List of Popular Celestia Add-ons, For new users.

[Darkmiss]

Updated:

Add-0n List Canceled.
I'm not qualified enough to post this list. (apparently)

so i give up trying to help people

[t00fri]

Darkmiss,

I must say that personally, I have split feelings concerning your collections in /sticky/ form. On the one hand, you are certainly doing a useful service to Celestia newbies. On the other hand, if this (like the one for textures) gets a 'sticky' label, then it should not ONLY contain the references according to your /personal/ taste!
Keeping such an effort well-organized and up-to-date is quite bit of work, incidentally...

For instance, I noticed that in your reference about textures, you have essentially only listed Don.Edward's textures. No reference to the TextureFoundry despite 42000 visitors/downloads in 9 months(not that I would care;-)), nothing wrto John's or other people's texture services.

Have a look how well-organized and /systematically/ Selden is doing this job. So why not linking to him (as well?)?

Bye Fridger

[Don. Edwards]

Fridger, In all fairness you should be listed. But at the present time the Texture Foundry is a dead site. You have yet to get it back on its feet. The rest of us at least have functioning sites at this time. I am sure he will get you in there but first you need to get your site back up. At least put the front page up and say something as to the effect you will be back soon or something. As it stands your site is a dead link and there is no logic in linking to a site that is down.

Don.

Ok, I made a mistake. I guess your site is still there it was just the link I had to it that didn't work anymore. That could be the samething other people are seeing.
I had to navigate back into your storage space to find the link to your frontpage.

[Christophe]

I think what's needed by the Celestia community is some kind of central repository where anybody can upload add-ons, and where people can vote for their favorites add-on. Something like KDE look for example.

Then the next step would be to build an interface to that repository inside Celestia to automate the download and installation of add-ons, a Windows Update for Celestia if you will.

[t00fri]

Fridger, In all fairness you should be listed. But at the present time the Texture Foundry is a dead site. You have yet to get it back on its feet. The rest of us at least have functioning sites at this time. I am sure he will get you in there but first you need to get your site back up. At least put the front page up and say something as to the effect you will be back soon or something. As it stands your site is a dead link and there is no logic in linking to a site that is down.

Don.

Ok, I made a mistake. I guess your site is still there it was just the link I had to it that didn't work anymore. That could be the samething other people are seeing. :)
I had to navigate back into your storage space to find the link to your frontpage.

Now if I'd tell you to click the TextureFoundry URL on the Celestia /Homepage/, http://celestiaproject.net/celestia/links.html

where it belongs,
or on Selden's site, you would probably get mad at me like yesterday with Christophe about the 'red diamond'-issue, arguing that you are not a Celestia beginner...;-)

Don I am not particularly concerned about Darkmiss' missing reference to my site. When I soon come up with this new level of texture quality that we are working on right now, again lots of people will download from that site also without Darkmiss' reference;-)

I was rather concerned with the /general/ attitude to giving newcomers 'sort of official'='sticky' reference to textures. While such an effort is most useful, it should be done systematically and in good style and not only according to personal taste. Even when my TextureFoundry was visited by 500 downloaders/day(!) my site did not appear in Darkmiss list. John's site, Praesepe's site also are missing etc.

It's just a very biased selection.
The selection is however not done by an expert on image manipulation and textures, respectively...

And finally, a lot of the textures in the TexFoundry are still fine (the earth textures, for example) Jupi, Europa and Mars just need the rotation/offset introduced in celestia recently.

After the hack of shatters net, the Texfoundry was completely rewritten in PHP4 (for reasons of security) by Christophe. It is perfectly functional again and has about 1000 visitors/week.

I had planned a much earlier update of the textures, but since these new 16bit/channel technologies have come up and I am intensively working on this with Mario/SG, there will be an extra delay.

But the results will certainly be worth waiting a bit longer;-)...

Bye Fridger

[Darkmiss]

Please do not think i am trying be bias to anyone.
nor am i trying to make a collection of everything available for Celestia.

I am mearly trying to make a simple and easy getting started list for new users.
to get them started into add-ons and bigger textures

From there they can do like the rest of us, and search for themselves
So i just made some links to some interesting add-ons.
And i linked to the textures i am using myself.

Some useres may still be using Celestia as default.
as some may find all these add-ons a very frightening thought.

I am mearly trying to ease them into updateing.

here is a link to what i mean.. http://63.224.48.65/forum/viewtopic.php?t=2444

[Darkmiss]

there are a lot of model makers, and texture creators out there
Rassilon, Seldon, Jim, Billybob, Toofri, Don Edwards, John Van Vliet, bh, Praesepe, AstroBoy..... to name but a few.

and i love the work you all do
but did i really need to say any of this

I really thought you were all grown up enough
not to start saying "But what about ME"
but one of you did.

I do not have any skills in texture creation, or model making.
and i really know very little about space calculation

So please just let me help out a little bit, as and where i can.

[billybob884]

Well, I for one am glad to see you thought of me, but I didnt really create or model anything, all I did was put together a "list". But thanks all the same.

[selden]

Paul,

It's easy to get overawed by those who can manipulate models of the real world in astonishing ways to make things appear in Celestia which rival or exceed images that we see in the sky. Remember that some of those people have been doing similar things for longer than many of us have been alive. Practice makes perfect.

You might think about the kinds of things in astronomy that you enjoy the most. Try to do something related to that and share the results with us. So what if it isn't quite as good as you think someone else might be able to do? Or has already done? What matters is that you enjoy doing it. And as you get more experience with it, your skills will improve, too.

