Public Gallery for Celestia

[Hunter Parasite]

I think we should make a public gallery were people submit pics to possibly, a massive archive of stars, ships, planets, galaxys, or anything for that matter. The celestia homepage (http://www.shatters.net/celestia/) has a microscopic gallery of what, 6 to 8 pics. Now why have that, when you can have hundreds, maybe even thousands of pics. That could be not just for enjoyment, but to give to-be users a taste of what they're looking at, before clogging much needed space with add-ons and other stuff.

Even though that doesn't sound very persuasive, i think it should be done.

[Don. Edwards]

Hunter Parasite,
We at one time did have a quite extensive gallery for Celetia, but do to hacking of the website well over a year ago we lost it. Chris never restored the gallery and so we no longer have one. I am sure Chris could have restored the gallery but I believe he had other plans. Just thought I would fill you in on hte facts. Besides the gallery we did have was sometimes very buggy and i thnk that was one of the reasons for its disapearance.

Don. Edwards

[GlobeMaker]

If one video of Celestia could be offered on the current gallery it should be this:

Smart Video of Celestia : 3 megabyte download

This 3 megabyte file would have celestia.exe plus a script and small textures.
When a stranger clicks on the "video", celestia is installed, runs a script that
tours all objects during a 2 hour period. Textures are only in lowres and not
fancy models or satellites are there. Fast passes through stars clusters
dazzle the newbee. Jupiter's moon cycle in fast time.

Two hours of Celestai show-off time in a 3 megabyte file. The GNU agreement is not needed unless the stranger goes outside the script's
capabilities. Galleries are included in the two hour movie. Controls are
explained. The stranger has some announced "interactive times" when
she can use the controls. Then the scripted tour continues.

Flash screens appear every 20 minutes to announce websites, advanced
capabilities, and better qualities of the official Celestia package of
14 megabytes.

Conclusion

This 3 megabyte file is smaller than most videos, but it lasts 2 hour.
It installs automatically, so unskilled people do not need to unzip or install
anything. It is a double click away from instant entertainment for two hours.

[julesstoop]

Something that installs automatically after download, without any intervention from the user, is (considered) malware and probably (luckily i.m.h.o.) not even possible on Mac OS and Linux.

[Dollan]

Is it possible to have an Image Shack directory accessible by multiple people? The image hosting is unlimited and images are limited to sizes of 1mb (more than sufficient for even quality screenshots), which should satisfy even the most rabid image uploader.

Of course, someone could go one step further and accept via email screenshots by people, set up a Geocities account for 15mb's of free space (with minor but still annoying advertisement), and store the images on IMage Shack. Right there you have the recipe for a virtually unlimited gallery. The only remaining thing you'll need is someone willing to take on the responsibility of maintaining the gallery.

...John...

[Telepath]

Is it possible to have an Image Shack directory accessible by multiple people? The image hosting is unlimited and images are limited to sizes of 1mb (more than sufficient for even quality screenshots), which should satisfy even the most rabid image uploader.

Great idea in theory John. In fact you can email images directly to an Imageshack directory, the email just needs the GUID (accesskey) of the directory in the subject line, and that could be made publicly available.
However, in practice, as soon as you made it public, it wouldn't take long before the spammers started abusing it, and it would probably become a repository of porn. (I'm not going to make any Uranus jokes at this point)

Of course, someone could go one step further and accept via email screenshots by people, set up a Geocities account for 15mb's of free space (with minor but still annoying advertisement), and store the images on IMage Shack. Right there you have the recipe for a virtually unlimited gallery. The only remaining thing you'll need is someone willing to take on the responsibility of maintaining the gallery.

Better idea, as the moderator could filter out the crap and organise images into categories etc... This responsibility could of course be shared by a group of people, if they all had access to the email account.
BTW: http://www.sitesled.com has up to 100MB

[Hunter Parasite]

curses, foiled again... stupid hackers...

[eburacum45]

If someone set up a Celestia Imageforge gallery and acted as moderator/editor, that would work. Other people could send them images through the Imageforge site.

Or perhaps we could just each maintain our own gallery, and link them all together on a reference page somewhere (perhaps on this board).
My own gallery is huge but very variable in quality, as I like to think my images have got better over time (especially after the purchase of a new graphics card).
http://img66.imageshack.us/gal.php?g=aquinas7qk.jpg
it is very slow to load (not surprising with nearly three hundred images, most but not all made with Celestia). Many of these images have been used to illustrate the Orion's Arm website.
By the way I keep getting a mysterious image of a robot carrying a sign of some sort appearing at the bottom of this gallery; anyone else seen anything similar?

[Dracontes]

Or one could use maj.com as I have (shameless self-publicity ). I've never seen anything about image size or gallery size limits there and it hasn't any publicity attached AFAIK.