How is OS X development proceeding?

[Guest]

Fabulous HankR!!
Working fine with 10.2.3 G4867. Certainly chews up my cpu! I assume you are probably not looking for bugs or feedback at this point, as you're still busy "hooking things up", correct?

Keep up the great work!

[Rodago]

Works great on my G4 400 10.2.3! Way smoother movement through the stars than the last version, even with the giant star database added. Loads faster too! It still has a few bugs, of course, but this is excellent for a pre-alpha! Keep up the good work!

-Rodago

[julesstoop]

Funny, on my G4-400/10.2.3 it's rather slow (markedly slower than previous versions). I'll probably need a never videoboard as well to enable ring & eclipse shadows. Nevertheless, it's very OK and heading in a good direction. (Nice prefs-panel
, with superfluous apply-buton)

Few bugs I've discovered thusfar:
- Scroll weel for closer/further doesn't work, nor does shift-right dragging.
- When I click on a star in the sky, a completely different star gets selected (some 30 arcdegrees off) if anything gets selected at all.
- A/Z for faster/slower doesn't work.

[Rickster]

Looks great. Doesn't look like it's figured out that it can use pixel & vertex shaders on the Radeon 8500, though. :(

[HankR]

Unfortunately, Celestia currently requires the GL_NV_vertex_program extension, which Apple's OpenGL doesn't support (even on nVidia cards). I believe Chris has said he plans to support GL_ARB_vertex_program eventually, which should work with Apple's latest OpenGL.

- Hank

[Rodago]

Posted: Sun Jan 26, 2003 9:29 pm    Post subject:


Funny, on my G4-400/10.2.3 it's rather slow (markedly slower than previous versions). I'll probably need a never videoboard as well to enable ring & eclipse shadows. Nevertheless, it's very OK and heading in a good direction. (Nice prefs-panel
, with superfluous apply-buton)

Yeah, I find that if you play around in the solar system, it does get noticeably slower than previous versions. But if you go directly outside the solar system after opening the program, moving around is noticeably faster. About the bugs, I've seen all of the mentioned ones on my system as well, and also a couple more that I've noticed:

-Adding a favorite freezes the program, and then the name is screwy after re-opening it (though it still takes you to the right place)
-Doesn't display all 3-D objects
-Orbits display incorrectly about half of the time, especially when coming within close proximity of the star.
-No comet tails (which I understand is new in 1.2.5)

However, I still stand by my statement that it's excellent for a pre-alpha. :)

-Rodago

[HankR]

A new alpha version of Celestia 1.2.5 for Mac OS X is now available for download at SourceForge. The release file with the new version is 'celestia-osx-1.2.5-a2.dmg'. This version does not include the data files (hence a much smaller, faster download). You'll have to copy the data files from the initial alpha release (they're inside the application package). IMPORTANT: Do not delete the earlier version until you've copied out the data files. Instructions for doing this are in the README file with the new release.

Here's what's changed from the previous alpha version (mostly bugfixes):

- Moved data files to '~/Library/Application Support/CelestiaResources'

- Fixed problem loading compressed '.dds' texture files

- Fixed problem with nightside texture maps

- Fixed problem with picking objects on screen (courtesy Colin K.)

- Fixed problem with latitude/longitude in "Go To Object" dialog

- Fixed problem with jpeg images loading inverted

- Fixed problems with keyboard commands

- Fixed problem with garbage in initial display

- Fixed problem with logo display timing

- Added autosave for window location

- Updated "About" box info

- Changed to new icon

Please report any problems with the new version on the Mac OS X topic in the "Celestia Bugs" forum.

- Hank

[Matt McIrvin]

Great work! The first alpha was already an amazing step forward, and this is much more usable.

- Fixed problem with latitude/longitude in "Go To Object" dialog

There still seems to be a problem with the distance parameter, if you use kilometers. (Also, an option to enter altitude instead of distance would be very convenient.)

