While I find this to be an excellent program, whenever I try to go to a ring planet (Saturn) it crashes everytime. Also, when I enabled eclipses and entered the time of the earth eclipse (June 21, 2001) and sped up the time so I could see it, it crashed just about the eclipse would have happened.
Am I doing something wrong or is there something I can do to fix this? Thanks.
Crashes in Windows Version
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Guest
ogg
I found the same problem with crashing on approach to Saturn when using a Toshiba laptop from work, with windows 98SE. It was fixed by a driver update from Windows Update (ie not from the manufacturer site), but there was a strange half-shadow effect on the rings after that (the sunward half of the rings were lit, the other half were dark). The newer one I use has the same specs but has Windows XP with different drivers and it too has strange ring shadowing; eg Saturn's rings have chunky, radial shadow blotches that shift and fluctuate as you look from different angles. (also, eclipses are rendered by turning the whole planet jet black with strange sparkly lights. Go figure. Didn't try eclipses on the old one, perhaps they would have crashed it too.)
NOTE: updating the video driver for the XP machine from Windows Update actually *destroyed* some of the adapter's OpenGL support and slowed down Celestia considerably. Luckily I could 'System Restore" it on XPpro... So be warned.
Judging from what Chris and others have suggested, my problems were/are due to poor hardware support for the OpenGL extensions that Celestia takes advantage of to create the effects in the first place. Perhaps you're in a similar situation? Generic graphics cards without specific 3D support will have limitations when using Celestia. Point is, if you don't have a top-shelf graphics card you might just have to put up with these limitations and do without shadows (ie turn off eclipses in the rendering options box. Chris is also promising a similar option there to turn off ring shadows.)
Anyone have similar experiences? Is this advice sound or am I alone here?
ogg
NOTE: updating the video driver for the XP machine from Windows Update actually *destroyed* some of the adapter's OpenGL support and slowed down Celestia considerably. Luckily I could 'System Restore" it on XPpro... So be warned.
Judging from what Chris and others have suggested, my problems were/are due to poor hardware support for the OpenGL extensions that Celestia takes advantage of to create the effects in the first place. Perhaps you're in a similar situation? Generic graphics cards without specific 3D support will have limitations when using Celestia. Point is, if you don't have a top-shelf graphics card you might just have to put up with these limitations and do without shadows (ie turn off eclipses in the rendering options box. Chris is also promising a similar option there to turn off ring shadows.)
Anyone have similar experiences? Is this advice sound or am I alone here?
ogg