Some notes concerning the Celestia Motherlode

[cartrite]

Years ago, we went around on the forum about the "true" color of Mars, and this texture was rated highly as perhaps the most accurate color. It is the one I use personally and in the educational activities. Now, I just learned that a forum member requested of Bob that it be deleted. Fortunately, it has not yet been discarded.

If you are referring to me here, it is not true. I answered this in the 3dmars thread too. Relax. To my knowledge, no one has asked Bob to delete this texture. I'm sorry I even brought this up. I wanted to see if a larger texture would look right on the model I uploaded to the motherlode and I chose that one. There is nothing wrong with that texture. I like it myself. That is why I downloaded it. I think the model I uploaded to the motherlode is obsolete. I have a better one available at my site. After 1.5 is officially released, I may look into uploading the newer one. That is why the post that upset you was in that thread. I was trying to see if it was worth keeping the 3dmars "MODEL" at the motherlode.

After more than a year of being sober, I think it may be time for a beer or two or three. Aw Hell. How about the whole case.
cartrite

[buggs_moran]

After more than a year of being sober, I think it may be time for a beer or two or three. Aw Hell. How about the whole case.
cartrite

Bloody hell, a whole year?!? I found that as I got older, moderation worked just swimmingly... One or two a week staves off the old demons.

[BobHegwood]

Anyway, very good thoughts, Bob. And I hope I'm being helpful as well!!

...John...

Indeed you are my friend, and I really appreciate your comments.
Have printed them out for reference while I'm working here. Please
keep in mind though, that I only function in a very small role at the
ML right now. I simply do not have the ability to do everything you
suggested.

Thanks again for your thoughts, Bob

[BobHegwood]

I have been a Celestia user and contributor for five years, and I for one am concerned about the editing that is arbitrarily going on in the motherlode.

First of all Frank, there is nothing "arbitrary" about what I'm
doing. Before I delete anything, I contact the author of the
offending add-on, I ask Ulrich for his opinion, and I am testing
each and EVERY add-on available on the Motherlode. If it works
fine, but has inaccuracies, then I explain these in the details of
the add-on. If it doesn't work on 1.5 Pre5 or 1.4.1 then it gets
deleted simply because it doesn't work.

I also research each add-on by going to the source so to speak.
I have had conversations with people at NASA, JPL, Keck, etc...

So, what the hell do you want from me?

Another example is the Voyager spacecraft add-on. There is only one on ML, the one done by Jack Higgins. It is a lower-res model that may or may not be ideally accurate, but it is available to everyone and it runs fine on all systems. It is not the same detail as the one done by ElChristou, but that add-on is NOT on the motherlode. To find it, a Celestia user would have to be a forum member and just happen to locate the link to the CelestiaMatters website.

The only reason it ain't there is because it hasn't been uploaded
to the ML as far as I know. As I mentioned in another post
though, there ARE links from the ML to CM. Go take a look at the
details for any of ElChristou's or Runar's add-ons.

Please tread lightly here in what we delete or not from ML. I agree with Urlich that this should not be an arbitrary effort undertaken by Bob and a few folks who send him emails. Rather, I would support a panel of forum members to examine the ML add-ons one by one, and either identify them as (1) the most accurate, or (2) move some add-ons to a different folder. Deleting an add-on that someone worked hard on should be done very infrequently or not at all.

I for one have time and would be happy to serve on such a panel. I suggest at least 10 folks.

That would suit me just fine. Then YOU can start catching all the
hell associated with trying to improve something through a
strictly volunteer effort.

[t00fri]

I have been a Celestia user and contributor for five years, and I for one am concerned about the editing that is arbitrarily going on in the motherlode. I agree with several comments that we should be very careful on how, and by whom, the ML is "purged" of what some folks (but maybe not all folks) consider an "inaccurate" model or texture.

In principle, I am quite in agreement with what you write.

But in view of all these arguments, the real problem is the lousy documentation standards that are accepted at the ML. If the maintainers would insist after reviewing the quality of any submission that modifications of color and texture details relative to the originals MUST be scrupulously documented there would be no problem. Why should one author of a Mars texture be just allowed to make Mars much redder than somebody else, without thorough justification? What's the measure here/ The author's gut feeling perhaps? Is that what the non-scientists dream about? That we take people's gut feelings for colors as a reference?

