Celestia 1.6.1 SVN

[Reiko]

What I get is the 2nd pic. I never get anything like the first one and I do have it openGL 2.0.

Reiko, have you used the celestia.exe conained in this zipfile? If not, try it. Drop the celestia.exe of the package into your celestia folder (you can rename
it or the original, so that you do not lose your original celestia). Then run the new one.

That one works! Thank you very much.

[Fenerit]

Hi! With Guillermo's patch I get this render (no bad!) at 1 light year from the true position of the stars:



This behave like a "flash" when one go to the stars.
Then the stars are displayed as usual.

[abramson]

This behave like a "flash" when one go to the stars. Then the stars are displayed as usual.

Yep. Chris is aware of it. According to his message to me:

The new star rendering only applies to stars seen at a distance. It is not yet used for stars within MaxSolarSystemSize of the viewer (I think that this is still set to one light year.)

So, at 1 ly there is a discontinuity that is more evident for intriniscaly very bright stars. But that's life when it comes to developing versions not yet commited to the source repository by the author, isn't it?

[Fenerit]

Absolutely! Yet because I love that rendering, indeed.

[Reiko]

Will there be a version with the new stars and no fading orbits? The fading orbits look strange and I do not understand the purpose for it.
Does somebody plan on making an SVN version with stars that looks like what Chris made with diffraction spikes? Just for fun maybe?

[danielj]

It appears that Celestia SVN and Celestia RC are following separate paths.
In the latest distribution of Celestia 1.6.0 SVN (not 1.6.1),we have new star rendering as the only new feature.
However Celestia 1.6.1 RC0 have nothing new (apparently,I could be wrong) and in the changes log,1.6.1 is not included.Is there any reason for this?

[John Van Vliet]

--- edit ---

[selden]

Celestia v1.6.1 will be strictly a bug-fix release with some updated translation files. It will not include any new features. Its bug-fixes and translation files are included in the SVN trunk repository along with new features, but many of those new features are incomplete. The next major release of Celestia might be either 1.7 or 2.0 depending on how many of the new features are included.

[t00fri]

It appears that Celestia SVN and Celestia RC are following separate paths.
In the latest distribution of Celestia 1.6.0 SVN (not 1.6.1),we have new star rendering as the only new feature.
However Celestia 1.6.1 RC0 have nothing new (apparently,I could be wrong) and in the changes log,1.6.1 is not included.Is there any reason for this?

Daniel,

1.6.1 is a so-called "dot release" and thus by definition only contains bug-fixes. No new features.
The new stuff will be in the so-called trunk version of SVN. If you look more carefully, you will find already many changes and improvements there. The last official 1.6.0 release is dated July 9th 2009. Hence all entries in SVN.trunk that are more recent than about 16 months are NEW. You will find many of those... Just go and have another look!

For example, there are continuous (time consuming) updates of the coordinates & orbital parameters of extrasolar objects and other bodies. You will find many more new data entries in the data/ directory!

There are no new textures, partly because I have stopped to make textures for the official Celestia distro, partly because Ciclops was also slow in providing new official raw imaging maps. E.g. there is still no new official upgrade of the Titan map since Feb 26, 2009 and the last update from Iapetus is from Oct 17, 2008! Of course, I have been doing lots of 16k VT's from many Saturnian moons, the Moon, Mercury etc, but these are reserved for my forthcoming Celestia.Sci distribution. You should know that for the official distributions we have to be conservative as to using available imaging data.

Actually, Chris' new star rendering is NOT yet part of the SVN trunk. It has only been implemented so far via patches. The reason is simply that the code is not yet finished.

One of the big news of the forthcoming official Celestia distribution (1.7?) will be the graphical user interface (GUI) that now uses the same Qt toolkit for ALL supported operating systems.
Then after startup, Celestia will look precisely the same in all operating systems. Moreover, maintaining of the GUI in the various OS will be MUCH less work, of course.

The Qt version has been developed in parallel since a long time and meanwhile is nice and stable. It offers many new features beyond the old Windows GUI, for example.

Apart from that, it is true: most developers have made a break recently, each one for somewhat different reasons, I suppose .

Fridger

[Fenerit]

It appears that Celestia SVN and Celestia RC are following separate paths.
In the latest distribution of Celestia 1.6.0 SVN (not 1.6.1),we have new star rendering as the only new feature.
However Celestia 1.6.1 RC0 have nothing new (apparently,I could be wrong) and in the changes log,1.6.1 is not included.Is there any reason for this?

Danielj, you can get your SVN and compile it, check:
http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Celestia/Development/Win32_platform

or following these steps:

- Download the Microsoft .NET Framework 3.5 Service pack 1 (Full Package) from here:
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?FamilyID=d0e5dea7-ac26-4ad7-b68c-fe5076bba986
and install it by clicking on the setup. Note: in Xp this package must be installed first, or the SDK's installation will not start. I don't know about Vista\7, under such aspect.

- Download the DVD_ISO Microsoft SDK for windows 7\Vista\Xp from here:
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?familyid=71DEB800-C591-4F97-A900-BEA146E4FAE1&displaylang=en
The file ISO can be unburned, but simply extracted by the common zip programs (WinRAR, Winzip, 7zip) inside a temporary folder of your choice. Then install it from that folder by running the Setup.

- Download the Visual Studio Express Edition 2008 (C++) from here (mind the tabs):
http://www.microsoft.com/express/Downloads/
and install it by clicking on the Setup file.

- Download TortoiseSVN (the client program for downloading the Celestia source code from Sourceforge):
http://tortoisesvn.net/downloads
and install it by clicking on the Setup file.

The steps above are required even to compile the future Qt versions. Qt version needs further library to be downloaded and installed, but as start, you can take confidence with such compilation and successively involve yourself with the Qt's compilation.

Once you have accomplished such operations, make an empty folder named like you wish (e.a "..\celestiaSVN") under the root of you hard disk, do launch the TortoiseSVN through the right click menu on that folder by choosing "SVN checkout" menu, a window will be displayed: insert the string:

https://celestia.svn.sourceforge.net/svnroot/celestia/trunk

inside the textbox named "URL of repository" and press "Ok". If the Tortoise doesn't start soon the download of the trunk, then, by the right menu, always on that folder you have created, click on "SVNupdated": this will download (slowly) the trunk. A new window will be displayed showing the names of the trunk's files which undertaken the download. Wait until finished.

At this point start Visual Studio Express Edition, load in it the file "celestia.snl" and wait that the MS "intellisense" tecnology do finish its performances (a progress bar on the bottom of the program will advance). Then press F5 key and wait (you will see the code parsed within the bottom tabbed window). Once finished (whether there is not errors), a fresh "celestia.exe" will be ready in the main "..\CelestiaSVN" folder (or where you have choosed). Take up the file, backup the previous, and substitute it to the default official "celestia.exe".
Then you can check the SVN root weekly with Tortoise (right click on "SVNupdates"); if there are news (updates) they will be downloaded always in such folder, to be compiled as explained.

[Fenerit]

One precisation, Danielj: the code updates for the binary EXE to be compiled must be deals diversely from the updates for the text data. In this latter case, if a data file is updated (ssc, stc, dsc... etc,) simply copy the updated file from the trunk you have on your disk and paste it inside you default Celestia's installation, in substitution of the previous one, as it is (backup the existent, whether you wish).