Celestia 1.2.4pr changes the behaviour of ellipses, - how they disappear at increasing distance rather then just fade away smaller and smaller as you retreat from the star.
This means there's a neat demonstration trick for my Astronomy Society that I can't do anymore:
1) select the sun, centre on it and pull back until the pluto & neptune orbit lines form a tiny, tiny circle around the sun.
2) rotate (right-click drag) around the still-selected sun until you see Alpha Centauri
3) select Alpha Centauri
4) make the smallest possible rotational motions (right-click drag) around AC, trying to keep the solar system on the screen. If you're far enough from the solar system you will see the background stars barely move yet the solar system (with orbits still visible) bounces rapidly round the screen. Playing with it this way you can demonstrate a true 3-D appreciation of the distance between the stars without just relying on 'astronomically' high numbers that don't really mean anything to people (beyond a certain point).
problem is, 1.2.4pr just 'drops' the orbit ellipse once it becomes too small, but even this 'too small' is not small enough to do the demonstration, because you can't get far enough away from the Solar system to be able to see it move (as opposed to just dissappear off the edge of the screen) and still see that it's a solar system.
Any chance the old behaviour will make a comeback? Otherwise I'll have to keep an old version and change between them if visitors to the observatory ask me how far away the stars are (as they always do)
One thing that was changed in 1.2.4p that I wish hadn't been
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Guest
Orbit min size
chris wrote:I'll make the minimum size of orbits configurable in 1.2.4 . . . You'll be able to modify start.cel to set the minimum size to one pixel so that orbits don't disappear.
--Chris
How does one do this (1.2.4 release version)?