Crash when going to Earth, Earth's sattelites and Mars

[El Pelado]

i have the 1.3 version. i added galaxies, planets, stars, etc. when i start the program, i want to "fly home"(to earth) and the program crashes. i tried to do the trip in parts, or going first to the sun.... but it crashes.
someone can help me?

if you can answer me to uriel_g@yahoo.com
thanks

[selden]

El Pelado,

Unfortunately, nobody can help unless you provide the full details about your system. There are too many possible configurations and causes, especially since Celestia v1.3 is now using OpenGL v1.4 functionality.

Ideally, you should provide the following:

System hardware and operating system version
Graphics hardware and driver version
Celestia version, OpenGL version

e.g.:
256MB, 2GHz Pentium 4, Windows NT4, SP6A,
32MB ATI Rage 128 Pro, v6.60
Celestia v1.3.0pre3, OpenGL v1.2.1650

The OpenGL version is available from Celestia's Help menu. It's probably best to include at least the first three lines. If it's not an Nvidia card, Chris often will need to see *all* of the supported extensions that Celestia lists for your card. They can be cut-and-pasted from Celestia's Help menu.

E.g.
Vendor: ATI Technologies Inc.
Renderer: RAGE 128 Pro Ultra x86/SSE2
Version: 1.2.1652 WinNT Release

Max simultaneous textures: 2
Max texture size: 1024

Supported Extensions:
GL_ARB_multitexture
GL_ARB_texture_border_clamp
GL_ARB_texture_env_add
(and lots more that I'm not going to include in this example)


I hope this clarifies things a little.

[El Pelado]

here is my system:
128MB, 1.5GHz Pentium 4, Windows 98 se(i will put windows 2000),
64MB(im not sure, probably 32MB) NVIDIA GeForce2 MX/MX 400,
Celestia v1.3.0pre3,
(this i took from the help menu)
Vendor: NVIDIA Corporation
Renderer: GeForce2 MX/AGP/SSE2
Version: 1.2.2
Max simultaneous textures: 2
Max texture size: 2048
if its not enough tell me, and tell me how to look up for it.

thanks for the help

[selden]

Version: 1.2.2

There is your problem: the version of OpenGL that you have is rather old and you need to upgrade the graphic drivers. Apparently the version that you have has bugs in routines that Celestia uses. The current drivers are free for downloading from Nvidia, but they are very large: about 13.5MB. If you have only a dialup line, the download will take quite a while. Sorry.

To get the most recent drivers, go to the Web page http://www.nvidia.com/content/drivers/drivers.asp and download the most recent Nvidia installation program from there. Alternatively, you should be able to get a copy from the Web site of the manufacturer of your particular card. Don't get it from anywhere else: you don't know what you might be downloading.

On the Nvidia site, select Graphics Driver, GeForce and TNT, Windows 95/98/ME and Go

Then click on one of the 4 download sites, Accept the license, and then specify a reasonable download directory on your computer. After the download has finished, use the "Add/Remove Programs" option in the Control Panel to remove the old drivers, reboot, and then run this new installation program. After it has finished, reboot and you should be running with OpenGL v1.4.0.

I hope this helps.

[Guest]

Version: 1.2.2

There is your problem: the version of OpenGL that you have is rather old and you need to upgrade the graphic drivers. Apparently the version that you have has bugs in routines that Celestia uses

Oh dear, is this a 'new' prob with Celestia1.3 ?
what I mean is, I am still using Celestia 1.2.5 _OK_ on my :-
Vendor: NVIDIA Corporation
Renderer: GeForce2 GTS/AGP/SSE
Version: 1.2.1
Max simultaneous textures: 2
Max texture size: 2048
with WindowsME and 128MBram

I was going to get round to installing Celestia1.3 soon
but will I need to then upgrade the nvidia drivers ?
This could be a bit of a pain, (49k modem !) especially as it is all working ok for all my other tasks ( ie. if it aint broke ,, etc ! )
oops, just realised that I'm not loged in,, it is I MalcolmP

[selden]

MalcolmP,

Chris (Celestia's primary author) will have to say for sure, but my understanding is that most, if not all, of the vertex shading routines have been rewritten in Celestia v1.3 to use OpenGL v1.4's GL_ARB... routines.

