Chris, could this happen ?

[Darkmiss]

At the moment I can have three textures of the same name,
of three different sizes, in all three texture directories.
and switch between them, with shift-R.

Don Edwards made a really nice collection of mars textures,
showing a mars transition, from mars as it is now,... to a full earth-like mars.(about 9 textures I think)

Is it possible you could make celestia read more than one texture,
from one directory, and have them load in one at a time from a key press.

EG: ssc file:

"Earth" "Sol"
{
texure1 "earth-4k.dds"
texture2 "earth-8k.dds"
texture3 "earth-bm.png"

and have them change to the one you want by the funtion keys, maybe

F1 = texture1
F2 = texture2
....... and so on.........


Also...
what happend to the error finding tool, you was going to put into Celestia ?

[billybob884]

Yes that is a good idea, but before this I would like to see the planet refresh option so if you make changes to a texture it will show it, without closing and re-opening celestia

[Darkmiss]

yes that would be very handy too.

So is this a good idea Chris ?

[chris]

yes that would be very handy too.

So is this a good idea Chris ?

Yes it is a good idea, and something that I plan on implementing. Selden suggested this a while ago in a slightly different context; instead of multiple versions of the same texture, it would be neat to have maps showing different information--temperature, a geopolitical map, climate, altitude, etc. Another interesting application would be maps of Earth showing the continents in different positions over millions of years.

--Chris

[selden]

Another interesting application would be maps of Earth showing the continents in different positions over millions of years.

Yes, indeed!

Unfortunately, the best ones currently available are copyrighted by Christopher Scotese, so they can't be freely redistributed. See http://www.scotese.com/

[billybob884]

well, it looks like he's done a lot of research, so i can see why he copyrighted it, although im not saying i agree with it...

[Darkmiss]

it would be neat to have maps showing different information--temperature, a geopolitical map, climate, altitude, etc.

Yes, this is what gave me the idea, I downloaded a very detailed Earth Bathymetry map

this one
From here http://www.space-graphics.com/earth1.htm

I got it to work great, Downloaded, resized, converted to TGA, then compiled to a 4k DDS.
but I had no luck adding a specular map to stop the sun reflecting off the surface. (not that skilled yet)

Then it made me think about Don's mars transition textures.
He would be able to just move from the start texture to the end result
through the function keys.