Celestia Forums

Hello everybody

I just discovered Celestia 2 weeks ago and downloaded over 2 GB of add-ons. So far the program works great and the enhanced textures of planets are unbeleivable.

I also downloaded all the Educatonal activities, 1 to 7, and noticed that only Activity 3 and 4 have little icons that look like a picture of Jupiter.
None of the contents of all the other activities have this little icon picture.

This makes me think I am missing the program file ???

None of the activities work except for 3 and 4

My computer is more than powerfull enough to handle all the spectacular graphics, calculations etc.

I want to use Celestia for class room education, Cub scouts, and animation in Hospitals for sick children.....I just wish I could figure out a way to get the Educational activities to work....Especially travelling near a black hole cuz kids always ask for that ))

Any help or suggestions would be very much appreciated

Sincerely
Pierre Tournay
Montreal
pierret@aei.ca

in the celestia folder, a folder name: educational-extras, whit contain word document whit the educational and link to celestia.

Read the documents and see if that is of any help.

Dan

Hi Dan

Yes, I remember seeing "Word" documents in the Educational-Extra folder.

So it would appear that I must first go thru the "Word document" to get the activities to turn on

I will try that tonight

Thank you very much Dan for your kind reply

Sincerely
Pierre Tournay
Mobtreal
pierret@aei.ca

Hello;

I followed Dan' s advice and the activities came out screaming ))
Gorgeous animations of the formation of our solar system and so much more !!

I did notice that the Planetary nebula Abell 39 came out in full 3D whereas the Ring nebula, M42 and M16 had a 2D look.

Is this normal ?

Do some of you get a 3D look on the Ring Nebula and others ?
The Ring Nebula looks flat viewed from the side and has small wavy edges

I will go and get the latest drivers on my video card just in case they are needed to get more of those 3D effects

Thank you Dan !!!

Sincerely
Pierre Tournay
Monytreal
pierret@aei.ca

Pierre Tournay wrote:Hello;
I did notice that the Planetary nebula Abell 39 came out in full 3D whereas the Ring nebula, M42 and M16 had a 2D look.
Is this normal ?

Bonsoir/Hi, Pierre
There are several manners of returning the objects of deep space, most practical proposed by Selden Ball with the method of the board, allow to install in Celestia the beautiful pics that telescopes could seize some. Returned the 3d is difficult, because the beautiful images which we see are those collected 'vu d'ici': if we approach some physically, we would see them completely differents... And we necessarily don't have all of the data about distances, the depth of field of stars and illuminated dust which look us so beautiful! In short, it is hardly possible to simulate the depth. A 3D sim would enormously require informations and elements, those which you quote are, it seems to me, right a 2D texture applied to a model of sphere 3d. An ideal track would be that employed by Rassilon for the Rosetta neb or M4, indeed: but that requires to compose of particular stars one by one, a titanic task! And all universe, simulate by this way, would require a gigantic data base to post known this manner
Tomorrow, maybe

Pierre,

The differences are not due to your graphics card. Many Addons include flat pictures, some have rippled surfaces and a very few provide 3D shapes.

We don't know the 3D shapes of most remote nebulas, only what they look like from our viewpoint on the Earth. Sometimes mathematical models of radiation patterns can provide guesses for what their 3D shapes might be.

It's relatively easy to provide flat models to hold 2D astronomical photographs for Celestia, although getting them aligned and sized correctly can be difficult. For artistic reasons, some people prefer to provide rippled models to hold the photographs.

Making an imaginary 3D shape is easy, too. Making a realistic 3D model can be easy or it can be extremely difficult, depending on the type of object you're trying to simulate.

Thank you all very much and Merci Beaucoup

It is reasuring that I did not do a boo-boo while loading all the add-ons individually...

I had assumed that since Abell 39 was in 3D, maybe a lot of other nebulas are too )...I can understand the degree of difficulties involved in making these superb add-ons and I want to congradulate all the ones that take time to do this so we can all enjoy this superb program.

I will explore the "Capture Movie" feature and see if I can make a little movie so I don' t have to open the Word document, scroll down the text and find the special object to show children during a school presentation etc.

