things to see with a good video card

[Evil Dr Ganymede]

I've now updated my video card to a spiffy Asus Geforce4 TI4200 with 128MB RAM, and am admiring the vastly improved rendering in Celestia (I had a Powercolo Radeon 7500 before). Now I can suddenly see ring shadows and specular reflections on Earth's oceans!

Are there any other improvements I can keep an eye out for now I actually have a decent video card?

[-Shadow-]

Most likely everything will be improved even if somethings only slightly.
I've still got a NVIDIA GeForce2 MX/MX 400 it's ok, but since I'm upgrading my Computer soon I now know I've got something to look forward too other than better game graphics.I'm getting a new Motherboard, more memory to add to my 384 mb, a Radeon 9700 Pro,
and a better Harddrive, since I only have a 20 gig one right now

[Don. Edwards]

Well Shadow, by going to a Radeon card you are going to loose features in Celestia. The main one is going to be bumpmaping as Radeons can't bumpmap and give specular lighting effects at the same time. This is something that Chris has yet to resolve. Hey its your choice but for me until a Radeon is absolutely 100% compatible, NVidia gets my money.

Don.

[Evil Dr Ganymede]

Er, yeah. Apparently ATI cards suck at doing OpenGL too, which is why I upgraded from a Radeon in the first place...

[selden]

Are there any other improvements I can keep an eye out for now I actually have a decent video card?

The major "eye candy" gains are in ring shadows, specular reflections and bump/normal mapping. Haze in planetary atmospheres shows up most noticably in the combined OpenGL/Nvidia rendering path. Type Control-V repeatedly to see the different effects due to the different "rendering paths." No one planet shows all of them, though. E.g. Mars has a bumpmap, but no rings, while Saturn has rings but no bumpmap.

(Unfortunately, bumpmapping is broken in Celestia v1.3.0final due to a last minute attempted bugfix. You should download v1.3.1pre5 if you haven't already.)

More memory on the graphics card means you can view more, larger (higher resolution) textures.

Of course, it'd be nice if a future major release of Celestia supported tiling. That would make it possible to see local high resolution images of a small area on a planet's surface without having to load a high resolution surface texture for the entire planet.

[chris]

Bump mapping and specular reflections do actually work on Radeon cards now, at least on the 9700s. On Nvidia cards, you get the haze effect on planets with atmospheres, as well as improved bump mapping.

--Chris

[ElPelado]

i have a question: i have installed a normal map for earth. but it doesnt seems to change a lot(it change something, but it doesn't look like a bumpma). Should we see the same effect with a normal map or a bumpmap? or is there a difference??

i have Nvidia GeForce 2 mx/mx 400 with 64Mb and one of the lastest drivers from the Nvidia page. I can se all those efects, i cant see just the shadows of the rings on the planet.

[-Shadow-]

hmm
I can get a better deal for A GeForce 4 Ti420 ($279.99)
or a Ti4600 ($429.99) Compared to a Radeon 9700 Pro ($699.99)
I also found a GeForce 4 Ti4600 128MB Graphics Accelerator
for $399.97 but I'm not sure what it does.

[selden]

Shadow,

Both 4600s are basically the same type of card. One reseller just spelled out the name of the graphics chip in more detail. The cards are probably made by different companies, though, so be sure to check detailed reviews for things like reliability and design quality. Some companies sell "boutique" versions for a higher price (i.e. overclocked with better cooling, etc.)

Personally I can't justify paying 4x the price for a card that's less than 2x the performance, but some people prefer getting that last 5% of bragging rights.

[-Shadow-]

I found out the Accelerator thing is made by Visiontek not NVIDIA.

but some people prefer getting that last 5% of bragging rights.

Though I don't know what that means.

[selden]

I found out the Accelerator thing is made by Visiontek not NVIDIA.

Nvidia only makes the chips. At least a dozen different companies make the cards. (VisionTek doesn't seem to make cards based on Nvidia chips any more, so the ones you're seeing advertised are ones that were made some time ago. I have one of their boards based on the Ti4200. It's been working fine.)

but some people prefer getting that last 5% of bragging rights.

Though I don't know what that means.

The fastest consumer graphics cards that use Nvidia chips (the FX 5900 Ultra) and ATI chips (the Radeon 9800 Pro) have the same high list price. The 5900 is about 5% faster than the 9800. ATI and Nvidia alternate as to which one makes the fastest chips. Some people always have to have the fastest available, even though the difference is tiny, so they can brag about it.

[-Shadow-]

Oh now I understand.
Thanks for explaining Selden