Sorry. Last post was mine. Didn't log in.
Frank
Couple of questions on various topics/feature requests
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t00fri
- Developer
- Posts: 8772
- Joined: 29.03.2002
- Age: 22
- With us: 22 years 7 months
- Location: Hamburg, Germany
Anonymous wrote:...
As I watch them travel to various worlds, the places that they linger most on ... the places they really love to see ... are the places that have movement and action. Spacecraft drifting through space, asteroids tumbling silently on chaotic rotational movements, planets rotating on their axis, moons swirling around, pulsars spinning at high speed .... that is what really "turns them on" the most.
...
Frank
Thanks Frank for your emphatic report.
I think that I can entirely follow you when you say that animations (blinking lights here and there, ...) "turn them on most". Yet, there are many things that turn on kids in that age, of which the grown-ups are not always happy...
So I gather, you fully endorse in this case their liking of such "eyecatching" effects. I am just curious why you think these are so "educational"?
Could it be that you see animations as a means (pedagogical tool) to keep their attention focused on what you want to tell them really about the matter?
That I could immediately subscribe to.
Being a teacher, too (my "kids" are just a 'little bit' older...), I always feel greatest satisfaction when I succeed to make my "kids" ask piercing questions, instead of 'blindly' believe me what I tell them. For that reason, I would very much favor to implement a carefully planned 'instrumentation' kit, for people to do their own 'experiments' about 'space and time' etc. within Celestia. Don't you think such a concept could easily outpower "blinking light animations, rotating Rover wheels or antennas"?
Bye Fridger
Dear Fridger:
Thanks for the insightful thoughts on your last post.
I think our different perspectives may be due to our different student populations. I can easily understand your viewpoint at the college and graduate level that some blinking lights on a spaceship should have little to do with your advanced student's use of Celestia, or their interest in space. Advanced thought experiments seem to make far more sense and certainly, you have a willing audience. After all, they applied to your University and chose your course to take. They are mature and understand that a lot of hard work has to accompany advanced learning. They are used to both concrete and abstract thought and the effort needed to do both with quality.
In my years of teaching at the teenage level in a high school, however, I have found a major disconnect between what we adults and scientists know, understand and appreciate about the universe (or any subject) and what "kids" know, or want to know.
First, it is important to remember that these kids are not typically in school because they want to me. They are there because we insist they go to school! Their maturity level is what one would expect of a 13 year-old or 16 year old. Their number one priority is ... chilling ... socializing ... gabbing with each other. Their level of enthusiasm for school is typically social. Their favorite movie is watching Adam Sandler throw up on screen, and their favorite TV show is watching girls eat worms on the latest episode of "Fear Factor" (do they have Fear Factor in Europe???). Yes, some students enjoy learning and are very capable performers ... but in my experience, the teachers they learn from are by and large, only moderately versed in their subjects. Most middle and high school teachers have Bachelors degrees only and when they do have a Masters, it is usually in Education, not in their subject field. In fact, I have been surprised to discover even in my own high school how many teachers are assigned to teach a subject they have not even majored in ... simply because there is a shortage of qualified teachers. In one case, a Home Economics teacher was assigned to teach a Biology 1 course based solely on one Biology course she had taken in college years before. I won't say this is the norm, but it is more common than you may think.
High school also is drastically different from college in the level of equipment and laboratory available. Most high school lab equipment is at the level of a microscope or two, some beakers and a few heat lamps. Although computers are in many schools, I have seen NONE of them with the video cards capable of running Celestia. I had to convince my school administration to invest $3,000 to install Nvidia cards in the science computer lab. I am lucky. They agreed. Most schools don't have the budget. Some creative labs usually have to be "on paper" in high school, or via the internet. Equipment equal to the type you have available, is non-existant in a high school setting.
The kids know this from experience, so they learn that high school is a place to get some resonable general knowledge from teachers who know some things but not too much, using elementary level equipment. To many students, high school is not a place of "higher learning". As a result, 8 out of 10 students simply don't want to expend the effort to engage in provocative thought experiments. I can try assigning them (and I do), but to my exasperation, their willingness to "work" for their knowledge is always disappointing, no matter how enthused I try to convey the concept.
A perfect example is in Astronomy. When I first begin my Astronomy course for juniors and seniors in high school each September, I always start with the Big Bang, then follow with the size, scope and immensity of the universe. To me, its sheer magnitude "blows me away". To look up into the night sky and imagine it goes on to an almost infinite distance ... past trillions of stars and billions of galaxies, through ENORMOUS distances of empty space, backward in time billions of years, is ... well ...