[BusError]

Please report any problems with the new version on the Mac OS X topic in the "Celestia Bugs" forum.

- Hank

I don't think any of this went into CVS, the current CVS cocoa frontend doesn't work anymore either; it fails to find "Sol" in the star database, an can't attach anything to it.

Thats too bad, with chris having updated the shaders to ARB, they ought to work on OSX now!

[HankR]

A while ago I sent my changes for the Mac OS X version to Bob, who had offered to put them into CVS, but it doesn't look like he's had a chance to get to it. I've since made some additional code changes to accomodate Celestia version 1.3, and I plan now to check everything into CVS myself within a few days. I'm not sure when I'll do a new release -- probably not until after 1.3 is final. It will likely still be an "alpha", but should be an improvement over the current release. Be warned that there appear to be problems with the new rendering paths that may take some time to work out. Also, there hasn't been a lot of progress on the GUI, although most functions will be available via keyboard commands as they are now.

- Hank

[BusError]

Please post here when you have updated CVS; I don't mind building it instead of waiting for a binary, and if you have a write access to cvs, I'll send you any changes I make

also you should register on the forums ;-)

[Guest]

Okay, slightly off-topic, but still an improvement.

Yesterday I installed the 10.2.5 update. Thusfar my G4-400 with Ati Rage 128 pro wouldn't render eclipse shadows: after the 10.2.5 update it does (with celestia 1.2.5 pre-alpha 2)!

[Guest]

That was me again. Strange though: just after I posted it registered as my post, when I came back a few hours later I had turned into guest.

Just to be sure:

Jules Stoop

[F]

Just wanted to check in and see how the development is going. Celestia 1.3.0 looks damn cool with its multiple views. Any news about 1.3.0 for MacOS X?

Thanks and hoping for a new version.

/F

[HankR]

Yes, Celestia 1.3.0 is very nice. I'm hoping to release a preliminary version for Mac OS X this weekend. There are just a couple more things I'd like to fix... but if I run out of time, I'll go ahead and release what I've got.

- Hank

[BusError]

Please be sure to checkin the changes in CVS also!

[scienceman]

Unfortunately, Celestia currently requires the GL_NV_vertex_program extension, which Apple's OpenGL doesn't support (even on nVidia cards). I believe Chris has said he plans to support GL_ARB_vertex_program eventually, which should work with Apple's latest OpenGL.

- Hank

Hi,

Any progress on this front? I have been trying to build from source, since at the time of this posting the latest Mac OS X dmg is still only at 1.2.5 and I would like to move on to 1.3.0 ... Any advice on how to build from source and/or solve the above problem?

Any 1.3.0 Mac OS X version available? (Would rather know how to build form source though, so please post your tricks!! Thanks.)

[scienceman]

Just to be clear, everything seems to go ok if I specify ./configure --with-gtk --without-kde up to the following point:

checking GL/gl.h usability... yes
checking GL/gl.h presence... no
configure: WARNING: GL/gl.h: accepted by the compiler, rejected by the preprocessor!
configure: WARNING: GL/gl.h: proceeding with the preprocessor's result
configure: WARNING: ## ------------------------------------ ##
configure: WARNING: ## Report this to bug-autoconf@gnu.org. ##
configure: WARNING: ## ------------------------------------ ##
checking for GL/gl.h... no
configure: error: No gl.h found. See INSTALL file for ddetails about how to correct this problem.

[HankR]

A version of Celestia 1.3.0 for Mac OS X is available for download from SourceForge (has been for some time). You should be able to build the latest Mac OS X version from the CVS source tree using ProjectBuilder (it's a Cocoa app). Just download the project from SourceForge (you'll need to have the Apple Mac OS X Developer Tools installed, of course).

- Hank

[julesstoop]

[OT]
I read somewhere NASA had a youth science project in the USA, using iMacs exclusively. Will this boost the development of celestia for OS X?
[/OT]