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How to draw an orbit trace behind object?

Posted: 03.03.2010, 13:19
by ormstont
Hi,

Someone recently sent me a Celestia video taken where the orbit trace is only drawn behind the object (it's running a sampled orbit) rather than the whole orbit being drawn. I've got a video of the effect here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7wqE8aKDxts (with Phobos and Mars Express showing the tracing). This was on linux and I've tried loading the same file into my Windows version of Celestia and I can't replicate the effect.

It's really nice, especially for complex orbits where having all the samples displayed can create quite a mess of lines. Is there any way to make this work on Windows version of Celestia or is it strictly linux only? If so is there some special tag I need to put in the SSC file?

Many thanks in advance!

Re: How to draw an orbit trace behind object?

Posted: 03.03.2010, 19:37
by selden
That feature currently is available only by downloading Celestia's source code from SourceForge, editing to set an appropriate flag and then compiling it. The feature is not available in Celestia v1.6.0.

At some time in the not too distant future, it'll be added to one of the menus, although stil only available by compiling Celestia yourself.

The feature is described in the thread viewtopic.php?f=10&t=15688

Instructions for compiling Celestia under Windows are in the Celestia Wikibook at http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Celestia/D ... 2_platform

Re: How to draw an orbit trace behind object?

Posted: 04.03.2010, 12:52
by ormstont
Ah brilliant, thanks very much - it's a really nice feature for visualising spacecraft, especially with complex orbits. I'll have a go at compiling the latest source code and have a play! Thanks for the help!