Cosmographia

[ajtribick]

Chris L had a demo of absolutely vast numbers of asteroids being displayed in a Celestia-like program at one stage...

Celestia as-is would have a pretty lousy framerate (among many other things) if we put all the known asteroids in there...

[t00fri]

Chris L had a demo of absolutely vast numbers of asteroids being displayed in a Celestia-like program at one stage...

Celestia as-is would have a pretty lousy framerate (among many other things) if we put all the known asteroids in there...

Sure, but let's not talk about Chris L's new "Celestia-like" program here... Everyone is free to download and compile the code from here
http://code.google.com/p/cosmographia/

The rendering is done by means of the VESTA library from ASTOS solutions (that I like quite a lot):
http://www.astos.de/products/vesta

I am following the Cosmographia code development since several months via SVN.

Fridger

[John Van Vliet]

--- edit ---

[t00fri]

there is STA - cambrian-3.0
http://www.osor.eu/projects/sta

Yes, as I pointed out several times in the past:
viewtopic.php?f=2&t=16330&start=12
...

The purpose of STA is quite different from Celestia. Mainly devoted to an optimization of space mission trajectories and corresponding visualization. Indeed, VESTA is also used there for rendering.

But since several months, ChrisL 's coding activity is largely focussed on his new Cosmographia program. As far as I read, it is planned to also be (commercially) available as a MAC app. The Cosmographia license is somewhat different from that of Celestia. ChrisL is the only developer.

Fridger

[Fenerit]

That mean the end of Celestia project?

[selden]

That mean the end of Celestia project?

No.

[Fenerit]

Yup! Such peremptory reply makes me breathe a sigh of relief.

[CAP-Team]

But developing Celestia is now low priority? Except for adding new data as it is discovered?

[ajtribick]

But developing Celestia is now low priority? Except for adding new data as it is discovered?

For whom?

The various members of the dev team may have different opinions on this...

[Fenerit]

I've seen that Cosmographia starts from the beginning with a particle system embedded (VESTA library) and I recall that particle system was planned to be inserted in Celestia some time ago. Of course such a feature is irrilevant for the astronomical matters, but... What one should wonder about? Why Cosmographia yes and Celestia not? From here my remarks.

[chris]

I've seen that Cosmographia starts from the beginning with a particle system embedded (VESTA library) and I recall that particle system was planned to be inserted in Celestia some time ago. Of course such a feature is irrilevant for the astronomical matters, but... What one should wonder about? Why Cosmographia yes and Celestia not? From here my remarks.

The existence of Cosmographia doesn't mean the end of Celestia, nor does it mean the end of my own participation in Celestia development.

Regarding the asteroids, Cosmographia isn't using standard particle systems to represent them. There's a custom OpenGL shader program that computes the positions of asteroids at single precision from Keplerian elements. With this technique, you can't actually visit the individual asteroids and see models, etc. But, it does convey the overall dynamics of the large asteroid families, which is the main reason I think you'd want to view so many objects simultaneously. It wouldn't be too hard to take the shader and adapt it for Celestia, which also supports custom geometry classes (though not as cleanly as the VESTA engine used by Cosmographia.)

--Chris

[MiR]

The existence of Cosmographia doesn't mean the end of Celestia, nor does it mean the end of my own participation in Celestia development.

So, nobody gives a response..? Then I'll do it:

This message make me happy!

Michael

[Fenerit]

Hi! - out of topic -
Does someone has compiled Cosmographia from source? I got several issues, and I do not know whether followed the correct procedure. Diversely from Celestia it want for all Qt SDK (1.7 Gb) not the library only (228 Mb), apart the creator, right? Because with the library only I get:
1 - right mouse doesn't work
2 - I'm able to see the texture for external planets but not for internal (Moon also)
3 - Menu bar doesn't appear when the mouse is moved toward left side screen
4 - keys for observer's view pivoting (like Celestia's numeric keypad) doesn't work.

Apart all that, I like how it start (fade in) in orrery view.

[selden]

Split from asteroid thread.

[selden]

I see none of the problems you mention.

I use QtCreator v2.2.0 [based on Qt v4.7.4 (32bit)] under Windows 7 Professional SP1 x64.

However, I did change the build directory (in QtCreator) to be cosmographia-read-only so that all of its files could be found when I run Cosmographia from QtCreator. In addition, quite a few of Qt's dlls had to be copied into the directory containing Cosmographia.exe (cosmographia-read-only\build ) so that Cosmographia would run by itself, without QtCreator.

[Fenerit]

Yes, I've done that and if fact after compiling Qt creator starts Cosmographia, but with such issues (in my case). When I create the main dir in which to place the .EXE, when I launch it, messages are shown indicating which .DLLs needs. After done that, Cosmographia starts but always with such issues. I've even moved here and there the subfolders through the main root just to see if paths needed to be reconfigured, but without success. They must be as it is. Because I do not have installed all the qt SDK since Celestia doesn't need of, mine was just a try to see what should be happened. Thus, I wonder whether you Selden have ALL the Qt SDK installed instead of just the library.

[selden]

Sorry, I didn't mention that. Yes, I have the entire kit installed, even the support for all of the different types of smartphones, although I don't expect to ever develop software for them.

[t00fri]

I frequently build Cosmographia since several months from SVN (almost daily, since Chris is VERY industrious in committing updates). With old graphics cards the program crashes after start-up. With new Qt tools and more recent graphics I encounter no basic functional problems. I usually build under Linux after modifying only the target directory for the executable. I use Qt >4.7.3 and Qt-creator > 2.1.0.

ChrisL wrote somewhere that a very recent Qt version is required. I always use the latest available for a given OS.

I found a number of issues in the code, but don't see any reason to report, since conversely, the Celestia Devs were not informed by Chris about this project...So I suppose he prefers to do this job all by himself

Fridger

[selden]

Problems encountered in Cosmographia can be reported on its issues page
http://code.google.com/p/cosmographia/issues/list

[t00fri]

Problems encountered in Cosmographia can be reported on its issues page
http://code.google.com/p/cosmographia/issues/list

I am of course aware of the issues page. You seem the only active beta-tester besides Chris himself.

Fridger