed in the newest prereleases, but the square blobs bug certainly is.

[selden]

Don,

One of the major differences between v1 and v2 is in fact the size of the surface texture images. v1 has 4K images, v2 has 1K images.

Please try replacing the 1K images by the 4K images to see if v2 stops working. The v1 and v2 models look for exactly the same texture image filenames, so you could just drag them from one medres directory to the other medres directory.

[don]

Please try replacing the 1K images by the 4K images to see if v2 stops working.

Yes, this change makes the gray blobs show up again.

[selden]

sounds like a bug for the tracker!

(although I'm sorry to say I can't duplicate the square blobs effect on my system at work -- FX 5200 w/v53.03 drivers)

[don]

How would you like me to describe this "bug"?

[don]

One last note ... every so often, I can see the red "haze" when Celestia is loading, but then is goes away and becomes the black of space.

[selden]

If I've understood your description, one bug description might be

Some Nebula objects that are all-sky maps cause other Nebula objects to display as square blobs on some systems.

Also include a detailed prescription for repeating the failure. Here's my interpretion of what you've written. Please correct my mistakes.

This bug can be seen on a 128MB ATI 9800 with driver version ??? by following these steps:

1. install http://???.zip into the extras directory
(replace ??? by the exact URL of one of the Nebula object Addons that will display as a blob)

2. install http://www.lns.cornell.edu/~seb/celestia/h-alpha_v2.zip into the extras directory. The extras directory now contains only ??? and h-alpha_v2.

3. run celestia v1.3.2pre6 (or current CVS build) and see the Nebula ??? display normally.

4. put http://www.lns.cornell.edu/~seb/celestia/h-alpha_v1.zip into a directory outside the Celestia tree. Do not extract its files.

5. drag /h-alpha_v1/textures/medres/h-alpha.dds out of the zip file into Celestia/extras/h-alpha_v2/textures/medres/ replacing the 1K v2 image by the 4K v1 image.

6. run Celestia v1.2.3pre6 and see the Nebula ??? display as a grey blob.

Of course, check to make sure this prescription actually does fail!

[don]

One problem for some cards is that V1 contains 4K surface textures.

Ahhhh, just caught this on a re-read. My 128 MB ATI card only does 2048 textures.

[maxim]

What version of Celestia were you running?

1.3.1 - this explains the situation. But my cards says it displays textures until 4096.

I will try 2k maps tomorrow.

maxim

[maxim]

Ok, setting textures to 2k works fine for me.
Strange - I always thought my card could handle 4k textures.

maxim