At the risk of taxing your patience, I found that the all the satellites (Voyager, Pioneer, HST, Shuttle....) all look broken-up.
I can see a glimpse of the satellite but they have very large triangles overlapping the satellites...Looks like a Picasso rendering )
Could this happen if I have downloaded the image twice ??

I downloaded so many add-ons that this could be the reason

Any comments/suggestions as you allready demonstrated, would be most welcome and appreciated.

Thank you in advance

Pierre Tournay
Montreal
pierret@aei.ca

Pierre,

You might find Cel:// URLs or "Favorites" entries more appropriate than movies. Then you can change the viewpoint as you want while doing the demo.

You're the second person to mention broken models and large triangles. Apparently that is one of the things that can happen when too many models are loaded into your graphics card, more than can fit into its memory.

You should reduce the number of Addons that Celestia is trying to display at the same time. Move the ones you're not going to be looking at into a folder outside Celestia's Extras folder. Then Celestia won't try to load them.

Hi Seldon

Thank you for the clarifications.
It is very much appreciated for a newbie like myself that is just learning as I go )

You guys are Pros )) and your advices are Bang-on !!!

I get to play with the software rather than trying to figure things out blindly

I wish you all a Merry Christmas, Peace on Earth and fantastic voyages with Celestia !!!!

Sincerely
Pierre Tournay
Montrealk
pierret@aei.ca

Dear Pierre:

I am delighted you are enjoying the Educational Activities. They will be a big hit with your classes. If at all possible, see if you can get at least 1 or 2 of them with their add-ons loaded into your school's computer lab computers. Although most school computers don't have graphics cards, some of the links to some of the features in the Activities will work on even a computer with no video card. Having the kids take their own journeys through the activities (in pairs or groups of 3 or 4) is mind-boggling to them.

As to the spacecraft models breaking up into triangles, it is a problem for more than you. I wrote the Activities but know next to nothing about model graphics. However, I have seen the same effect. It is graphic card related. You should also make sure you are running the final version of Celestia 1.3.2. It does a better job of minimizing the black triangles. 1.3.2 final is the only one posted on the main Celestia webpage so if you downloaded from there, you do have that version.

It is not impossible that in a few cases, you may have two copies of the same model running. This would NOT occur if you are using the celestia.cfg file that comes with all activities. It is designed to replace the existing celestia.cfg file with one that does not load any of the add-ons that you may have downloaded from other sources and placed in your extras folder. When using the Activities, that folder is ignored by Celestia due to a command in the celestia.cfg file that comes with the Activity cfg file. When you are done using the Activities , the instructions are to either replace my celestia.cfg file with your original copy, or continue using the add-ons available with the Activites.

We did this to avoid two duplicate add-ons running at the same time. the way to tell is not really triangles, but flashing. As you move a spacecraft model, it will flash, blink almost. If you see that happening, Celestia is trying to load two images in the same spot. If that's the case, let me know and we'll tell you how to block it.


Regards,

Frank Gregorio

Hi Frank

Please excuse my delay in answering you back.

All my add-ons are in the Educational Extra folder with a good 1 Gb worth of them ). There is only a single file in the regular Celestia Extra folder and it contains a SSC file called minormoons.

The satellites that were problematic were removed and I now have well working HST, Chandra, Space junk, Celestia spaceship, Freedom 7 space ship

The Educational activities are extraordinary and I am still trying to figure out a shortcut top access all the videos without opening the "Word" documents. I will try the CEL idea and/or My favourites. I figured that the button "Bookmark" would do the trick but the links don' t show up.
No big deal...I' ll read moree on CEL.

As part of my presentations in schools, I always offer them copies of pictures or videos for their school computers but up here in Quebec, the computers they use are pathetically old. None the less, there are places where Celestia could be used/copied/downloaded and this will be offered in the spirit this software was created for.

I just need to get it working well enough before so that I could help the teachers with some installation questions.

I posted in the Celestia Bug section, a question on Deep sky objects that tend to make my computer freeze as soon as I press the letter "U" on the keyboard in order to display these objects. My first attempt will be to remove some folders and see if the problem goes away. If not, I will inquiore about adding more memory to my graphics card and go well beyond 64 megs. I will also try any suggestions coming back from the forum members

Thank you for your kind reply and I will certanly show it around in schools and offer them a way to get it

Sincerely
Pierre Tournay
Montreal