Celestia 1.7.0 Development will begin soon

[Mzbuj]

It is really good news. My dream is to have the Celestia for VR
Best Regards!

[Neirow]

I would like to join but i ain't that good with programming, however
scince my pc couldn't handle Space Engineers i never updated to it and keept working with celestia over the past 2 years i have created about 2 GB of extra data (textures exoplanets, binaries etc) i don't know if it helps but if so i'd be glad to share them
also is there gonna be a mass parameter in this new version?

[Neirow]

i'd like to join i have updated the textures and worked on exoplanets over the past 2 years and would like to contribute to this

[florian]

Thanks for restarting this. I don't have a whole lot of time, but I care about Celestia, and I can program.

I think there are a number of areas where celestia could be improved:
* Update infrastructure (64bits, newer compiler, latest dependencies...)
* General bug fixing
* Updated assets
* Add-on manager / installer / uninstaller / automated repository
* Graphical improvements
* Mobile version
* ...


I think moving to github is great, that way we will be able to easily take in contributions, and to track bugs and feature requests. Speaking of which, it looks like issue tracking is turned off in github. Could you turn it on?

[Alexell]

florian, I agree with you. If you know how to program and want to join the team, I approve.
The issue tracking I turn when we start to work in a team on the new changes. Now they are preparing to upload in repozitory existing local changes.

[Alexell]

omega13a, Of course it is necessary to update the catalogs of stars, planets, exoplanets, and other objects. But do not misunderstand me: not all at once. First, we will make changes in the repository that I and other people have been doing locally.

[omega13a]

I still have a few hundred stars I don't have enough info for. I'm slowly finding that info.

[Neirow]

so how would one with little to non programming knowledge but a rather large astronomical knowledge go about joining the project?

[davidwferrin]

dear sir: I really like this program, it lists SOL as G2V, Lum: 1 x Sun at Dis: .466525, App. dia. 1dec 8min 45.4sec, 1 radius x Sun(.696 x 10^9meters), Surface temp 5860 K(I use 5770 for reasons noted below). I use this to test the info given, it a program on my Casio fx-9750 G plus calculator, input given Lum, input given Radius, input given temp, (Lum x 3.826002872 x 10^26)/(4pi x (Radius)^2 x (temp)^4 x (5.6704 x 10^-8) x 1 put this in E( as this gives emissivity and can only vary between zero and unity, depending on the properties of the surface). next 4pi x (Radius)^2 x (temp)^4 x (5.6704 x 10^-8) x E put this in I(Lum in watts). next I/(3.826002872 x 10^26) = given Lum. next 4th root of ((given Lum x 3.826002872 x 10^26)/(4pi x (Radius)^2 x (5.6704 x 10^-8) x e)) = given temp. next sqr root of ((given Lum x 3.826002872 x 10^26)/(4pi x (temp)^4 x (5.6704 x 10^-8) x E)) = given Radius. return to input loop.

So, the above program if given lum 1, radius .696 x 10^9, temp 5770, returns E= .999999999, lum in watts= 3.826002872 x 10^26, Lum 1, temp= 5770, Radius= 696000000.
This works very well for most stars, BUT, HIP 54463 / x Car / HD 96918, has returns like this

E= 34.22764019, lum in watts= 3.23679843 x 10^31, Lum= 84,600, temp 5550, Radius= 3.74 x 10^10,

All but E are OK, the emissivity is impossible, this is a problem for many SuperGiants...

Thank, David W. Ferrin

[Coder206]

Hello!

I hope you are doing well! I am new here, when I heard this news (version 1.7.0), I was very excited as a past Celestia user and advocate! I find the download of Space Engine a little too long to do and also I have trouble running it on my computer...
So thank you so much!

In regards, to the future of Celestia, are there any plans to utilize Mozilla's Rust Programming Language instead of CPP and also for the website to redesign it with HTML5?

