Cassini Spice Files

[t00fri]

Chris,

Will we hopefully be adding this code for Cassini to the final 1.5
release?

Final 1.5 release?

The last prerelease 2 is almost exactly 1.5 months old and CVS
has become a quiet place again ...

For my part, I stopped submitting further bug-reports related to
openGL code (-> Chris) some time ago . [ Like the immediate crash of the code once
cloud shadows are switched on for VT's from /large/ 64k textures... Or
the unsatisfactory status of atmospheres & surface colors etc which is
blocking further texture work...]

In the meantime, I finished a set of new C++ texture tools (I named
them txtools) that complement the nmtools for making
the complete set of highest quality MONSTER textures within a
very short time.

I also coded a much enhanced version of my old 'texconvert' tool
based on (the latest version of) the DevIL library. It has lots of fixes
but most importantly a VERY fast and quite encouraging new
DXT5nm compression facility. Here is a preview from my
DevIL-based DXT5nm compressor (here reduced in
resolution by a factor > 2!):



I am also in contact with Simon Brown, the author of the
high-quality cross-platform DXT1,3,5 compressor SQUISH in
C++ that produces even smaller RMS errors than the NVDXT tools
by Doug Rogers/NVIDIA. The only trade-off for this high quality is the
comparatively slow speed.

However, we are presently trying to increase the performance
substantially by exploiting the fact that DXT5nm compression is
effectively a 2D task rather than a 3D one!

Last not least, I coded a set of shell scripts (LINUX, CYGWIN,..) that
completely automatize the WHOLE task of making 64k texture tiles
(including DXT5nm encoding of the normalmap tiles!) with all the
required directories etc! For Windows (without CYGWIN)
one may use the script by Guillermo instead or another
one I am going to prepare as well.

All these new "goodies" will soon be available at CelestialMatters, of
course. Stay tuned...

Sorry for posting this in a thread about "SPICE files". I just had a few minutes to write the post...

Bye Fridger

[Fightspit]

Waouh

[chris]

Chris,

Will we hopefully be adding this code for Cassini to the final 1.5 release?

As volcanopele already pointed out, the actual SPICE kernels are too large for the base release. But, we can still make some improvements to Cassini for 1.5.1. Once SPICE kernels for the extended mission are publicly available, we can use them to produce an xyz trajectory that covers both the primary and extended mission. Some improvements in the accuracy of the orbits for both Saturn and it's moons would also be nice.

--Chris

[buggs_moran]

Holy mackerel that is big... I can see your point Chris. A refined xyz and orbit definitions would be much more practical for the general Celestia release...