Please report problems with the MacOS X version here.

[Owain]

On an unrelated topic, when I run this on my iBook, the earth's texture appears to be a sort of mirror... any ideas?

I presume it's a texture memory problem because I just lowered the resolution in the options menu and it works fine now.

Cheers,
Owain

[TomTzart]

Regarding preferences in the Mac OS X alpha 2 version of Celestia 1.2.5, my experience is that they generally are retained across sessions, provided that changes are made in the preferences panel and not using command keys. Changes made using command keys are not retained across sessions, and are not shown properly in the preferences panel. I believe the probem here is in synchronizing the preferences panel with changes made using keyboard commands. This will eventually be fixed, but in the meantime, I believe that if you use the preferences panel to make changes, your preferences will be retained across sessions.

- Hank

No, the preferences are changed in the Preferences menu, never with command keys, and Celestia doesn't retain them across sessions. May be you have program that it retains only the first column ( between "Stars" and "Atmospheres" ), but you can't conservate the rest of the preferences for the following session. When you press "Apply" nothing really happen. You can work with thouse preferences in the current session, but when you restart, all them gone.

Hugs

[HankR]

TomTzart,

You're right. Looks like the preferences in the middle column and "Atmospheres" in the first column are not being saved, even if changed from the preferences panel.

- Hank

[Matt McIrvin]

Matt,

Is there any information in '~/Library/Logs/CrashReporter/Celestia.crash.log' when Celestia fails to launch from the dock?

- Hank

I got this in the console:

2003-02-09 14:10:07.585 Celestia[1283] Unable to load nib file: MainMenu, exiting

The strange thing is that the problem just went away; now launching it from the dock actually works.

[Matt McIrvin]

The strange thing is that the problem just went away; now launching it from the dock actually works.

Aha-- a probably relevant fact: it started working once I emptied the Trash, in which the older Celestia alpha had been.

[GerardJ]

I've tried both of the pre-release versions for the Mac and they both behave the same way.
At launch I get an empty white window. As soon as I click on the window resize handle the window turns black and displays random bits of "noise" and it I make it small enough, bits of the desktop contents.
I'm running OS X 10.2.3 with all updates on a Biege G3 768MB and an ATI Radeon 7000 Mac PCI card. The card is driving two displays at 1600x1200xmillions each.
I am specifically running an older ROM image on the card (v119 instead of v209) as on reboot, the new ROM fails to detect the second display most of the time.

Here are some PDF screen captures of what I see:
http://www.thecowgoesmoo.com/launch.pdf - Launch with blank window

http://www.thecowgoesmoo.com/resize.pdf - Black window with noise after resize

[Guest]

Celestia should still work (but it doesn't) if the data files are stored in /Library/Application Support/CelestiaResources. If not, I have to install the same data files for all users on my rig that want to use celestia.
I think the proper behaviour would be to read both locations, so /Library/AppSupport would have the "standard" data set, and ~/Library/AppSupport would have individual user customizations.
Or I could be nuts...

[Guest]

Celestia should still work (but it doesn't) if the data files are stored in /Library/Application Support/CelestiaResources. If not, I have to install the same data files for all users on my rig that want to use celestia.

You're right. This should be fixed. In the meantime, you can copy the data files back into the "Resources" folder in the application package. If the "CelestiaResources" folder is not found in the user's "Application Support" folder, the data files are looked for in the application package.

- Hank

[GerardJ]

I think the proper behaviour would be to read both locations, so /Library/AppSupport would have the "standard" data set, and ~/Library/AppSupport would have individual user customizations.
Or I could be nuts...

It's a little clumsy, but you could for the time being use UNIX lins for this. Put the "master" copy of the folder/files in the root library folder, then create soft links in each user's home library folder. If the user wanted to override any of the files they would simply delete the soft link and replace it with an actual file.
At least until the fallback is coded in to the app, this is a way to keep at least the default files in one place that is easily maintained.
A simple PERL or shell script could traverse the /users directory tree and initially create the links for you.

[AKcrab]

Thank you for the great tips, but in reality I was pointing out a bug. I do indeed have two users, but I was "testing" the app to see if it would handle it.

Indeed, great advice to anyone who may actually want to install celestia for multiple users.

btw... When you say "soft link" I assume you mean symbolic link? (ln -s)

[selden]

AK,

While the formal name is "symbolic link," most programmers call it a "soft link," in contrast to a "hard link" -- the other type that's described in the man page and elsewhere.

[Quo]

I'm experiencing pretty mutch the same as Gerard J. I tried both pre-release Versions (for trial of the second one I copied the data from
the first, as described in the Readme), and get an entirely white
Celestia window. <br>
After resizing there's a bit of desktop garbage in the window. Many
menu entries are grayed out, namely File:{new|open|save|save as|revert}, Navigation:{Locations|Solar Systems|Star Browser|Tour Guide}, all in Capture, and a few others.
<p> System: 233 Mhz Wallstreet PDQ, OS X 10.2.3 with all updates, the Grapic card is shown as ATY RageLTPro (ATY,LT-C).
<p>
Tatjana

[Bodkin]

I had the white screen problem. I realized that not only wasn't Celestia working, but Quartz Extreme wasn't working either. (There's a freeware utility I found on version tracker to check this.) I have a AGP Radeon card in my Graphite 450 Mhz and had installed the latest ATI driver update from ATI. I'm guessing that's what screwed things up. The fix was to re-install the 10.2.3 updater. Now Celestia works, and Quartz Extreme functions again. Take this for what it's worth. Your mileage may vary.

