Suggested Demo script improvements
Posted: 16.09.2006, 17:06
I think the demo script could use a bit of fixing. I'm using no extras here, but I am using a compiled 1.5.0 windows executable with the 1.4.1 demo.cel script.
1) I ran it today and for starters, the first part (where it goes to Earth and rotates around it) zooms in too close to the planet, so that the poles are cut off in the field of view. I think the camera should be further away, or have a wider field of view to see the whole planet.
2) Same problem when it goes to the moon and rotates around it, but it's not quite as bad there. But it's kinda hard to note the sun and the earth in the background when the moon takes up most of the view.
3) rotating around the sun is fine
4) going out to view the inner solar system doesn't work well at all - the camera needs to go out further, all I can see is Mercury and Venus and a bit of Earth's orbit (the FOV is 26 deg 6' 21.0" (1.00x) in all this).
5) Saturn is OK, but again the rings are clipped by the FOV.
6) When going to Mimas to show Herschel, it'd help if Herschel was actually visible on the lit hemisphere...
7) Sometimes when I go to Saturn in the demo I end up with Mimas in eclipse, which means I can't see anything on its surface and I can't see the sun to see how faint it is at this distance. Basically, the script needs to be changed so that the things that it is showing are visible - if that means deliberately setting the times to different ones then that's what has to be done.
8 ) When looking at the Big Dipper, it would be useful to turn on the constellation lines then, rather than when we then go to the Little Dipper.
9) It would be useful to set the stars to be fuzzy points or scaled discs within the script to make them more visible. When they're set to Points, you can't really see any obvious patterns without the lines.
10) the rotation around the sky to see the milky way is too long and too dizzying. Also, if you have galaxy rendering on already, the script doesn't turn it off before we get to this stage, so you can already see the milky way before it says that it'll turn it on. This part should just focus on a bit of sky (Cygnus?) and then turn the galaxies on to show the milky way, and maybe follow it along the sky for a bit.
11) When we go to Antares, we aren't "10 times further from it than the Earth is to the sun", the distance to the star shows 22 AU when we stop.
12) The orbit around the milky way doesn't really show it off very well, I think the camera should orbit perpendicular to the galactic disk so we can see the structure more clearly. As it is, it's a bit inclined above the disk, but not by much.
1) I ran it today and for starters, the first part (where it goes to Earth and rotates around it) zooms in too close to the planet, so that the poles are cut off in the field of view. I think the camera should be further away, or have a wider field of view to see the whole planet.
2) Same problem when it goes to the moon and rotates around it, but it's not quite as bad there. But it's kinda hard to note the sun and the earth in the background when the moon takes up most of the view.
3) rotating around the sun is fine
4) going out to view the inner solar system doesn't work well at all - the camera needs to go out further, all I can see is Mercury and Venus and a bit of Earth's orbit (the FOV is 26 deg 6' 21.0" (1.00x) in all this).
5) Saturn is OK, but again the rings are clipped by the FOV.
6) When going to Mimas to show Herschel, it'd help if Herschel was actually visible on the lit hemisphere...
7) Sometimes when I go to Saturn in the demo I end up with Mimas in eclipse, which means I can't see anything on its surface and I can't see the sun to see how faint it is at this distance. Basically, the script needs to be changed so that the things that it is showing are visible - if that means deliberately setting the times to different ones then that's what has to be done.
8 ) When looking at the Big Dipper, it would be useful to turn on the constellation lines then, rather than when we then go to the Little Dipper.
9) It would be useful to set the stars to be fuzzy points or scaled discs within the script to make them more visible. When they're set to Points, you can't really see any obvious patterns without the lines.
10) the rotation around the sky to see the milky way is too long and too dizzying. Also, if you have galaxy rendering on already, the script doesn't turn it off before we get to this stage, so you can already see the milky way before it says that it'll turn it on. This part should just focus on a bit of sky (Cygnus?) and then turn the galaxies on to show the milky way, and maybe follow it along the sky for a bit.
11) When we go to Antares, we aren't "10 times further from it than the Earth is to the sun", the distance to the star shows 22 AU when we stop.
12) The orbit around the milky way doesn't really show it off very well, I think the camera should orbit perpendicular to the galactic disk so we can see the structure more clearly. As it is, it's a bit inclined above the disk, but not by much.
- there's no reason why there can't be a scripts folder in Celestia if there isn't one already - I think it makes sense to have a separate folder for them myself.
- download my modified version from here into your Celestia folder (rename your existing demo.cel script to demo.old though if you want to restore it afterwards, because this will overwrite it!):