MIND BOGGLING to me. Naturally, I want to convey this to my students. So I begin with discussion ... then we try visual conception ... imagining such large numbers. We practice with very large numbers (how many people really understand how much a "billion" of something really is???). Before Celestia, I tried to teach the size of the universe using the "Powers of 10" concept, via a great IMAX video named "The Cosmic Voyage". It worked to some extent, but as I watched their faces, there was little change to them. To them, the film was a documentary in a high school, and although my wonder and amazement over the enormity of the universe was presented to them with as much skill and enthusiasm as anyone could muster, many of them simply didn't "get it". They seemed to realize that space was a "big" place ... but ... they were just not used to marshalling their minds to truly ponder the scope of infinity.
It was my revelation to realize that it takes a special student to drop their distractions, and the socializing that constantly occurs in a high school classroom, to block out the classroom lights and the sleepiness from the night before ... to stop daydreaming of what they'll do after school ... to block it out and concentrate on the amazing concept of what infinity (or near infinity) really means. I would say that less then 2 in 10 are willing to do it. As a result, my discussion ... or a classroom exercise ... or a video ... all have limited results.
When I introduced Celestia to them, however, I saw a dramatic change. In my computer lab, I turn out all the lights. I put on some etheral space music. We load up Celestia and they follow a step-by-step journey to where I want to take them ... and I watch their reactions. To my delight, Celestia gets them into space. They really go.... mentally! They click, they press keys, they fly in the Celestia spaceship, and just for a little while, they imagine themselves there. In this way, I have been able to get them to begin ... to just begin to understand the size and wonder of the universe. We start at Earth and slowly, go "UP". They keep going into space. I have them fly slowly at first ... at the speed of a jet plane, then at space shuttle speed. I even show them the Celestia spaceship they are flying in (Jack and I designed it as an add-on). They understand .... they do ... and they like it. They are part of space, for a little while. Slowly, they drop high school behind and for a little while, they ARE in space. They come to realize that even at thousands of km/hr, they are not getting very far. Slowly, visually ... in the dark of my lab, they keep boosting speed to "hyperwarp" speed. Finally, two hours later .... out beyond the MIlky Way in intergalactic space ... they finally get it! "WOW", they say. "I had no idea space was Soooooooo big". They say this after they've seen the Cosmic Voyage ... after we discussed it in class. It was not our discussion ... not a good video ... not an experiment that did it. It was Celestia and its visual capabilities ... its spaceship .... its moving stars .... its bells and whistles .... that is what convinced them.
Form the standpoint of a 10 - 19 year old then, I can emphatically say that the blinking lights and explosions and rotating turrets of antennas, and rocket exhaust from a rising Shuttle launch ... and lightning on Jupiter ... and volcanoes erupting on Io and colliding planets ... and .... and .... all of these things DO work ... they do capture their imaginations. They make space alive! Yes, perhaps 2 in 10 kids could get just as excited by some complex thought experiment and I do not discount their importance ... but in this world ... with the level of teenager that purveys our high schools today .... Celestia with some animation bells and whistles is the best tool I could have to reach the maximum number of them.
I have always believed that learning should be fun! Animation in Celestia is a great way to boost it's fun-making ability ... while painlessly teaching the user some wonderful Astronomy about an impossibly wonderful place ... the universe. The good part is that you and I can have it both ways. Animation in Celestia does in no way ... no way ... change how you want to use the program in higher education. You can do what you want and require your students to do whatever you wish ... with animation effects present. From my perspective, animation helps me to open the world of space to ALL of those kids ... even the ones whose complex thought experiment is what type of pizza they want for dinner.
If fiery flames coming from the back of a rocket in a Celestia animation help me to capture their imagination, even in a small way (THIS is soooo COOL!) ... AHhhhh! .... that is the glory of it all. They begin to change ... and to begin accepting the challenge of doing those complex abstract experiments you and I would like them to do.
In that regard, I really would welcome your support for animation in the program. Let's serve all of our audience, to the best of our abilities. If millions of kids fall in love with space in some small part because Celestia has helped to capture their interest with its visual effects, we have succeeded as educators.
Respectfully,
Frank
Thanks for the insightful thoughts on your last post.
