Ideas for next version of Celestia

General discussion about Celestia that doesn't fit into other forums.
Buzz
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Post #61by Buzz » 21.06.2002, 08:43

And how about continental drift? :)

Size_Mick
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Post #62by Size_Mick » 21.06.2002, 16:04

Buzz wrote:

And how about continental drift? :)


LOL that would be cool, and maybe even possible. But then we'd also want melting polar caps to compensate for global warming, heheh.

One thing comes to mind: It would be cool if the program could keep track of events in the solar system, and pop up a "link" to an automatically generated script that takes you to the event (eclipses, planetary alignments, whatever).

Another thing that would be sort of cool, is if you could select one of a list of major cities on earth, and the camera would automatically position itself a few meters above that spot, so that you could look at the sky on a particular date and get an idea of what sights are to be seen on that date. Then when the real day comes, you'd know just where to look and what to look for when you step outside. I live in Central Florida, and I often find myself painstakingly moving the camera to a position above Tampa Bay, then craning it around to see what the sky looks like so I can compare it to what I see in my back yard. Anyone else do this?

chris
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Post #63by chris » 21.06.2002, 16:26

Buzz wrote:And how about continental drift? :)

I do have a prehistoric Earth texture from Chris Scotese that I'll be posting soon. Not a simulation of continental drift, but very cool nonetheless.

--Chris

Axel

Tectonic shift, paleontic maps

Post #64by Axel » 22.06.2002, 18:13

Hi folks, hi Chris.

I hope you don't mind mesuggesting one use of these paleontic maps within Celestia.

They ought to be automatically loaded depending on the time within Celestia. Just to rename them to Earth.jpg and let it go would not be the whole fun, I'd say.

:wink: Axel

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t00fri
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Tectonic shift, paleontic maps

Post #65by t00fri » 22.06.2002, 20:01

Axel wrote:Hi folks, hi Chris.



Hi hi, frei ?bersetzt klingt das so wie

Liebes Volk, lieber K?nig...

Du scheinst dauernd der Meinung zu sein ein besonderes Verh?ltnis zum K?nig zu haben;-)). Schreib' doch einfach mal zur Abwechslung eine mail an alle 268 registrierten User...

Bye Fridger

Axel

Tectonic shift, paleontic maps

Post #66by Axel » 24.06.2002, 10:10

Hi Fridger,

es sollte 'Hallo Leute' schon besser entsprechen als 'Hi people'. Ich denke das tut es auch.

Das mit dem K?nig ist nur des Barden minnes?ngerische Interpretation.
:lol:


Ciao, Axel

phoenix
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Post #67by phoenix » 24.06.2002, 13:57

seit doch mal so lieb und bleibt beim englischen, unsere ganzen lieben celestia fans verstehen sonst kein wort ;-)

tststs
is aber lustig zu wissen...

greets
Phoenix
most recent celestia win32-SVN-build - use at your own risk (copy over existing 1.5.1 release)

Rassilon
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Post #68by Rassilon » 24.06.2002, 18:04

What are you gents babbling about?
I'm trying to teach the cavemen how to play scrabble, its uphill work. The only word they know is Uhh and they dont know how to spell it!

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t00fri
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Post #69by t00fri » 24.06.2002, 18:30

Rassilon wrote:What are you gents babbling about?


Hi, hi...

Soccer or Sex what else;-)

Bye Fridger

Pixel
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Post #70by Pixel » 25.06.2002, 08:27

t00fri wrote:Hi, hi...

Soccer or Sex what else;-)

Bye Fridger



well - good look today then :wink: !