If someone would submit such modified, "gut-feeling" textures at CelestialMatters, I would want to see the RGB filter characteristics of the instrument used for imaging. If there was nothing but gut-feelings, I would reject the texture. Basta.

In fact, the most accurate textures for our solar system (according to Fridger) are the ones he does himself. Unfortunately, some of his best ones are not made available to any of us as downloads on any website, let alone the ML. He keeps them to himself.

Frank

Could you please become more specific here? Perhaps you simply did not find out where I have published these textures? For instance, I noticed that some superficial Windows downloaders of Celestia never download the Celestia source code, where a lot of my hires Saturn moon textures are published! It's mainly Windows users who rarely look into the source code. Never forget we are doing OpenSource publication in Celestia!

Let me know how often you download the sources before accusing me of retaining images...

Also did you check CelestialMatters, which is our natural publication site?

Last not least, since I have high graphics standards and too little spare time, it may occasionally indeed take quite a long time before I am satisfied to publish a texture. My recent hires rings of Saturn are such an example.

Bye Fridger

[fsgregs]

Bob:

Before I delete anything, I contact the author of the
offending add-on, I ask Ulrich for his opinion, and I am testing
each and EVERY add-on available on the Motherlode. If it works
fine, but has inaccuracies, then I explain these in the details of
the add-on. If it doesn't work on 1.5 Pre5 or 1.4.1 then it gets
deleted simply because it doesn't work.

It seems I may have not had all the facts regarding the editing on the ML. I read some of the posts, including Ulrich's own objections to the editing process, and I assumed that the deletions were being done primarily by you at the request of a few active people who wanted the ML cleaned up. That is what the posts suggested. I did not understand what effort you were taking before you decided to delete an add-on (such as contacting the author first and/or testing the add-on against 1.4.1 and 1.5.0). I am sorry if my reply to what I perceived as an ad-hoc situation was in error or offended you in any way!

The effort you are taking is extensive and for the good of the Celestia community. I know that and I did not post my objections to the process because I thought you were being unreasonable. That said, you stated that if an add-on does not work in 1.5.0, it is deleted. To me, that IS arbitrary. When they were designed, there obviously was no 1.5.0, and to assume they all older add-ons will all work on a beta version of 1.5.0 without some modification would not be fair. There are a lot of great add-ons that might not work, because their ssc or dsc files are obsolete. They should stay on ML until 1.5.0 is officially released, and even then, a comment might be more appropriate stating that they do not yet work on 1.5.0. It would be up to the designer to fix the add-on over a specific period of time.

Let me know how often you download the sources before accusing me of retaining images...

Fridger, this really is unfair! For years, you have been hoarding images of textures. You will publish screenshots of one, forum users will ooh and ahh over them and ask you when you will make the texture available, and you politely refuse. You have created very accurate high-res textures of most of the planets and moons in our solar system, but have not made more than a few of them available to the rest of us since your old TextureFoundry site, which you closed out of anger at some forum members for making these exact same points in 2004!

Frankly, I was unaware that any of your hig-res textures were available as source code. I suspect most of us "Windows" users on the forum are like me. I am not a Linux user and have no idea how to compile anything. I don't have a computer background. I am simply a good high school teacher with a high dedication to Celestia and its use in education, who has dedicated thousands of volunteer man-hours over the last five years to designing activities that showcase Celestia in hundreds, if not thousands of high schools around the world. If your textures are in fact, now available in certain places, that is wonderful news! I have no idea what the web link is to the source code, or how to extract your textures from the site. Would you please post the web address!

As to CelestiaMatters, it is nice to see a total of three of your dozens of textures (3 Saturn moons) now available for download. Thank you for that. I am still trying to understand the process for creating the 64K VT images of Earth you are so proud of showing. I have downloaded and tried to work the FX tools and NMTools, but so far ... have had poor success. I am sure it is my fault ( must just be dense). I'll keep at it!

All in all, my posting offended two good contributors to Celestia and that was of course, not its intention. I simply do not want to see add-ons be deleted from ML unless there are really compelling reasons to do so.

Thanks to Bob and Fridger for all you do!

Frank

[chris]

Actually I think the main problem is not with CML, but rather with Celestia.

The way addons are handled by Celestia is rather crude to say the least... They are no more than bunches of files thrown together in a directory with no meta data whatsoever. Adding to that the fact that addons tend to break from one version to another...