I think our different perspectives may be due to our different student populations. I can easily understand your viewpoint at the college and graduate level that some blinking lights on a spaceship should have little to do with your advanced student's use of Celestia, or their interest in space. Advanced thought experiments seem to make far more sense and certainly, you have a willing audience. After all, they applied to your University and chose your course to take. They are mature and understand that a lot of hard work has to accompany advanced learning. They are used to both concrete and abstract thought and the effort needed to do both with quality.
In my years of teaching at the teenage level in a high school, however, I have found a major disconnect between what we adults and scientists know, understand and appreciate about the universe (or any subject) and what "kids" know, or want to know.
First, it is important to remember that these kids are not typically in school because they want to me. They are there because we insist they go to school! Their maturity level is what one would expect of a 13 year-old or 16 year old. Their number one priority is ... chilling ... socializing ... gabbing with each other. Their level of enthusiasm for school is typically social. Their favorite movie is watching Adam Sandler throw up on screen, and their favorite TV show is watching girls eat worms on the latest episode of "Fear Factor" (do they have Fear Factor in Europe???). Yes, some students enjoy learning and are very capable performers ... but in my experience, the teachers they learn from are by and large, only moderately versed in their subjects. Most middle and high school teachers have Bachelors degrees only and when they do have a Masters, it is usually in Education, not in their subject field. In fact, I have been surprised to discover even in my own high school how many teachers are assigned to teach a subject they have not even majored in ... simply because there is a shortage of qualified teachers. In one case, a Home Economics teacher was assigned to teach a Biology 1 course based solely on one Biology course she had taken in college years before. I won't say this is the norm, but it is more common than you may think.
High school also is drastically different from college in the level of equipment and laboratory available. Most high school lab equipment is at the level of a microscope or two, some beakers and a few heat lamps. Although computers are in many schools, I have seen NONE of them with the video cards capable of running Celestia. I had to convince my school administration to invest $3,000 to install Nvidia cards in the science computer lab. I am lucky. They agreed. Most schools don't have the budget. Some creative labs usually have to be "on paper" in high school, or via the internet. Equipment equal to the type you have available, is non-existant in a high school setting.
The kids know this from experience, so they learn that high school is a place to get some resonable general knowledge from teachers who know some things but not too much, using elementary level equipment. To many students, high school is not a place of "higher learning". As a result, 8 out of 10 students simply don't want to expend the effort to engage in provocative thought experiments. I can try assigning them (and I do), but to my exasperation, their willingness to "work" for their knowledge is always disappointing, no matter how enthused I try to convey the concept.
A perfect example is in Astronomy. When I first begin my Astronomy course for juniors and seniors in high school each September, I always start with the Big Bang, then follow with the size, scope and immensity of the universe. To me, its sheer magnitude "blows me away". To look up into the night sky and imagine it goes on to an almost infinite distance ... past trillions of stars and billions of galaxies, through ENORMOUS distances of empty space, backward in time billions of years, is ... well ...
MIND BOGGLING to me. Naturally, I want to convey this to my students. So I begin with discussion ... then we try visual conception ... imagining such large numbers. We practice with very large numbers (how many people really understand how much a "billion" of something really is???). Before Celestia, I tried to teach the size of the universe using the "Powers of 10" concept, via a great IMAX video named "The Cosmic Voyage". It worked to some extent, but as I watched their faces, there was little change to them. To them, the film was a documentary in a high school, and although my wonder and amazement over the enormity of the universe was presented to them with as much skill and enthusiasm as anyone could muster, many of them simply didn't "get it". They seemed to realize that space was a "big" place ... but ... they were just not used to marshalling their minds to truly ponder the scope of infinity.
It was my revelation to realize that it takes a special student to drop their distractions, and the socializing that constantly occurs in a high school classroom, to block out the classroom lights and the sleepiness from the night before ... to stop daydreaming of what they'll do after school ... to block it out and concentrate on the amazing concept of what infinity (or near infinity) really means. I would say that less then 2 in 10 are willing to do it. As a result, my discussion ... or a classroom exercise ... or a video ... all have limited results.
