Celestia v1.6.0 Release Candidate 1 available for testing

[selden]

Windows Celestia v1.6.0 Release Candidate 1 is now available for testing.

Please report in the Bugs forum any problems you find with it.
Be sure to include "Celestia v1.6.0 RC1" in the subject line.

Reminder: do not install it into the same directory where you have a previous version of Celestia.
That will break things badly.

Suggestion: rename your current Celestia directory to be Celestia_151 (if that's what it is)
Then install Celestia into the directory Celestia which the installer creates.

[edit]
Please note: the location and format of the RC file have changed.
Please download
http://www.celestiamotherlode.net/creat ... 6_0rc1.zip
(33 MegaBytes)
You'll have to extract the installer from the Zip file before running it.

Sorry for the inconvenience. It's an ibiblio policy not to provide executable programs for direct download. But it's much faster than the previous server! There's no need to download it again if you did get the other version. It's exactly the same installer program, just put into a zip file.
[/edit]

[t00fri]

Have a look, it now contains my revamped Mercury texture, check it out...I think it also looks fine at medium and low resolutions.

Please, check out also my binary orbits! It's all new.

And my globular clusters, of course

Fridger

[ANDREA]

Sorry to trouble here, but I think I found a bug in 160rc1.
If you look at the image you'll see that, even if there is a plethora of Jupiter Moons, if I right click on Jupiter I have only 5 moons shown.
I checked for all planets with moons, and here the results:
Earth and Mars are OK
Jupiter 5 moons
Saturn 13 moons
Uranus 5 moons
Neptune 4 moons
Pluto (yes, I know it's not a planet, but I tried the same) only 1 moon.
Unless there is same hidden reason for this, I think it's a bug, at least in the Italian version.
Will you please check if this is present in the other languages?
Thank you.
Bye

Andrea

[abramson]

Confirmed, English installation. I guess this is by design, to avoid the long list of minor moons. Just like the orbits can now be plotted separately for principal and minor moons? Those five are the "not minor" Jupiter's moons (Amalthea must be very happy for her promotion to main moon ). It's a good idea. The full list of moons is still available in the solar system browser.
G

[ANDREA]

Confirmed, English installation. I guess this is by design, to avoid the long list of minor moons. Just like the orbits can now be plotted separately for principal and minor moons? Those five are the "not minor" Jupiter's moons (Amalthea must be very happy for her promotion to main moon ). It's a good idea. The full list of moons is still available in the solar system browser. G

Yes, I supposed the same, but Amalthea's discrepancy was not clear.
Its promotion to principal moon is due to its strange and nice color?
And so why Pan had not the same importance, for its riding between Saturn's rings?
Even if I agree that having 63 names for Jupiter's moons window is cluttering, I think a scrolling window could solve the problem.
Anyway, it's not so important, we can survive without all of them in the window.
Thank you for checking, Guillermo.
Bye

Andrea

[Reiko]

Have a look, it now contains my revamped Mercury texture, check it out...I think it also looks fine at medium and low resolutions.

Please, check out also my binary orbits! It's all new.

And my globular clusters, of course

Fridger

Really like the Mercury texture.

[Reiko]

There is no Nix and Hydra for Pluto?

[selden]

I may be misunderstanding what you're saying about the moons.

I think there are two separate issues here:
1. whether there's a menu selection for rendering an object
2. what category a particular moon is in

The separation between major and minor moons is intentional.
Their orbits and labels can be selected separately in the Render menu.
Which is in what category is controlled by a Class value, which you can Modify if you want.
The choice as to which is what type may be worth discussing.

Having additional menu items to select the rendering of an object based on all possible Class values seems to me to be a reasonable request. Someone could write a script to change their visibility, too.

Code changes for v1.6.0 are frozen, except for fixing critical bugs. I don't think that's what this is.
Menus are particularly hard to change these days, since they are multi-lingual and need to be translated into all of the languages that Celestia supports.

However, I do think someone (not me) should submit an appropriate Bug report or two in the Bugs forum, so they can be considered for v1.6.1.

[selden]

There is no Nix and Hydra for Pluto?

That's very strange.
I've sent a note to Grant Hutchison asking about it.

[selden]

There is no Nix and Hydra for Pluto?

That's very strange.
I've sent a note to Grant Hutchison asking about it.

numberedmoons.ssc is missing.
I've reported it in the Bugs forum.

[cartrite]

In SVN 4710, only extras/minormoons.ssc is included in celestia.iss. There are a few other ssc files in extras including numberedmoons.ssc. Users may be missing comets, and some spacecraft too.
The comets.ssc in the extras folder only has Hale Bopp while the data/comets.ssc file has 3 other comets. Why the 2 files? Couldn't they be combined?
cartrite

[selden]

cartrite,

Could you generate a list of missing files and report it in the Bugs forum?

Thanks!

[cartrite]

I could but I can't test it. I don't run WinXP anymore. I can even edit celestia.iss but again, I can't test. This is the file that generates the Win32 installer script.
I could add the missing files from the "extra" folder via a list to the bugs forum.
cartrite

[cartrite]

I've reported it in the Bugs forum

Is this 2774308? It looks like a different report. I'll submit another.
I submitted bug # 2776201 to address this at Source Forge.
cartrite

[Spaceman Spiff]

Can I suggest the context menu groups minor moons into a further offshoot menu:

Code: Select all


[...                ]---------------------
[Satelliti  >       ][Amaltea            ]
[Marca              ][Callisto           ]
---------------------[Europa             ]
                     [Ganimede           ]
                     [Io                 ]
                     [- - - - - - - - - -]---------------------
                     [Satelliti picola > ][Adrastea           ]
                     ---------------------[Aitne              ]
                                          [...                ]



That way, the user only needs to contend with a menu of 60 mini-moons if they are really after one of them. Also, there should be a large amount of code re-use from the offshoot menu for the major moons anyway.

