Small and trivial aesthetic problem

[Mad Boris]

Spacecraft orbits do not appear to go in front of planets.

Any way of turning off moon orbits, just to avoid screen clutter ?

[stonedyak]

Yeah, I've just noticed that too. It's not too much of a problem, but it would be nice to see orbit lines go 'around' planets - to give a more 3d feel.

[chris]

I will provide a method to disable moon orbits while showing planet orbits. As for making them appear in front of or behind planets when appropriate, that's a surprisingly tricky thing to do given Celestia renders planets. I don't have any ideas for a robust fix yet.

--Chris

[Mad Boris]

Thanks, Chris.

I'm sure you'll find a way around this little problem sooner or later.... how come the orbits of moons are displayed correctly whereas spacecraft are not ?

[stonedyak]

The problem is that Celestia renders the 2d orbit lines before the 3d planets, so they always appear behind them. To fix it, you would have to render the orbits in at least two halves, one before the planets were plotted and the other afterwards.
Of course, I'm not sure how easy that would be to implement...