I'm experiencing pretty mutch the same as Gerard J. I tried both pre-release Versions (for trial of the second one I copied the data from
the first, as described in the Readme), and get an entirely white
Celestia window. <br>
After resizing there's a bit of desktop garbage in the window. Many
menu entries are grayed out, namely File:{new|open|save|save as|revert}, Navigation:{Locations|Solar Systems|Star Browser|Tour Guide}, all in Capture, and a few others.
<p> System: 233 Mhz Wallstreet PDQ, OS X 10.2.3 with all updates, the Grapic card is shown as ATY RageLTPro (ATY,LT-C).
<p>
Tatjana

[latourfl]

I use the first alfa version, and I have the same problem for almost EVERY planet texture. It is worst than other screen shots I've seen. I posted an example here :

http://homepage.mac.com/latourfl/doc/PhotoAlbum31.html

Plus, running the demo, I had a Kernel panic the other night. But I looked in the logs to find it, and it seems that no file was created. Is there any other way to retreive these info somewhere ? I haven't shut my iBook down since I reboot it.


My computer : iBook 500Mhz, 320 Mb RAM, Ati Rage 8 Mb

[guest]

When I try to download the CelestialMacOSX.dmg it is only 10.9 K. I figure that the size is some kind of setup to really download it after agreeing to a EULA. But when I try to mount it, I get a "No mountable file system" error 95. ???

[dwight]

The same thing happens to me...

[macrae]

Problems with Celestia v.1.2.5 alpha 2 for MacOS X. I am running 10.2.3 on a Dual-processor 1GHz G4 with ATI Radeon 9000 64MB graphics (stock card).

1) The original alpha release drew Amalthea, Tethys, Phobos, and Deimos without any problems (e.g., I looked at Amalthea with that version, and it was a nice, reddish, asteroidish blob, Phobos showed the correct image map, etc.). Now, they appear entirely black, regardless of illumination or resolution. The image maps are there in the directory, but they do not display. I could not figure out what the common denominator was for these particular bodies. I have not exhaustively checked the other bodies, but most others appear to be fine.


2) As reported by others, relatively large texture maps (for me, it was a 4096x2048 PNG image of the Earth) crash or hang the program, and take the system with it. This was true of the original alpha version of Celestia and the current a2 one. I took the opportunity to upgrade the system between 10.2.1 and 10.2.3 to see if the OpenGL changes would make a difference. It did make a slight, almost irrelevant difference: with 10.2.1, the screen blanked to black and I had to reset. With 10.2.3, the screen froze, but the mouse kept working, and I had to reset. Like I said, the difference was slight Maybe I could have logged in remotely and killed processes to recover, but I have not checked. Judging by the system-level problems, I am guessing it is some driver/OpenGL/OS problem being tickled by the larger bitmaps, as other people have suggested in the forum. This also shows up in the system log repeatedly, and may be a clue:

Feb 12 14:17:00 Pandora mach_kernel: ATIRadeon::submit_buffer: Overflowed block
waiting for FIFO space. Have 3, need 6. RBBM_STATUS 0x80010140
Feb 12 14:17:01 Pandora mach_kernel: ATIRadeon::submit_buffer: Overflowed block
waiting for FIFO space. Have 3, need 6. RBBM_STATUS 0x80010140

As alpha software, the program works great. It works well for most things, such as the stock data files. I get what I deserve for getting greedy and trying huge bitmaps.

Thanks greatly for porting the program. You have done a wonderful job.

[HankR]

Thanks greatly for porting the program. You have done a wonderful job.

I'll accept your thanks on behalf of the entire Celestia development team. Most of the credit for the OS X port itself should go to Bob. I've just fixed a few minor bugs. And the overall credit for Celestia, of course, goes to Chris and the other core developers. The platform-dependent GUI is a fairly thin layer. Also, for the Mac OS X version, thanks go to Apple for shipping a first-class set of developer's tools free with its OS.

I think I probably introduced the problem with black appearance of Phobos, Deimos, etc. while trying to fix a previous bug that was causing jpegs to be loaded upside down. I haven't had a chance to take a second look at my code changes, but I'm pretty sure I'll find the problem there.

My system seems to handle large texture problems a little more gracefully than yours; I only see display problems, not freezes. I've never had to reset the system. Looks to me like you results (and similar reports by others) may be due to problems with the ATI drivers. Hopefully Apple will fix these eventually. But there are always going to be limits due to the amount of available texture memory. And those limits will always be exceeded by our greediness for higher resolution textures, at least until some kind of paging system is implemented.

- Hank

[Guest]

Hey Hank, please look into the problem where NEW people who are interesting in downloading the OS X version of Celestia are only receiving a 10-12K CelestiaMacOSX.dmg that will not mount?(see earlier posts) This has happened to me on multiple machines, with multiple different connections to the internet. It happens from this site as well as versiontracker(pressumably pointing back here).

I have heard nothing but rave reviews of celestia and would love to try it. Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks

[GerardJ]

I had the white screen problem. I realized that not only wasn't Celestia working, but Quartz Extreme wasn't working either.

Thanks for the tip. I'm not all to eager to turn Quartz extreme back on for my PCI based card. While it does improve the visual apperance of some things (like window drags) it dramatically increases the CPU load on my older machine.
I'm guessing that QE should probably be added to the list of requirements then?
Celestia would be the first app I'm aware of that fails to run if QE is not enabled, seems strange.