Celestia Forums

Update: Project is basically abandoned at this point, no idea when or if there will be a release.

This is an idea I've had for a long time now - simulating the evolution of the Solar System, from protostar to white dwarf, in Celestia. A huge project, I know, but there are already parts of it...the formation of the Moon, the red giant Sun, paleogeography maps...and even though it's not the Solar System, there's the formation of Delta Trianguli. Back in May, The Minmus Derp on Discord had the same idea, so this collaborative project started. It's still not going to be my main project, at least not for some time, since I have other things I need to work on (e.g. the brown dwarf catalog, updating data for default Celestia...those keep getting put off too, don't they...)

The main issues here are that you can't change the visibility of stars in Celestia, even using a script, so there's no way to replace the Sun with copies of it at different evolutionary stages; and that Celestia's time can "only" go 2 billion years into the past or future. This project will use Celestia Origin's solution to the first issue - to put the red giant Sun (and other evolutionary stages) somewhere on the other side of the Milky Way. The present day Sun will be used from 2 billion years ago to 2 billion years hence, so at least for that range the displayed time is correct and it's simpler to navigate to planets, etc, even if the Sun is less accurate. It...works. (If anyone has a better idea please tell me, but that's what I'm doing for now.)

Askaniy has made an improved set of textures for the prehistoric Earth for this project; they can be downloaded here. The Other Celestia Discord can be used as the place to discuss/develop the project so it continues to have a purpose (nussun is back in the main server now). Also, this project is how I originally found the Iapetus orbit bug.

Previews of the little I've done so far...

Nice

Sorry for slacking a bit, I have a lot of homework these days. I hope to help out a bit more soon.

is this addom almost done?

trappistplanets wrote:is this addom almost done?

Not even close. Hopefully there will be a first release within a few months though.

SevenSpheres wrote:It's still not going to be my main project, at least not for some time, since I have other things I need to work on[...]

ok seven spheres

I did that project, I used about a million every year and this time I had to create and delete objects over time, I also update the texture but I still lack, for example, in the Paleolithic and the future drift age, although there are still problems in the orbit of the objects because in the formation of the solar system the planets were not located in the current position in which we are and disappear and appear makes you see nothing xd.

Daly wrote:I did that project, I used about a million every year and this time I had to create and delete objects over time, I also update the texture but I still lack, for example, in the Paleolithic and the future drift age, although there are still problems in the orbit of the objects because in the formation of the solar system the planets were not located in the current position in which we are and disappear and appear makes you see nothing xd.

Feel free to release it; I can send you what I have if you want.

What a shame. At least Celestia Origin has a full Continental Drift texture collection for Earth.

Why did you put the entire Solar System evolution addon pack on hiatus? What textures representing the Solar System's planets life stages (besides continental drift for the Earth) were going to be part of this addon?

jjcatloaf123 wrote:What a shame. At least Celestia Origin has a full Continental Drift texture collection for Earth.

jjcatloaf123 wrote:Why did you put the entire Solar System evolution addon pack on hiatus? What textures representing the Solar System's planets life stages (besides continental drift for the Earth) were going to be part of this addon?

Are you jeromy_liang on Discord?

SevenSpheres wrote:Are you jeromy_liang on Discord?

who is jeromy?

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seven, what is your progress on this project?

trappistplanets wrote:seven, what is your progress on this project?

There has been none and there almost certainly will be none, especially if you keep pestering me about it.

It's such a shame that the Solar System evolution addon texture pack was put on hiatus. All we ever get of this is the Continental Drift feature on Celestia Origin.

jjcatloaf123 wrote:It's such a shame that the Solar System evolution addon texture pack was put on hiatus. All we ever get of this is the Continental Drift feature on Celestia Origin.

1. Please stop offtopic.
2. It wasn't put "on hiatus", it was canceled due to lack of interest and constant pestering from a certain Discord member (you?)
3. If you want to make a Solar System evolution addon there's nothing stopping you from doing so.

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Update: moved posts to the appropriate thread.

There's the red giant addon by frank Gregorio you can now find in the now-archived Motherlode under the educational tab on the resources, click on Activity 6 if you want to see an addon of Sol's 2 red giant stages.

There's also the Orpheus/Theia vs Earth collision in Frank Gregorio's Activity 9 of Celestia Educational on the now-archived Celestia Motherlode.
It works even on regular Celestia though it happens in the Nu2 Lup star system instead of ours and it's not a Lua Universal Tools addon.
But it's still useful.

Plus I even made 2 addons of what the solar system may have looked like billions of years before the said-collision, as well as what the Solar System might look like after Sol becomes a white dwarf (yet those are also taken place in separate stars outside our Solar System and so does LUA's Dying Solar System addon).
But neither are those LUA addons.

The icemars texture isn't originally made by me and I don't remember who made it, but I give credit to the artist who made it.
The vol-moon2, vol-moonbmp and vol-moon-night2 textures used for Europa, Ganymede and Callisto in the white dwarf solar system addon were found in Frank Gregorio's Oprheus addon.
I also don't remember who made this tftitan-bump map but the user making it was making a terraformed Titan texture and this's used as a texture to give Titan a totally dead look (after Sol became a white dwarf).

Yet the Pluto texture was by Master-Bit via DeviantArt and the SI-type texture was from the Orion's Arm by sbowers.

Hope for totally positive feedback.
Places like this site were not made for fighting or any criticism.