However, you may be able to run it by typing Control-V immediately after starting Celestia. By chaniging start.cel you probably can give yourself more time before you need to type a Control-V.

Celestia v1.3 has at least 5 levels of shading routines.
When it starts up, it tries to use all of the levels that your OpenGL library claims to support. One of the features in v1.3 is that you can use the Control-V command to step through them. The first time you type a Control-V it reverts to the minimum level of shading (BASIC). That mode doesn't use any of the new vertex shading routines and should work on all cards with all levels of OpenGL. If you can start Celestia at some location away from the planets (modify or eliminate start.cel) then you can give yourself more time to type it.

Then you can goto a planet and turn on the other levels to find out which ones are usable. I'm sure Chris would be glad to find out which ones work and which ones cause problems.

In principle, you can add a line to Celestia's .cfg file to tell it to disable particular OpenGL routines, but I don't know which ones are appropriate for which level of shader support.

I hope this helps a little.

[El Pelado]

i have a fast connection, so dont worry.
but i have some questions:
1) what the F**k is OpenGl? it cames with windows or with the video card or with Celestia?
2) nothing bad will happen if i install the opengl that you told me to install? or there is any risk?

thanks

[El Pelado]

i have a question, maybe the answer has to do with the same problem, but when i first installed the program, i couldn't see mars, venus, earth, saturn, titan, jupiter.... all the planets with haze i could not see well, i saw a big cloud and i couldnt see the planet. then i deactivate the haze from the solarsys.ssc and everything was right again.
what can i do to see haze and planets? or its the same problem of the opengl?

[chris]

i have a question, maybe the answer has to do with the same problem, but when i first installed the program, i couldn't see mars, venus, earth, saturn, titan, jupiter.... all the planets with haze i could not see well, i saw a big cloud and i couldnt see the planet. then i deactivate the haze from the solarsys.ssc and everything was right again.
what can i do to see haze and planets? or its the same problem of the opengl?

Earlier NVIDIA drivers had a bug with fog in software vertex program emulation that made the haze effect unusable. Celestia is supposed to detect older drivers and not use haze. In Celestia 1.3.0pre2, this check for older drivers was circumvented. I fixed that in pre3 . . . Drivers that report an OpenGL version earlier than 1.3.1 exhibit the fog bug. If you want haze, download the latest drivers from http://www.nvidia.com. Sorry if I sound like a broken record here . . .

--Chris

[chris]

i have a fast connection, so dont worry.
but i have some questions:
1) what the F**k is OpenGl? it cames with windows or with the video card or with Celestia?

OpenGL is a library of functions for rendering 3D graphics. A very basic version of OpenGL comes with Windows, but if you want to take advantage of hardware accelerated 3D graphics, you need to install drivers that come with your graphics board. The drivers are constantly being updated, with performance improvements, bug fixes, and new features, so it's good to keep up and download new versions from the graphics chipset vendor.

2) nothing bad will happen if i install the opengl that you told me to install? or there is any risk?

The risk is low and the potential benefits high. Celestia will likely run noticeably faster when you upgrade your driver, as you have a very old version.

--Chris

[El Pelado]

first of all: YOUR PROGRAM IS WONDERFULL!!!!!!!!!
the only thing that should be changed is the galaxies without color. it should be great to wacht the real M31.

i have 2 other things:
1) when i first install the program(1.3.0) it all worked good. except for one thing: i couldnt put a bumpmap on earth. i tried many that i downloaded, but it didnt work. the only thing that i could do was to put the moon bumpmap. why it didnt work??
2)i know how to make stars, but can i put stars in other galaxies??