Thilo
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Post #71by Thilo » 25.06.2002, 14:43

You referring to the soccer or the sex part? ;)

(good reason im switching to german)
t00fri, wenn du ein Problem mit Axel hast und deshalb schon ins Deutsche wechselt, wieso macht ihr euren Streit dann nicht privat aus? Meinem gef?hl nach hat das ziemlich wenig sinn und zweck den du da produzierst. Den Streit aus einem thread brauchste nicht auch noch auf den hier ausweiten ...

alexis
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Post #72by alexis » 26.06.2002, 05:50

Rassilon wrote:What are you gents babbling about?

http://babelfish.altavista.com

/Alexis

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Stargazer_2098
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Post #73by Stargazer_2098 » 26.06.2002, 07:48

Thanks for that link, Alexis!
This might come in handy... :D


Stargazer.
"We have lingered long enough on the shores of the cosmic ocean.
We are ready to set sail towards the stars
" --- Carl Sagan, Cosmos.
----
Member of the Noctis IV and Orbiter communities;
Visit Noctis
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Rassilon
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Post #74by Rassilon » 26.06.2002, 17:34

alexis wrote:
Rassilon wrote:What are you gents babbling about?
http://babelfish.altavista.com

/Alexis


Actually I used that and still couldn't make out more than something about calling chris the king :P And I was making a glib joke ;)
I'm trying to teach the cavemen how to play scrabble, its uphill work. The only word they know is Uhh and they dont know how to spell it!

Thilo
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Post #75by Thilo » 26.06.2002, 21:03

Don't worry about it, it's just flaming round between t00fri and Axel ... and my response to it ;)
IT's not worth it to understand that ;-)

Axel

Post #76by Axel » 27.06.2002, 08:49

Hi Thilo,

you're right. There's no need to copy&paste from another thread. Still I tried to solve a major problem for quite a few, not to flame.

Axel

Buzz
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Post #77by Buzz » 28.06.2002, 09:17

Has anyone suggested to let clouds cast shadows on the surface of planets? This would be a cool effect!

D.Edwards
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Cloud shadows

Post #78by D.Edwards » 28.06.2002, 12:44

Cloud Shadows?
What kind of video cards do you think most of us have? Most of have modest cards. If all these features everyone wants and now if cloud shadows were to be implemented it would take a video card running a gigahertz and a gig of DDR VRAM just to run with all these suggested features. We must all keep in mind that for each visual efect Chris adds to Celestia our performance is going to go down. Even if he could somehow offload more of the work to the CPU we would all end up needing super computers to run Celestia with all the wanted features. I for one would love to see some of the mentioned features added but lets get realistic here. We must pick and choose features carefully or Celestia is going to get bloated and slow. I personaly don't see a need for cloud shadows. Its a neat idea but I think there are other areas needing work.

One thing I would like to see that I don't think has been mentioned is that Saturn's rings are not casting shadows on the planet. This needs to be implented for Celestia's acuracy to be corected. I know it probably has something to do with the fact we are using semi-tranparent png images for the rings and Celestia is bypassing rendering shadows from them because of there tranparency.?? There has to be a way around this. One of Saturns main features is the fact that it has at various times in its orbit the rings cast large shadows across its cloud surface. I am sure everyone has seen pictures of Saturn with large black bands running across its face.
Well thats my 2 cents. Now I will shut up.

Thilo
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Post #79by Thilo » 28.06.2002, 12:50

This is not really an argument for you should be able to turn these things off and on.
Like the Vertex/Pixel shader.

Guest

Post #80by Guest » 28.06.2002, 15:59

D.Edwards wrote :

We must pick and choose features carefully or Celestia is going to get bloated and slow.


I agree. It would also be nice if some of the existing features - like texture loading of planets, especially higher-resolution ones - could be speeded up.... I also notice Celestia seems to slow down significantly when connected to the net (WinXP, 56K modem). Even so, shadowed clouds would look awesome, even if the program were awesomely slow. But perhaps the minor faults, few as they are, with the program could be fixed before attempting such major tasks... for example, orbits of things oscillate wildly when you get close to the object, and dissapear completely on very small distances.

I notice in the gallery in Bruckner's add-on page the Earth has reflective oceans. Could anyone tell me in an a totally idiot-proof manner just how this is done i.e. what do I need to do it ?

Since this is ment to be about ideas for the next version, how about a ring system for Neptune ?

(Mad Boris)


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