Celestia 1.7.0 Development Thread

[SamwiseBrave]

Sorry if this isn't the place to do it (I couldn't find a better option), but I have a feature request.

Would it be possible to have a 'puff factor' multiplier (each with an associated slider in the view options) for:
- star size (slider range: 1x - ~500x)
- planet size (slider range: 1x - ~10000x)
- moon size (slider range: 1x - ~20000x)
- planet orbit radius (slider range: 1x - ~1000x)
- moon orbit radius (slider range: 1x - ~1000x)

The purpose of this would be to visualise our place (and orientation) in the galaxy compared to the other potentially habitable systems.
This would greatly aid in writing articles and stories about the future of space exploration with some degree of authenticity / accuracy.

I love seeing the accurate scale of the universe, but it's just too hard to conceptualise our relationship to our stellar neighbourhood.

Many thanks!

[Lafuente_Astronomy]

Sorry if this isn't the place to do it (I couldn't find a better option), but I have a feature request.

Actually, this is the place. You're technically making a suggestion for inclusion in the future development of Celestia. So, you're alright.

Would it be possible to have a 'puff factor' multiplier (each with an associated slider in the view options) for:
- star size (slider range: 1x - ~500x)
- planet size (slider range: 1x - ~10000x)
- moon size (slider range: 1x - ~20000x)
- planet orbit radius (slider range: 1x - ~1000x)
- moon orbit radius (slider range: 1x - ~1000x)

Could you elaborate on that? And can you also explain to us how it works? Thanks

The purpose of this would be to visualise our place (and orientation) in the galaxy compared to the other potentially habitable systems.
This would greatly aid in writing articles and stories about the future of space exploration with some degree of authenticity / accuracy.

I love seeing the accurate scale of the universe, but it's just too hard to conceptualise our relationship to our stellar neighbourhood.

Indeed. The Universe is a very massive place, and possibly infinite. It would good for us to at least visualize our place in the Universe and then stare in awe and wonder at just how teeny tiny small we truly are. So, yes, that would be a good idea

Many thanks!

And many welcomes back to you. I'll see if the devs will like it

[onetwothree]

Sounds like a good addon for Lua Universal Tools.

[Lafuente_Astronomy]

Sounds like a good addon for Lua Universal Tools.

Well, looks like one of the developers agreed to your request.

[SamwiseBrave]

Wonderful!

I'll try to elaborate, but please ask any specific questions I haven't explained &/or feel free to take this idea and develop it in your own way.
Preamble:
I play a lot of space games and it kind of annoys me how 2D and unrealistic in terms of scale they all are. Surely people know that space is 3D.
I'm also interested in the idea of colonising other planets from a scientific / academic viewpoint. What would be involved? How far away are planets that might potentially be colonised? Where are they in relation to each other and us? What are the orientations of the orbits relative to each other and ours?

Filling out the picture:
The vision I have is that you could zoom out to a distance of say 20-40 ly (or whatever) and by adjusting the sliders in the 'visualization' menu, start to see:
1) the sizes (and colours) of the local stars in comparison to each other,
2) the sizes of the planets in the local star systems in comparison to each other, and
3) the orientations of the orbits of the planets in the local star systems in comparison to each other.

Does that help?

[onetwothree]

Well, looks like one of the developers agreed to your request.

I'm not a LUT developer

[SevenSpheres]

There aren't currently any active Lua developers. However, the Lua Edu Tools/Lua Universal Tools already has a "Magnification" function that magnifies the planets of the Solar System. Maybe this could be extended to do what you're wanting.

[Janus]

A possible way to achieve this is with a script.
I know it probably won't match exactly.
The following is adapted from a script for one of my mod sets, betwixt:between:RaDecDist, which lets me do distance calculations easily.
This particular one searches for stars of particular types near each other, such as red dwarfs(M,L,T) within 10Ly of G/F/A types.
Additions to the celx language are simple, and sometimes useful.

