Celestia Forums

HI

I downloaded every part of this add-on, I unzipped the files in the installation directory, but it doesn't work. On the add-on's page, it is said that the .ssc file needs to be modified. How can I do that ?

You simply need to remove the NormalMap references if you do not
also download and install John's Normal Map VT for Venus.

Use the following:



Save this code as Venus.ssc in your Celestia\extras folder, and
then copy John's textures\hires folders to the same place. I probably
need to place a better explanation on that page... Will get to it.

Thanks, Brain-Dead

Another, easier method would be to simply use the following code:



Again, simply save this code as Venus.ssc in your Celestia\extras
folder, and save the textures\hires folder in the same location.
This way, you can right-click on Venus and then select the High-Res
texture for viewing.

Hope that helps, Bob

Thanks for your help, but I don't know the way to create a file and save a code. What should I do exactly ?

The John Van Vliet pack of Venus is the most complete of all.However,the level 5 alone of the Normal Map have a HUGE size of 1 GB (4X300MB) and this is the size COMPACTED.I think is a great exaggeration two textures of ONE SINGLE body having 3 to 5 GB of size.Is there a way to reduce this size?

danielj wrote:
I think is a great exaggeration two textures of ONE SINGLE body having 3 to 5 GB of size.Is there a way to reduce this size?

Don't forget if you make the textures smaller, you will see MUCH less . And ..., planets are pretty BIG, too.

All planetary VT textures (Earth, Mars, Mercury (Messenger!), Venus,...) as well as the Moon that I am concerned with, are multi GB in size for each texture!

Probably you will soon need a new harddisk

F.

But the BMNG IS 64k and has a smaller size.I can??t afford a bigger HD.I had already bought a HD in the end of last year,but my total size is NOW 320 GB,but about 35% is full.It appears that I will have to choose between detail and disk space...

danielj wrote:But the BMNG IS 64k and has a smaller size.I can??t afford a bigger HD.I had already bought a HD in the end of last year,but my total size is NOW 320 GB,but about 35% is full.It appears that I will have to choose between detail and disk space...

Ok but that's not the point. I just want to know how to edit the Venus.ssc as said above.

sephiroth,

If you haven't already, please take a look at the Web page http://www.lepp.cornell.edu/~seb/celest ... intro.html

It includes some comments about editing under Windows in the notes in section 2.1.

Briefly, however,

If you are using Windows, you can use Notepad or Wordpad to edit the SSC file. It's just plain text.

For example, if you click on the file's icon with your right-mouse-button, you should get a popup menu. Select (click on) Open With...
Select Choose Program...
in the new popup menu, scroll down to and Select Notepad
click in the box Always use Selected Program
click on OK

Notepad should open and display the contents of the SSC catalog file.

If Open With.. is not in the popup menu
select Open
In the new popup menu, select Select from a list
Click on OK
in the new popup menu, scroll down to and Select Notepad
click in the box Always use Selected Program
click on OK

Notepad should open and display the contents of the SSC catalog file.

danielj wrote:But the BMNG IS 64k and has a smaller size.I can??t afford a bigger HD.I had already bought a HD in the end of last year,but my total size is NOW 320 GB,but about 35% is full.It appears that I will have to choose between detail and disk space...

It is NOT correct that BMNG 64K has a smaller size!!
At least using good quality formats!! I think I should know this . Of course, the apparent size depends on the format you use. But e.g. using JPG format with a low quality factor gives you really a much worse display.

Daniel, there is NO free lunch ...

And note: the VT's made with my F-TexTools or the nmtools are by far the smallest size for a given format (JPG, PNG,DDS), since they reduce the resolution in an optimal way near the poles. Moreover, all normalmap VT tiles that correspond to elevation=0 (Oceans!) are reduced to 4x4 bytes ONLY!

F.

I've converted the BMNG to from PNG to JPG. Saved me a lot of space, and didn't alter the detail enough for me to notice. I do the same for all the .png files I get. I have a 40 GB hard drive, and can even then enjoy high-quality VT's of all the inner planets... in addition to my favourite multi-GB games.

Hungry4info wrote:I've converted the BMNG to from PNG to JPG. Saved me a lot of space, and didn't alter the detail enough for me to notice. I do the same for all the .png files I get. I have a 40 GB hard drive, and can even then enjoy high-quality VT's of all the inner planets... in addition to my favourite multi-GB games.

This statement can hardly be used in any quantitative manner, since you did NOT specify for your JPG conversion

a) the quality factor
b) the subsampling quality (1x1, 1x1, 1x1 or e.g. 2x2,1x1,1x1, or...)
c) DCT-method (integer, float?)

Since JPG is NOT a lossless format the quality of JPG conversion can only be judged or compared after the above parameters are given.

You have also not stated what sort of monitor and resolution you are using. The ability to spot bad renderings can strongly depend on it.