Best regards,

Coder206

[Alexell]

Coder206, hi.
In the near future plans, this is not. Besides, this is not enough people with the necessary knowledge. But I like this idea

[Snowfall]

it really brings a lot of joy to me thinking that Celestia might actually come back from the dead! would there ever be any possibility of having adjustable/realistic lighting? that is one of the biggest reasons why i moved to Space Engine. if not, that's fine Celestia already has a lot of amazing features compared to Space Engine. i guess the comparison isn't really fair, though. bump map ability on spacecraft and asteroid models would be really nice though too. look now mi writing a wish list, i could go on for hours! derp!

i have a lot of good memories with Celestia, and im sure you folks have a lot of plans for it. ^^ you have all my support! <3

[Cham]

Snowfall

bump map ability on spacecraft and asteroid models would be really nice though too

This is already available in Celestia (actually normal mapping). You just need to use the CMOD file type, and maybe use the CMOD tool. See for example the Curiosity model available elsewhere on this forum :

viewtopic.php?f=23&t=17432

[Millennium]

A friend, Tim Goff in Alaska, tipped me off this morning to Celestia, and it's rebirth.

Have been looking for a 3D platform for exploring the Solar Neighborhood, Orion Spur, and Galaxy for many years now.

My goal now is to find one that includes Stellar Clusters, Streams, Moving Groups & Associations -- and the ability to scroll back and forth in time to show the morphological evolution of the Streams and their interrelationships.

So far, the only online 3D interactive visualization we have found is:

http://sci.esa.int/hipparcos/ob-stars-interactive/

Which does not have the time function, and doesn't particularly focus on the near Solar Neighborhood of the Local Cloud, but rather on the larger Associations of the greater Gould Belt.

We are talking with their team, and the RECONS team, about dramatically upgrading their interactive Star Stream mapping, and creating the first to resolve the 2-3 dozen known Cluster/Stream/Group/Associations in the immediate Solar Neighborhood.

Perhaps we can attract their interest to working with the Celestia team, and supporting each other.

Thanks to everyone involved, and I look forward to reporting a quick learning curve for me here on the Celestia Engine!


Millennium Twain

Stellar Kinematics Working Group
https://www.facebook.com/groups/315142532205754/

[Snowfall]

This is already available in Celestia

excellent

[FarGetaNik]

bump map ability on spacecraft and asteroid models would be really nice though too

Well it's kind of implemented, but stil causes a lot of trouble. It only works on special conditions, but not very well, see http://celestiaproject.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=30&t=17471. There is sure a lot of space to improve for Celestia, but the next big step seems to be 64bit support, which certainly is an important one. I too could list countless bugs and features I'd like to see, but there is no point in doing so yet.

i have a lot of good memories with Celestia, and im sure you folks have a lot of plans for it. ^^ you have all my support! <3

Nice to have you here Snowfall

[Janus]

64-bit is a pain.

I have it compiling, but it crashes on launch.
Trying to get the proper format of all the libraries in 64-bit.
I had to compile my own Lua & zlib, working on libpng, and it is weird.

Once I manage to get them all in 64-bit debug, I will be able to trace to trace the crash.
I suspect it is 32 vs 64 bit DLL files though.
Normally on wondows WOW64 handles all the change over in the background.
However, since Celestia does everything itself, not so much fun.

If I am correct, then I am considering some if/then compilation code for calling the correct DLL files.

Janus.

[Celestial Phineas]

Still...Request for TrueType or OpenType font support. It is extremely important for eastern Asian languages (Chinese, either simplified or traditional, Japanese and Korean), for which fonts with a large charset is needed. It just doesn't work fine with the texture font files.

Since Adobe and Google released the open source CJK font, Source Han Sans, it would also be a great idea to update the current ones as well.

[_M-Explorer_]

Hello developers, my Proxima b can be used? Here is the code:

Code: Select all

"Proxima Cen b" "Proxima"
{
   Texture "venus.jpg"
   Mass 1.3  # M.sin(i) = ?? earths
   Radius 8000

    EllipticalOrbit
    {
      Period         0.04 # Fictional
      SemiMajorAxis   0.04 # Fictional
      MeanLongitude   0    # Fictional and I don't know, what does it mean
      Inclination   0 # Fictional
    }

    UniformRotation
    {
      Period      24 # hours
      Inclination   0 # Fictional
      AscendingNode  0 # Fictional and I don't know, what does it mean
      MeridianAngle   0 # Fictional and I don't know, what does it mean
    }
}


Regards:
Matthew/Máté

[Hungry4info]

Why not use non-fictional values for the orbit parameters? (they can be found in the discovery paper)