When I introduced Celestia to them, however, I saw a dramatic change. In my computer lab, I turn out all the lights. I put on some etheral space music. We load up Celestia and they follow a step-by-step journey to where I want to take them ... and I watch their reactions. To my delight, Celestia gets them into space. They really go.... mentally! They click, they press keys, they fly in the Celestia spaceship, and just for a little while, they imagine themselves there. In this way, I have been able to get them to begin ... to just begin to understand the size and wonder of the universe. We start at Earth and slowly, go "UP". They keep going into space. I have them fly slowly at first ... at the speed of a jet plane, then at space shuttle speed. I even show them the Celestia spaceship they are flying in (Jack and I designed it as an add-on). They understand .... they do ... and they like it. They are part of space, for a little while. Slowly, they drop high school behind and for a little while, they ARE in space. They come to realize that even at thousands of km/hr, they are not getting very far. Slowly, visually ... in the dark of my lab, they keep boosting speed to "hyperwarp" speed. Finally, two hours later .... out beyond the MIlky Way in intergalactic space ... they finally get it! "WOW", they say. "I had no idea space was Soooooooo big". They say this after they've seen the Cosmic Voyage ... after we discussed it in class. It was not our discussion ... not a good video ... not an experiment that did it. It was Celestia and its visual capabilities ... its spaceship .... its moving stars .... its bells and whistles .... that is what convinced them.
Form the standpoint of a 10 - 19 year old then, I can emphatically say that the blinking lights and explosions and rotating turrets of antennas, and rocket exhaust from a rising Shuttle launch ... and lightning on Jupiter ... and volcanoes erupting on Io and colliding planets ... and .... and .... all of these things DO work ... they do capture their imaginations. They make space alive! Yes, perhaps 2 in 10 kids could get just as excited by some complex thought experiment and I do not discount their importance ... but in this world ... with the level of teenager that purveys our high schools today .... Celestia with some animation bells and whistles is the best tool I could have to reach the maximum number of them.
I have always believed that learning should be fun! Animation in Celestia is a great way to boost it's fun-making ability ... while painlessly teaching the user some wonderful Astronomy about an impossibly wonderful place ... the universe. The good part is that you and I can have it both ways. Animation in Celestia does in no way ... no way ... change how you want to use the program in higher education. You can do what you want and require your students to do whatever you wish ... with animation effects present. From my perspective, animation helps me to open the world of space to ALL of those kids ... even the ones whose complex thought experiment is what type of pizza they want for dinner.
If fiery flames coming from the back of a rocket in a Celestia animation help me to capture their imagination, even in a small way (THIS is soooo COOL!) ... AHhhhh! .... that is the glory of it all. They begin to change ... and to begin accepting the challenge of doing those complex abstract experiments you and I would like them to do.
In that regard, I really would welcome your support for animation in the program. Let's serve all of our audience, to the best of our abilities. If millions of kids fall in love with space in some small part because Celestia has helped to capture their interest with its visual effects, we have succeeded as educators.
Respectfully,
Frank
-
t00fri
- Developer
- Posts: 8772
- Joined: 29.03.2002
- Age: 22
- With us: 22 years 7 months
- Location: Hamburg, Germany
Dear Frank,
many thanks for your extensive and most interesting explanations that clearly reflect your vast experience as a teacher of adolescents. There were quite a number of aspects you brought forward that I had not yet realized in this form before.
[my "kids" are rather 25-29 years old and usually do their PhD with me in theoretical particle physics...Quite an age difference, indeed. Also, so far, I have never used Celestia in any teaching context. So you are certainly much "ahead" of me as to exploiting pedagogical merits of Celestia]
In fact, I tend to agree with most of what you wrote. Let me just pick out very few points that caught my special attention:
-- In every social environment (like e.g. a high-school class), one typically encounters certain "main stream" trends, represented by a number of "peers" and some less popular interests, followed up by just a few (outsiders, rather).
The fact that you often seemed to use "majority" arguments above then led me to the question:
As a motivated teacher, do you care more to "reach" and inspire the majority in the class, or perhaps (in your heart!?) the others that presumably represent the "highly talented" few...?
[Certainly, in my "trade" we always dream of the rare talents...]
-- Remembering my own high-school times, I was most of all interested in girls. But right next came the "other stuff" that (unlike those girls ) still has remained vivid in my memory:
As of the age of 13 - 15, I spent many many nights, sitting with our math & physics teacher on the roof of our school building, in front of a quite respectable school telescope. But even more important than the stars, were these endless discussions with my teacher (who "exclusively belonged to me" during these nightly sessions...). We talked about many different aspects of science, the universe and how exciting it would be to become a researcher...
Besides my father, he certainly had a prominent share in motivating my decision for choosing science as a profession.
-- Since I am an entirely "normal" person, I always was convinced that many others should be equally receptive to this kind of "educational" experience...