I think we would gain a lot in useability and compatibility by using a deb or rpm like format which would include meta data like:
- name
- version
- date
- author
- license
- description
- manifest
- compatible celestia versions
- screenshots
- depends-on
- provides

It would then be easy for Celestia to warn the user of incompatibilities or missing dependencies. Of course there would still be the possibility for the addon author to provide invalid information, but it would still be better than no information at all.

Now this I agree with completely. A lot of the problems with add-on compatibility would disappear if Celestia required some metadata to be packaged with add-ons, and if installing an add-on wasn't just a simple file copy. I envision that an add-on package might be a zip file containing the package description file (with the metadata listed above) together with a collection of ssc files, models, textures, trajectories and scripts. The zip file would be have some extension such as .celz so that it could be associated with Celestia.

--Chris

[t00fri]

Let me know how often you download the sources before accusing me of retaining images...

Fridger, this really is unfair!

Frank,

nothing is unfair here!

You were accusing me of systematically retaining textures without being informed whatsoever! I am always ready to take criticism from people, but then I DO expect them to be informed about what they claim!

I have no idea what the web link is to the source code, or how to extract your textures from the site.

I do not accept you to make bluntly incorrect accusations of myself using your ignorance as a cover-up (see e.g. quote!)
Of course, you always find the sources for the actual official Celestia version on the Download link of the Celestia Home page(!), next to the various binary version links

http://www.celestiaproject.net/celestia/download.html

I am not an add-on creator, but rather do my textures for the official Celestia distribution which --as you know well-- does not appear too often . So even if you don't know how to access the (CVS) sources, let me quote some respective acknowledgements from the Celestia README file. At least that file you should be aware of.

These are the ackowledgements to my textures in the official BINARY Windows distribution of Celestia 1.4.1 that you have been using since almost 2 years without informing yourself who made them!

Celestia-1.4.1 (Feb, 2006, i.e. almost 2 years ago)
============================================
README file:

• Fridger Schrempp produced the Pluto and Charon textures using maps created by Marc Buie at Lowell Observatory. Buie's maps were generated from photometric data gathered during six years of mutual occultations of Pluto and Charon.
• Titan's cloud texture in natural colors and its surface map at near-infrared wavelength were created by Fridger Schrempp.
• The texture of Iapetus was created by Fridger Schrempp, using all available imaging resources both from the Voyager mission and the recent Cassini fly-bys
• Many cylindrical projections of photographs were performed by Fridger Schrempp with Matthew Arcus 'mmps' software,
• The Phoebe base texture was created by Fridger Schrempp from the cylindrical map recently published by the Cassini imaging team,
• The Tethys texture was created by Fridger Schrempp from recent Cassini imaging,
• The Iapetus texture was created by Fridger Schrempp from recent Cassini imaging,
  http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA07778
  merged with reprojected images from earlier Voyager missions.
• Fridger Schrempp created the Lunar topography map, using Clementine laser altimeter data, merged in the polar regions with topographic data from Clementine 750 nm
  oblique and nadir images,

It was on Chris' request that the hires versions of the many quoted textures of mine had to go to the source distribution. The reason was simply the size of the binary archives.

I would be ashamed after writing such blunder as you did above.

There is another reason why there may be large delays between showing first previews of my work and their final publication in Celestia: I have VERY high standards and sometimes I am simply not content with the textures for a long time (or never).

At CelestialMatters there are detailed background articles about how I produced some of my textures and the tedious reprojection and alignment work that they required...Each high-quality texture takes a very long time to do satisfactorily, while my spare time is unfortunately limited.

With creating and opening our CelestialMatters site we went through a large amount of work to create a special site for publishing our (and other peoples') high-quality texture work among many other actiivities.

...your old TextureFoundry site, which you closed out of anger at some forum members...

My original Texture Foundry is still in operation at it's old place
http://www.celestiaproject.net/~t00fri/texfoundry.php4
hosting lots of my old textures. Since the start of it's operation back in July 26th 2002,

190 399 users have found and used it!

So even here you were badly informed.

For years, you have been hoarding images of textures.

How about a little apology??

Bye Fridger

[BobHegwood]

Bob:

It seems I may have not had all the facts regarding the editing on the ML. I read some of the posts, including Ulrich's own objections to the editing process, and I assumed that the deletions were being done primarily by you at the request of a few active people who wanted the ML cleaned up.

