Celestia Forums

I'm a new Celestia User and have read the Manual and the detailed installation guide. I've had no problems with addons to date but keep getting a send/dont send error when I try to load 3D Mars followed by Celestia closing down.
I suspect I've missed a fundamental step in the setup of 3 D Mars. I know a texture map and a normal map of mars are needed to go with the addon but am not entirely sure how these should be added or pointed to in 3D Mars. If someone who has successfully loaded 3D Mars could step me through the setup process I would be very grateful. Celestia is a superb program by the way and I'm enjoying it very much. My System Specs should be fine for 3D Mars.

Thanks,
Rich

RichM,
I'll need to know some details.
Which operating system do you use. Linux, Windows,etc?
What version of Celestia are you using?
What graphics card do you have, how much ram in the card.
How much ram is on your computer.
Processor?
Which version of 3dmars do you have?
There is 2 versions of 3dmars and both should run right without any alterations. I suspect from the error you mentioned you probably have Windows XP and don't have a graphics card capable of running the model or your computer doen't have the ram. If you downloaded the 3dmars model from my site, try the one on the Celestia motherlode. It's not as detailed but it may all your system can handle.

cartrite

Have you updated your computer's graphics drivers?

Exactly what graphics hardware does your computer have?
What version of graphics drivers are installed?

Cartrite's "3D Mars" Addon on the MotherLode contains a .ssc catalog file which replaces the default spheroid that Celestia uses for Mars by a rather large 16MB 3D model: one with almost 300,000 vertices and 600,000 triangles. It has appropriately shaped bumps at the positions of the 3 major volcanoes and grooves in the surface at the position of Valles Marineris. To take best advantage of the model, a high resolution surface texture should be used, but one isn't required for the Addon to work.

It works fine on my system, so I have to suspect bugs in graphics drivers to be causing the problems you're having.



This thumbnail links to a much larger picture viewing down the length of the Valles.

The version of 3dmars that is on my site has many large textures and normalmaps. It will only run correctly with Celestia version 1.5 pre or higher or a recent cvs version. Celestia version 1.4.1 does not have the enhancements needed to run the model correctly. But I have run it on 1.4.1 without a crash.
cartrite

Gosh that was quick! Thanks for your interest.
Celestia Version is 1.4.1
Computer is Windows XP; 3.2Ghz Dual Core Pentium D; Intel Mainboard with 4 Gig 667Mhz RAM; NVidia 8600 GT Video Card with 512mB RAM on Board. I'm not sure of the graphics card Driver version (I',m writing this from work) but it is quite recent as the card is only a few months old.
The version of 3D Mars is the updated (Latest ) one but I also have the older one. Just haven't tried it yet.
All the Best,
Rich

You have a similar card so this is surprising. It may sound like your graphics driver was loaded from the cd that came with the card? I had to update this from the nvidia site. The driver version I'm using is 6.14.11.5822. Make sure Windows is not using a microsoft driver. Right click on the My Computer and chose manage => device manager => Display adapters to make sure your card is using the nvidia driver.

You really do need Celestia Ver 1.5 if you are using the newer version of the model. Pre3 is available. Here is a link. http://www.celestiaproject.net/forum/viewtopic ... 8140#88140

cartrite

Cartrite,
Thanks for your advice. I appreciate it very much. yes the Driver is the one which came on the CD with the card. I'm Downloading the latest pre release Beta of Celestia 1.5 (via your link) and will install it tonight. I'll try the older version of 3D mars on Celestia 1.4.1
Can the 1.4.1 and the 1.5 Pre 3 versions of celestia Run side by side on the same computer or does this cause registry conflicts?
I'll let you know tomorrow how I go.
Thanks again for your help

Rich

I have many different versions running side by side on my box. You'll need to give it a different name and new folder when running the setup exe. I would name it 1.5 or something. It's been a while since I had to deal with registry issues so I'm not sure if any problems have been found and ways around them. I'm pretty sure that .cel files can only be associated with one version though. The cel files can start the program and take you to a certain place with certain settings by clicking on them in a html or web page.
Good tool to help show a problem your having or bug reporting.

You can have 1 addon folder. You can edit the file celestia.cfg to get one or both versions to point to the same addon folder.
cartrite

cartrite wrote:You can have 1 addon folder.

I have got Celestia to work fine with two addon folders.

You can have as many addon folders as you want. You don't have to have a seperate addon folder for each version that is installed though. You can use the celestia.cfg file to point to whatever or howmany addon folder(s) that you have.
cartrite

selden wrote:Have you updated your computer's graphics drivers?

Exactly what graphics hardware does your computer have?
What version of graphics drivers are installed?

