Viewing Saturn/Neptune causes instability/crash

alegator · Post #1by **alegator** » 18.05.2003, 05:03

I have Celestia 1.3 in a P4/WinXP system with an ATI RADEON8500 128MB card amd latest Catalyst 3.4 drivers.
Trouble is that when I want to see Saturn (ENTER Saturn, Goto), the surface texture is broken and the program halts, forcing me to shut it down.
This only happens with Saturn and Neptune, the rest of the planets cause no trouble.
Any idea why? Any fix?
Thanks.

Gordon nolog · Post #2by **Gordon nolog** » 18.05.2003, 09:08

hello alegator,

there is a problem with ATI Radeon 8500/9000 series with ring shadow. Disable this feature in the render menu and everything will work fine.

The 3.4 catalyst drivers do not fix this problem.

As Chris said it probablly was a driver issue, I have written to ATI drivers developpers to ask them if they could do something. I had no answer but they say they will give no answer, so ....

Maybe, if some others do the same thing, it could decide them to do something for celestia. The bug report form can be found here :

http://apps.ati.com/driverfeedback/

bye

G.

Guest · Post #3by **Guest** » 18.05.2003, 19:32

Thanks Gordon. Celestia is of no commercial value to ATI, so probably they don't care. I'll add my voice to the driverfeedback anyways.
Thanks again
Regards

Post #4by **selden** » 18.05.2003, 20:36

Indirectly, Celestia should matter to them.

Some people have bought Nvidia instead of ATI cards just so they could see all of the features available in Celestia.

Also, if you're in the market for a midrange card, knowing that ATI's drivers in that price range are buggier than either their high-end or the competition is one reason to buy something else.

Apparently the mid-range cards are where they make most of their money, not the high end.