Frank, first let me apologize for my somewhat terse reply, but I
really HAVE been making an effort to help with the ML. That said,
let me explain a thing or two here about deletions at the request
of a few people...

I HAVE deleted a few different add-ons at the request of either
the author, or because of other reasons. If at the request of the
author, then the add-on is deleted immediately. This just HAS to
be done in my opinion though. If the author doesn't wish his/her
add-on to be on the ML, then it simply must be deleted. Period.
As to "other reasons" I'd be happy to discuss this via PM.

The effort you are taking is extensive and for the good of the Celestia community. I know that and I did not post my objections to the process because I thought you were being unreasonable. That said, you stated that if an add-on does not work in 1.5.0, it is deleted. To me, that IS arbitrary.

Perhaps I just didn't explain this process correctly... I test EVERY
add-on on my machine, using both Celestia 1.4.1 and 1.5 Pre?
If it works in either version of Celestia, then it is kept along with
and explanation - if needed - as to which versions it will run on.
Does this meet with approval?

Finally, you can now take part in a peer group process. See the
topic HERE although I must admit that you people are not my
"peers." You are all obviously more educated and more involved
with the scientific aspects of my hobby.

At any rate, we're trying to improve the thing, and from the
posts I've received lately, I think it's having some positive effect.

Take care, my friend, and just tell me to piss off if I get irritated.
This is my normal state though.

Thanks, Brain-Dead

[fsgregs]

Fridger:

I already did apologize in the prior post for upsetting you. However, it is of no use to argue in this post. That is not its intention.

I apologize for being uninformed. I tried my old link to TextureFoundry and it did not work. Nor do I find it anywhere on your website, or in any posts you've made in the last year. I note, however, that you have not posted a texture to it since 2003. You've done a lot of beautiful textures since then. However, that is of course, your choice.

I noticed that some superficial Windows downloaders of Celestia never download the Celestia source code, where a lot of my hires Saturn moon textures are published

I downloaded, uncompressed and examined the source code for Celestiav 1.4.1 from the link you gave me. There are no high-res textures in the Textures file, or anywhere else that I can find. Does one need Linux to see them?

As to whether you have released all of your many high-res textures for public distribution ... frankly ... it is not worth any more argument or effort on either of our parts. If you feel you have released all of them to us and not hoarded any ... than I stand corrected!

Thanks for posting whatever textures you have posted for us to use.
Regards

Frank

[t00fri]

Fridger:

I already did apologize in the prior post for upsetting you. However, it is of no use to argue in this post. That is not its intention.

I apologize for being uninformed. I tried my old link to TextureFoundry and it did not work. Nor do I find it anywhere on your website, or in any posts you've made in the last year.

Unlike you, 190 418 users found & used my TexFoundry until today. Since you were not aware of the Celestia Source code link on the Celestia home page, I see that you also had never looked at the "Related Sites" link on the same Celestia Home page.

http://www.celestiaproject.net/celestia/sites.html

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Could you please tell me how the Link to the Celestia TexFoundry could be easier to find?
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++
After your long membership in the Celestia community, I am really surprised ...

I note, however, that you have not posted a texture to it since 2003. You've done a lot of beautiful textures since then.

Before ~2005 there was the BIG problem that my line was part of my laboratory network, and therefore, I was not allowed to block it with uploads of large size textures. I have emphasized this awkward point many times in the forum. This was also the reason why I never updated the TextureFoundry with new textures.

Only after 2005 I had my own fast ADSL line and things changed dramatically. That's when I also uploaded the hires textures to the Celestia source distribution in SF.

I have never claimed that I am (still) using the TextureFoundry for publication of my textures. Above, I just noted that you were incorrect by claiming the TF was closed. I told you that I am doing my textures for the Celesltia distribution and more recently, I also use our new CM site for publication and notably as the home site for my F-TexTools and Nmtools. Many of the views I showed in the past were from the results obtained with these tools.

I downloaded, uncompressed and examined the source code for Celestiav 1.4.1 from the link you gave me. There are no high-res textures in the Textures file, or anywhere else that I can find. Does one need Linux to see them?