Cartrite's "3D Mars" Addon on the MotherLode contains a .ssc catalog file which replaces the default spheroid that Celestia uses for Mars by a rather large 16MB 3D model: one with almost 300,000 vertices and 600,000 triangles. It has appropriately shaped bumps at the positions of the 3 major volcanoes and grooves in the surface at the position of Valles Marineris. To take best advantage of the model, a high resolution surface texture should be used, but one isn't required for the Addon to work.

It works fine on my system, so I have to suspect bugs in graphics drivers to be causing the problems you're having.



This thumbnail links to a much larger picture viewing down the length of the Valles.

Hey thats really amazing... Good work to all involved...

Installed Celestia 1.5 Beta 3 last night. Model displays OK when I go to Mars2 but textures incorrect. I get a low res (?default ) texture of mars with the 2 high detailed 3D areas overlaying this in flat grey. The 3D areas look superb when you move in close so I'm looking forward to seeing the areas textured.
Could someone advise which are the best Mars textures and normal maps to use, where they should be installed and how the Mars 2 ssc file should be edited to point to them?

All the best
Rich

I get a low res (?default ) texture of mars with the 2 high detailed 3D areas overlaying this in flat grey.

I never created a full planet texture of mars so I never supplied one with the model. I use a normalmap I created myself with Fridgers nmtools, and John van Vliet's Mars texture from the motherlode.
As far as the high detaled ares being gray, I'm not sure why this would happen. The "high detailed areas have there own textures assigned that come with the model. Did you update your card's driver. When you run Celestia, click on the help tab and then click the open glinfo tab. You should see something like this. The way Celestia displays meshes is different from the way normal textures work on normal planets. A mesh only displays textures in the medres folder. Currently, the model looks for a normalmap called norm.png or .jpg or .dds and a mars texture called mars.something. These would need to be in the medres folder.

The "ctrlv" should be pressed until OGL2 is reached. That is the only rendering mode that Celestia displays the model correctly.

I never got any feedback about the name of the planetary normalmap and mistakenly left the name I was building and testing with. I'm going to update the model to look for mars-norm.* and include the instructions that are more informative. If anyone has the model already, you need not download again, just copy your mars normalmap and name it norm.*. Replace the * with the file format the texture is in.

cartrite

I was able to run the 4k version of 3dMars,with average frame rate of 40 fps (not 50 fps,with is without Fraps),but CAN?T run the 8k version.I change the vallis e mons textures for the 8k,but everything remain the same.I have a 8800 GS,so it?s supposable to support 8k models and meshes.
Look how I instaled:
In Extras,I have the folder 3dmars-ver 6.Inside I have textures and then medres.Like this:
Celestia 1.5.0>3dmars-ver6>textures>medres
Inside medres,I substitute the 4k versions of mons.jpg and valles.jpg for the 8k,but IT DIDN?T WORK.I opened Celestia,went to Mars2 and the frame rate was the same.And the level of the detail,the same too.
What did I do wrong?I don?t understand...

danielj wrote:Inside medres,I substitute the 4k versions of mons.jpg and valles.jpg for the 8k,but IT DIDN?T WORK.I opened Celestia,went to Mars2 and the frame rate was the same.And the level of the detail,the same too.
What did I do wrong?I don?t understand...

Why don't you type the shift ~ key to see what is loading. You may have to scroll up by pressing the Page Up key to see output that has scrolled off the screen.

Note. If you are comparing version 6 to version 5 of the model, the version 5 used 4 8k tiles that was equivalent to a 16k texture. I decided against using tiles because it caused seams. The version 6 model uses 1 8k texture for the entire area. This is equivalent to using 4 4k tiles from the version 5 model.
***********************************************************************************
Edit See next post for the comparison between the 4k and 8k textures.
viewtopic.php?p=104213#p104213
cartrite

danielj wrote:Inside medres,I substitute the 4k versions of mons.jpg and valles.jpg for the 8k,but IT DIDN?T WORK.I opened Celestia,went to Mars2 and the frame rate was the same.And the level of the detail,the same too.
What did I do wrong?I don?t understand...

danielj. see also this post viewtopic.php?p=104212#p104212
Here is a shot using the 4k texture.



Here is a screenshot using the 8k texture.



cartrite

It is really loading the 8k version of valles.jpg,but the 4k version of the mons.jpg.Also it says that mars-norm is not recognized or not supported.
The frame rate is between 20-31 fps,with the atmosphere on.

danielj wrote:but the 4k version of the mons.jpg.Also it says that mars-norm is not recognized or not supported.

There is an 8k version of mons.jpg in 8k-textures.zip. I don't supply a normalmap or texture of mars. If you want to use a normalmap of mars you need to download one and name it mars-norm.*. Replace * with whatever format the file is in.
cartrite

In the 3d Mars folder,the texture is mons.jpg 8k.But the program loads the 4096X2048 version.I have bo idea why...

Then you must have another 4k mons.jpg somewhere. You can look at the output on the screen carefully to see where the file is loading from.
cartrite