[El Pelado]

i installed the new opengl. but not all of the problem was solved.
first, to be able to see the earth, i needed to remove lots of .ssc files, like satelites around earth. and then everything works. but i still cant put a bumpmap on earth. i have the earthbump4k.jpg and when i put it, i dont see any difference. and when i put the earthbump.jpg that i have, i cant reach to earth.

what can i do?
where can i find a good bumpmap?

[selden]

El Pelado,

Did you remember to update \data\solarsys.ssc to specify the name of your bumpmap image?

It should now look something like

Code: Select all

   # NormalMap "earthbump4k.jpg"
   BumpMap "earthbump4k.jpg"
   BumpHeight 4.5


You need to remove the # (comment character) in front of both BumpMap and BumpHeight and you need to make sure the name of the bumpmap file is correct, too.

Also, don't forget that the image size has to be correct. The dimensions must be a power of two. e.g. 4096x2048 or 1024x512.

[selden]

first, to be able to see the earth, i needed to remove lots of .ssc files, like satelites around earth. and then everything works.

That is because of the limited amount of memory in your graphics card. It is not big enough to hold all of the texture maps. This could be part of your problem when using such a large bumpmap. It may not fit along with a high resolution surface texture for the Earth.

You might try adding the line

Code: Select all

CompressTexture True

to solarsys.ssc, right after the BumpMap line. (I'm not sure if that works for BumpMap jpegs.)

You also might want to consider upgrading to a card with a lot more memory. Nvidia cards with 128MB are readily available. Apparently one model of the FX 5600 will be available with 256MB, but they'll be quite expensive for a while.

[MalcolmP]

Selden & Chris :
Thank you, very helpful comments, all noted for when I do the upgrade.

PS I probably would have done it by now except I got distracted by learning how to do some 3D modelling stuff ! ( no one responded to my plea for a Ulysses model, so I guess there isn't one out there, so I've got an embryo one under construction :) )

[El Pelado]

something more:
in the help menu, in the info of the opengl is written :

Max simultaneous textures: 2
Max texture size: 2048

the max texture zise means that my celestia won't recognize textures of 4k right? only 1k or 2k??
and what is Max simultaneous textures: 2? what does it means?

an other thing:
what does the spec texture does?

now all my problems where solved(i think) the only problem is with the textures.
someone know a place to download 2k textures of the earthmap, earthspec and earthbump? i have ocnverted the 4k bump to 2k, but the grafs are too bad.

ah, one more thing, how can i put pictures here? i wanna ask showing my problems.

last thing
THANK YOU ALL FOR THE HELP

[El Pelado]

noone answer me about putting stars in different galaxies. is it possible?

[jim]

Hi El Pelado,

It seams that you try to install all addons that you can find. But your computer i would say it's like Ferrari engine in a Mini ;-). That means you have a good processor but the rest is to weak.
I think your GF2 MX will not work with bump maps and specular maps in Celestia. You need at least a real GF2.
With only 128Mb ram it's better to use 2k textures (maximal 4k DDS textures). One 4k texture can get a size of 43Mb in the ram!
For 8k (DDS) textures i recommend minimum 256Mb of memory and for 16k 512Mb ram.
Set the windows swapfile to minimum 512Mb or better 1Gb.


I hoppe now you unterstand why something is wrong on your system. Before you try to install all Celestia addons upgrade your computer.

Jens

[selden]

El Pelado,

Sorry, no, it is not yet possible to put individual stars in another galaxy using STC files. Essentially, stars can only be as far away as 16K light years from the Sun

There are several different reasons for this: numeric resolution in the positions as well as limitations in how the Z buffers are designed in current graphics cards, for example. . There are rumors that future graphics cards will use floating point instead of integer arithmetic, which should make it possible to remove this limitation.

It might also be possible to change how Celestia defines star locations, but I don't think that will happen soon.

[El Pelado]

thanks
i have a question where can i dowload 1k or 2k bumpmaps? i have only problems with the earth bumpmap
about the viedo card, i will have to wait to buy a new one.