As was discussed elsewhere in the forum, Chris forgot to include my hires textures from the CVS sources in his final 1.4.1 source archive, unfortunately. But these textures were in the SourceForce CVS archive since 2 years. Have a look...
http://celestia.cvs.sourceforge.net/cel ... res/hires/
You may simply download them from there.

They will be included for sure in the 1.5.0 sources.

If you feel you have released all of them to us and not hoarded any ... than I stand corrected!

Certainly not all, since I was surely not content with the final
quality of ALL textures I made. But you rather claimed that I was retaining textures /systematically/ . That's quite a significant difference!

But anyhow the official Celestia distribution contains 7 of my textures which is not that bad. Moreover there are quite a few links also in the forum.

Bye Fridger

[fsgregs]

You have done very high quality textures of Mars, Jupiter and Saturn, and many of their moons which you've bragged about on various posts on the forum. Since you are using them, I presume you are comfortable with their accuracy. Other than the few moons of Saturn posted in the Celestia links and some textures pre-dating 2003 on the Foundry, I am unaware of any link to a public posting of them.

Unlike you, 190 418 users found & used my TexFoundry until today

Given that rude and insulting tone, my participation in this thread is at an end!

Frank

[t00fri]

You have done very high quality textures
of Mars, Jupiter and Saturn, and many of their moons which
you've bragged about on various posts on the forum.

So you still don't want to believe what I write.

OK, here we go in more detail...

A) SATURN:
===========
Here is the 2005 download link to my "blue hat" Saturn
that quite a few well-informed people use since long. Runar
used it as kind of a base texture for his great hires Saturn
texture.

http://www.celestiaproject.net/forum/viewtopic ... aturn+blue

It is the texture I used in this recent post you may have seen
as well:
http://www.celestiaproject.net/forum/viewtopic ... blue#81803


+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
So? Did I retain that Saturn texture from publication?
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
I have never done another Saturn texture.

B) Jupiter:
========
Here is my 2k Jupiter texture that you can download since
2002 (!) from the Texture Foundry

There are also some nice rotating jupiter clouds at the TF.


(Cassini truecolor shot at the bottom)



I have NEVER done another Jupiter texture. So?

C) Mars
========
Here are the recent 32k results using my F-TexTools
Click for a larger image (1024x1024):

Click for a larger image (1024x1024):


These great VT textures you can easily make yourself with
my F-TexTools from Mario's@Space-Graphics.com 32k
original.

Virtually all MARS shots I ever showed in the forum were
based on Mario's great 32k input texture. Since we are
friends and collaborated extensively, he sent that texture to
me free of charge. But I cannot publish it, obviously. Can you
understand this?

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
In summary: These are my textures I did for Saturn,
Jupiter and Mars. ALL are published and|or easily
available for EVERYONE.

So?
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Unlike you, 190 418 users found & used my TexFoundry until today

Given that rude and insulting tone, my participation in this thread is at an end!

Frank

That's not insulting, since it's a FACT! 190 418 users got this
link from the Celestia Home page where it belongs... It's not
my fault that you never had a look there.

Bye Fridger

[John Van Vliet]

to change the subject a bit
bob said " Thus our current problem... We have people upset by the fact that
their add-ons are being deleted, "

trust me i am not upset . There were and still are some just taking up space . Also my old ones were maps only and not " just drop in / unzip to Celestia home dir. " , and have been in need of correcting for some time .

This is a good chance to fix old mistakes

[BobHegwood]

to change the subject a bit
bob said " Thus our current problem... We have people upset by the fact that
their add-ons are being deleted, "

trust me i am not upset . There were and still are some just taking up space . Also my old ones were maps only and not " just drop in / unzip to Celestia home dir. " , and have been in need of correcting for some time .

This is a good chance to fix old mistakes

That's a great attitude, and reply here, John. Many thanks for
understanding and the explanation. Have a great holiday my friend.

Merry Christmas, Bob

[Andy74]

I am still trying to understand the process for creating the 64K VT images of Earth you are so proud of showing. I have downloaded and tried to work the FX tools and NMTools, but so far ... have had poor success. I am sure it is my fault ( must just be dense). I'll keep at it!

Dear Frank,

if you have problems with the use of Fridger's tools I think these can be solved quite easily. Maybe you want to describe the problems in the respective forum at CelestialMatters. I'm sure you'll get help.
Your computer knowledge is most probably not less than mine, and I succeeded in the end. Maybe even I could help you.

Bye
Andy