I have led lots of quantitative tests of JPG quality vs PNG and DXT formats. Usually it is very well possible to see the difference in quality between a PNG original and a JPG with quality factor < 85 and subsampling = 2x2,1x1,1x1 for example. Of course I assume one uses a LCD or high-resolution analog (1600x1200) monitor.

F.

Fridger, maybe a stupid question

I have VT's for Earth (3.6 GB), Venus (3 GB), Mars (900 MB) and the Moon (270 MB).

Earth is DDS format for surface and normal texture, and PNG for specular texture.
The Moon, Mars and Venus is all PNG format

Can the size be considerably reduced with your software to DDS format (or some other software) without losing quality?

CAP-Team wrote:Fridger, maybe a stupid question

I have VT's for Earth (3.6 GB), Venus (3 GB), Mars (900 MB) and the Moon (270 MB).

Earth is DDS format for surface and normal texture, and PNG for specular texture.
The Moon, Mars and Venus is all PNG format

Can the size be considerably reduced with your software to DDS format (or some other software) without losing quality?

My F-TexTools/nmtools do not contain any code for converting to DXT format. That can be done in any OS by means of the new NVIDIA texture tools using the PNG output from my tools.

http://code.google.com/p/nvidia-texture-tools/

The main advantage of the lossy DXT format is its hardware (GPU) support. So the speed is strongly increased. It's not very efficient in reducing the size on your HD.

There is a new normalmap DXT format .dxtnm that is supported by Celestia and may be generated via the NVIDIA texture tools from my PNG VT output. It's quality is much higher that normal DXT format. That's what one should use for normalmap VT's. My tools optimize the tile sizes/resolution towards the poles and for normalmap tiles of oceans. But most importantly, the nmtools constitute the ONLY VT software that generates CORRECT normalmap tiles for /spherical body geometry/ away from the equator.

F.

t00fri wrote:This statement can hardly be used in any quantitative manner...

RAWR!!!!

t00fri wrote:...since you did NOT specify for your JPG conversion

I just opened the .png file in paint, and saved as a JPG. May not work for everyone, but it works for me.

t00fri wrote:You have also not stated what sort of monitor and resolution you are using. The ability to spot bad renderings can strongly depend on it.

Monitor is "Dell SE198WFP(Analog) on NVIDIA GeForce FX 5200", (also updated signature). I run it at a 1440 x 900 pixel resolution. The screen size is 26 cm by 46 cm.

t00fri wrote:The main advantage of the lossy DXT format is its hardware (GPU) support. So the speed is strongly increased. It's not very efficient in reducing the size on your HD.

Therefore, I patched my Celestia to load gzip-compressed DDS files. This way, I benefit from hardware support (and small texture size at runtime) as well as reduced size on disk (while not as small as jpg files).

steffens

steffens wrote:

t00fri wrote:The main advantage of the lossy DXT format is its hardware (GPU) support. So the speed is strongly increased. It's not very efficient in reducing the size on your HD.

Therefore, I patched my Celestia to load gzip-compressed DDS files. This way, I benefit from hardware support (and small texture size at runtime) as well as reduced size on disk (while not as small as jpg files).

steffens

Right! Didn't we even implement this officially?? I seem to remember we did.


F.

t00fri wrote:Right! Didn't we even implement this officially?? I seem to remember we did.

Chris agreed that this was a good idea, but the feature never went to the official CVS
The patch I proposed at that time does not apply cleanly to current versions anymore and I remember that someone offered a more general patch to support gzip-compressions for other file types as well.

steffens

Edit: see here for reference http://www.shatters.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=8866

Sorry,t00fri,but you are NOT completely right.The BMNG folder in Celestia 1.5.0 has only 2.46 GB,and is 64k (Venus is 32k) and it includes the texture map,normal map,specmap and nightmap.All these textures are in PNG format.Only the Normal Map is in DDS format.I think Venus VT is pretty BIG...
PS:Unfourtanetelly,my HD is 38% full and so I have only about 184 GB free!

t00fri wrote:

danielj wrote:But the BMNG IS 64k and has a smaller size.I can??t afford a bigger HD.I had already bought a HD in the end of last year,but my total size is NOW 320 GB,but about 35% is full.It appears that I will have to choose between detail and disk space...

It is NOT correct that BMNG 64K has a smaller size!!
At least using good quality formats!! I think I should know this . Of course, the apparent size depends on the format you use. But e.g. using JPG format with a low quality factor gives you really a much worse display.

Daniel, there is NO free lunch ...

And note: the VT's made with my F-TexTools or the nmtools are by far the smallest size for a given format (JPG, PNG,DDS), since they reduce the resolution in an optimal way near the poles. Moreover, all normalmap VT tiles that correspond to elevation=0 (Oceans!) are reduced to 4x4 bytes ONLY!

F.

danielj wrote:PS:Unfourtanetelly,my HD is 38% full and so I have only about 184 GB free!

I don't understand what you're worried about. You have plenty of space. I "only" have about 70 GB of free space, out of 320 GB, and even that's plenty of room for what I need.