Spoiler

Code: Select all

MarkBlu = "#0000FF";    MrkBlue = "#000080";
MarkWht = "#FFFFFF";    MarkYel = "#FFFF00";
MarkYlw = "#C0C0FF";    MarkOrn = "#FFAA00";
MarkRed = "#FF0000";

startype = string.sub(currentstar:spectraltype(), 1, 1)

if startype == "O" then currentstar:mark(MarkBlu, "square"    , 12)
if startype == "B" then currentstar:mark(MrkBlue, "square"    , 12)
if startype == "A" then currentstar:mark(MarkWht, "square"    , 12)
if startype == "F" then currentstar:mark(MarkYlw, "triangle" , 12)
if startype == "G" then currentstar:mark(MarkYel, "circle"    , 12)
if startype == "K" then currentstar:mark(MarkOrn, "square"    , 12)
if startype == "M" then currentstar:mark(MarkRed, "square"    , 12)


I left out the bulk, but this should show what I mean.
If you want to compensate for size, then compare observer distance with a constant, and adjust the last number.
Perhaps there is a way to put a texture instead of a shape on a marker?
Maybe put a colored disc instead of an outline?

Or perhaps I have misunderstood.


Janus.

[jujuapapa]

I don't know if it's the right place.

I remarks few differences between 1.6.2 and 1.7.

I saw this when I took same planetary system in each soft.
With 1.6.2 temperature of a planet was equal to 259 K and 235 K with 1.7 !
Why ?

So I return around Earth which is at 259 K with 1.6.2 and 295 K with 1.7
The update of the albedo didn't change anything.

Is it a bug of 1.7 ?

see screenshots.

It seems OK.

No good ?

[onetwothree]

that's strange, we haven't worked with this code. but at least i know that 1ca9db3212a is working commit, so will try to find the root cause and fix it.

[SevenSpheres]

This "bug" is probably caused by 1.7.0 reading the "Albedo" parameter as "GeomAlbedo", and so not using it to determine temperature. You need to use "BondAlbedo" to have the same functionality as 1.6.x "Albedo". For Earth it's caused by the use of the "TempDiscrepancy" parameter to display the correct temperature. See also this Wikibooks page.

[onetwothree]

Use data files from CelestiaContent repository. Particularly, update your nearstars.stc with this file. Old one doesn't have Temperature and BoloCorrection for the Sun.

[jujuapapa]

Use data files from CelestiaContent repository. Particularly, update your nearstars.stc with this file. Old one doesn't have Temperature and BoloCorrection for the Sun.

To have same datas than 1.6.2, I updated the file nearstars.stc with :

Temperature 5770
BoloCorrection 0.43

TY 123.

Have I to do same thing for exoplanets around each own star ?

[onetwothree]

No. The problem was with the Sun only.

[Joey P.]

Today marks the first time for me using Celestia 1.7.0.
I decided to keep my older Celestia 1.6.1.-ED and thus I have both. Both are based on the exact same program files and their folder.
However, when I tried giving 1.7.0. a custom .ttf font, it wouldn't work and no text would show up on the screen. Pressing "V" or "B" didn't work either.

Do you know how to fix this?

[Janus]

Besides needing to copy/paste the exact ttf font name into the cfg file.
I found that I needed to copy the ttf file into /fonts for it to be found.


Janus.

[onetwothree]

Please test https://ci.appveyor.com/project/375gnu/celestia/builds/32510540/artifacts, especially Intel & Nvidia owners.

All vertex shaders should be updated from https://github.com/375gnu/Celestia/tree/generic-attributes/shaders (only *_vert.glsl files, *_frag.glsl are the same).

There are some issues with text rendering like incorrect colors, this is known.

[MrSpace43]

Multiple cloud layers plus LunarLanbert for those cloud layers would be nice because then we could have our own animated planets.

[Markerz]

@onetwothree

Screen Shot 2020-04-29 at 2.58.13 PM.png

Tried your branch on Mac with AMD Radeon Pro 5500M & NVIDIA 650M, stars gets even more dimmer

[onetwothree]

On the left side it's master, is it?