Yes, I supposed the same, but Amalthea's discrepancy was not clear.

I suspect the apportioning of major moons follows a former IAU nomenclature using Roman numerals (good for you, Andrea of Italy! ). The Galilean (Medician?) Moons were Jupiter I, II, III, and IV. When Amalthea was discovered it became Jupiter V. Seven further outer, irregular moons were found and for a long time left Jupiter at 12 moons, the inner five considered regular, thus major.

For Saturn, Uranus and Neptune it is similar. Pan has a Roman numeral (XVIII), but it seems it isn't considered major.

I would have thought Saturn had only seven major moons, and Neptune just one. Ah well, I'm wrong again.

Spiff.

[selden]

I've reported it in the Bugs forum

Is this 2774308? It looks like a different report. I'll submit another.
I submitted bug # 2776201 to address this at Source Forge.
cartrite

I had not entered a tracker item.
Thanks for doing so!

[Guckytos]

Some strange encounters with RC1:

Have tried to install it on Windows 98, still getting the error message after installation: "Missing MSVCP80.dll ...". And Celestia won't start. And yes, I am sure that I am using RC1. When I replace it with the precompiled SVN4701 exe file it starts without any problem.

But there is then something strange happening. All the menu points "File, ..., Help" with their submenus are in English, while all on the screen and the mouse context menu is in my native language. Is this normal?

And the third thing is that the keyboard shortcuts are not working under Windows 98 as was already the case in 1.5.0. I thought Chris had that fixed.

Will test it tomorrow on the XP machine.

Best regards,

Guckytos

[Guckytos]

Okay,

on XP everthing installs and works without problems. Strange, why then the complaint on 98 about the missing DLL?

None the less I noted also on XP some things, where I am not sure if they are bugs or just overlooked things.

First of all is the display of "Phase Angle" in the HUD on left upper corner. This is the only part of the HUD that is not localized. It looks really strange with the rest in german and then this entry.
I also looked in the de.po and corresponding the celestia.pot (both latest version from SVN) and can't find a string for that entry there. Please note that one for 1.6.1.

Second has also to do with localization (and I am also not sure if it is a bug or a feature [MS would definitly say feature ]. When I start to use the Enter/Name/Enter for the german "Milchstra?e" I can see the english "Milky Way" in the selection. Is that really wanted? I thought it should then only be german.
Same goes for example for "LMC" and "SMC", in german "Gro?e Magellansche Wolke" and "Kleine Magellansche Wolke". I only quick-tested it for some galaxies.

And while I am at it, a feature request:
Please assign in 1.6.1 a shortcut to open the display options. I was just looking a bit around and was always opening/closing that menu to play around. I mean, once I switch spacecraft trajectories on and go to Saturn, things around that planet look real crowded.

It would also be very good if a spacecraft trajectory could be displayed in parts (like select actual date and the specify how far in the past/future you want to see it).

Third, why not use a different color or a dashed line for that part of trajectory that the craft has not yet travelled through at the time of observation? Would also make it easier to find a small dot in space.

Best regards,

Guckytos

[Vincent]

Christian,

First of all is the display of "Phase Angle" in the HUD on left upper corner. This is the only part of the HUD that is not localized. It looks really strange with the rest in german and then this entry.

This is a known issue that I recently reported on the devs mailing list.
The reason is that the 'Phase angle' string is not marked for localization
in celestiacore.cpp (line 3280). It will be fixed in 1.6.1.

Second has also to do with localization (and I am also not sure if it is a bug or a feature [MS would definitly say feature ]. When I start to use the Enter/Name/Enter for the german "Milchstra?e" I can see the english "Milky Way" in the selection. Is that really wanted? I thought it should then only be german.
Same goes for example for "LMC" and "SMC", in german "Gro?e Magellansche Wolke" and "Kleine Magellansche Wolke". I only quick-tested it for some galaxies.

This is actually a feature. Both the English and the translated names are
available. This can be useful, e.g., when searching an object using its
original name from the .ssc/.stc/.dsc file.

[Guckytos]

Christian,

First of all is the display of "Phase Angle" in the HUD on left upper corner. This is the only part of the HUD that is not localized. It looks really strange with the rest in german and then this entry.

This is a known issue that I recently reported on the devs mailing list.
The reason is that the 'Phase angle' string is not marked for localization
in celestiacore.cpp (line 3280). It will be fixed in 1.6.1.

Second has also to do with localization (and I am also not sure if it is a bug or a feature [MS would definitly say feature ]. When I start to use the Enter/Name/Enter for the german "Milchstra?e" I can see the english "Milky Way" in the selection. Is that really wanted? I thought it should then only be german.
Same goes for example for "LMC" and "SMC", in german "Gro?e Magellansche Wolke" and "Kleine Magellansche Wolke". I only quick-tested it for some galaxies.

This is actually a feature. Both the English and the translated names are
available. This can be useful, e.g., when searching an object using its
original name from the .ssc/.stc/.dsc file.

Thanks Vincent,

that clarifies those points. I thought so more or less, but wasn't sure. Must have overlooked that about the "phase angle" in the dev emails. Sorry for that.

Best regards,

Guckytos