[t00fri]

there are a lot of model makers, and texture creators out there
Rassilon, Seldon, Jim, Billybob, Toofri, Don Edwards, John Van Vliet, bh, Praesepe, AstroBoy..... to name but a few.

and i love the work you all do
but did i really need to say any of this

I really thought you were all grown up enough
not to start saying "But what about ME"
but one of you did.

I do not have any skills in texture creation, or model making.
and i really know very little about space calculation

So please just let me help out a little bit, as and where i can.

Come on Darkmiss, please read my post well! I never complained about myself. To the contrary: leave the TextureFoundry out as you always did, but please make a systematic, ordered listing if you want to help. The newcomers deserve it, if your post is to serve as a sticky 'eye catcher' for people who know NOTHING about Celestia. Otherwise refer to Selden's site. Or just post what textures you like, but without a 'sticky' label...

Bye Fridger

[Don. Edwards]

Well maybe we need to build a whole new section just for beginers. That way it can be the first place they look and it would also be the place to put links to the manuals and all other important data.
Just an idea.

[billybob884]

good idea, and if this were done, it should probably go at the top of the list of forums.

[chris]

I think what's needed by the Celestia community is some kind of central repository where anybody can upload add-ons, and where people can vote for their favorites add-on. Something like KDE look for example.

Then the next step would be to build an interface to that repository inside Celestia to automate the download and installation of add-ons, a Windows Update for Celestia if you will.

This would be brilliant . . . I'd offer shatters.net, but I don't have the bandwidth. Last week, over 30GB of traffic (almost entirely Celestia-related) went over my DSL line. If my line was saturated every second for a week, I could handle about 36GB, i.e. I'm scarily close to maxing out my connection.

Christophe, do you know anyplace that would host an official add-on repository?

--Chris


--Chris

[marc]

I know that there are several really good addon homepages out there and it can be tricky to find them sometimes.

So how about this..

A sticky topic in the addons forum called 'celestia addon homepages'

The first post in this thread will lay out the rules for this thread which would be

READ THIS BEFORE YOU POST TO THIS THREAD

--rules--
1, if anyone really must comment to this thread then do it in a new thread or post a private message. Dont do it here!.
2, only post to this thread if you have a celestia homepage that contains celestia addons.
3, only post a link to your homepage and a very short description
4, dont post any images or links to images.
5, only post one message, edit yours if you need to change it.
6, if your homepage is intermittant, not universally accessible, or needs a certain web browser then say so in your description.
7, if you want to announce a new addon to your homepage do it below.
8, if anyone really must comment to this thread then do it in a new thread or post a private message. Dont do it here!.

A post that breaks the rules will just make the author look like an idiot until Chris comes along and deletes it. (and if chris cant be bothered then they will look like an idiot forever)

If all goes well then we will end up with a nice simple list of addon homepages which can be maintained by all the people who own the homepages.

[selden]

Marc,

Your proposal sounds a lot like the way the index sites of some "Web Rings" are managed. Might a Web Ring satisfy some of the needs? Finding an appropriate host system might be a problem, though. I'd rather not use Yahoo's.

[marc]

I forgot about webrings and Im part of an elite webring! It works quite well too. Im not sure if its yahoo though. Ill look into it. What are the issues with the yahoo webring system?

[selden]

My information may be way out of date.

When Yahoo first took them over from Webring.org, the issue was advertisements. The Webring images were to be loaded each time from a Yahoo server so that ads could be included. The Web server I use is not allowed to include any commercial advertising.

Added slightly later:
Yup. Way out of date. Yahoo has already sold them to Webring.com. Their advertising is even more unacceptable, if that's possible.

sigh.

[marc]

Ive had a little look into it. (in fact im now the celestia webring ringmaster.)
I also had a look for an opensource php alternative that i could host on sourceforge, no luck there.
Its a good system and it can be set up not to put any ads on members webpages. Its only when you go to the hub of the webring that you have to put up with the ads.
Ill announce it and message the relevant people once i get it all set up.

later;

Good news, if you look at the the webring code on my links page.
mostlyharmless.sourceforge.net/links.htm
You can see that it is javaless and once all the font stuff is stripped out it is quite simple.. Ill make up a simple html snippet and provide the celestia icon as the image, this will be much better that the standard java junk they provide.

[Michael]

This part of the forum would be a great idea- IF you did not allow replies (like mine!) Just put in links to add-ons! No matter whose or how good, let the people decide!
Fridger does great work, there should be a link here, but his complaints about not being included or anyone elses complaints are not pertinent to this topic!
I just want a place where we can find links to Celestia Add-ons, I don't want opinions- just add-ons!! Everybodys Add-ons! Then the people can choose what they want!
If someone has a site with textures/add-ons/xyz or any other file that could enhance Celestia, it should be here! But NOT complaints, opinions, kudos etc.

[t00fri]

This part of the forum would be a great idea- IF you did not allow replies (like mine!) Just put in links to add-ons! No matter whose or how good, let the people decide!
Fridger does great work, there should be a link here, but his complaints about not being included or anyone elses complaints are not pertinent to this topic!
I just want a place where we can find links to Celestia Add-ons, I don't want opinions- just add-ons!! Everybodys Add-ons! Then the people can choose what they want!
If someone has a site with textures/add-ons/xyz or any other file that could enhance Celestia, it should be here! But NOT complaints, opinions, kudos etc.

Please once more: I have not been complaining of not being on Darkmiss' list. I have only used this fact, in order to illustrate that such biased collections like the one by Darkmiss should not have a 'sticky' label!

'Sticky' label collections
that are to serve as 'eye catchers' for Newbies, should be systematic, well ordered and have a little (qualified) explaining text of the specialities of the service in question, if possible.

Is this so hard to understand?

Bye Fridger