In closing , you did convince me that intelligent animations could well have their justification. And I herewith stop writing against their implementation in Celestia... Yet, my preferences are somewhere else.
Bye Fridger
many thanks for your extensive and most interesting explanations that clearly reflect your vast experience as a teacher of adolescents. There were quite a number of aspects you brought forward that I had not yet realized in this form before.
[my "kids" are rather 25-29 years old and usually do their PhD with me in theoretical particle physics...Quite an age difference, indeed. Also, so far, I have never used Celestia in any teaching context. So you are certainly much "ahead" of me as to exploiting pedagogical merits of Celestia]
In fact, I tend to agree with most of what you wrote. Let me just pick out very few points that caught my special attention:
-- In every social environment (like e.g. a high-school class), one typically encounters certain "main stream" trends, represented by a number of "peers" and some less popular interests, followed up by just a few (outsiders, rather).
The fact that you often seemed to use "majority" arguments above then led me to the question:
As a motivated teacher, do you care more to "reach" and inspire the majority in the class, or perhaps (in your heart!?) the others that presumably represent the "highly talented" few...?
[Certainly, in my "trade" we always dream of the rare talents...]
-- Remembering my own high-school times, I was most of all interested in girls
. But right next came the "other stuff" that (unlike those girls ) still has remained vivid in my memory:
As of the age of 13 - 15, I spent many many nights, sitting with our math & physics teacher on the roof of our school building, in front of a quite respectable school telescope. But even more important than the stars, were these endless discussions with my teacher (who "exclusively belonged to me" during these nightly sessions...). We talked about many different aspects of science, the universe and how exciting it would be to become a researcher...
Besides my father, he certainly had a prominent share in motivating my decision for choosing science as a profession.
-- Since I am an entirely "normal" person, I always was convinced that many others should be equally receptive to this kind of "educational" experience...
In closing
, you did convince me that intelligent animations could well have their justification. And I herewith stop writing against their implementation in Celestia... Yet, my preferences are somewhere else.
Bye Fridger
Re: Couple of questions on various topics/feature requests
This topic is useful.Thanks~~ 
Re: Couple of questions on various topics/feature requests
chris wrote:If you discount Celestia's very simple specular lighting parameters, then all planets have Lambertian surfaces now--this just means that the lighting is independent of viewer position. Recently, I've been doing quite a bit of work with shaders that will be the foundation for experiments with better lighting models.JackHiggins wrote:(1) It's 5pm in the evening where I am at the moment. From the ground in celestia, it shows the sky fairly accurately- it's a bit dark, and the sky is a bit bluer then it should be, but that's probably due to cloud.
However, if I go into space & look down on on Europe from above, it's pitch black. I'm guessing that at the very least, this is a *tad* bit unrealistic. Am I right? This same thing happens with the day/night terminator on the moon, where it's much more gradual than in reality. Chris mentioned a long time ago that he was going to implement a more realistic lighting model. "Lambertian", or is that the current one..? I'd like to know has there been any progress on this..?(2) According to celestia, I should (right now) be able to see Mercury and Venus in the sky, with Mag set to 0.83.
I can't.
Another 45mins or so I should start to see Venus i'd say, Mercury is right next to the sun and so nearly impossible to see.
Any chance this could be improved on a bit?
Eventually, yes . . . I'll be revisiting atmosphere rendering again. One of the things I'm going to do is add sky brightening near the Sun, which should nicely obscure planets in the morning and evening sky. It's not a general solution though . . .Both cmod and 3ds files are converted into the same internal format, so if I get shadows working, they'll work for cmod and 3ds files. I'll probably use stencil shadow volumes for meshes . . . This technique has it's disadvantages, but it's the only real-time method I know that doesn't totally screw up shadows for fine geometry that spacecraft models are full of.(3) Will the new CMOD format be able to cast shadows properly, unlike 3ds, which currently can't? Will it ever be possible for 3ds to cast shadows?(4) Relative and angular velocity display. Seriously, it can't be THAT hard, can it? I've mentioned this a good few times but never got much of a response. What does everyone else think of this as a feature?
Velocity relative to the currently reference object is probably a lot more useful than the absolute velocity (which in Celestia means 'relative to the stars', since the stars are fixed). As for angular velocity, well, what would you like to see?The reason I don't show this now is that my simple calculations for magnitude produces results that are only approximately correct. I don't know of a general formula for computing the magnitude of a planet. Most planetarium programs use empirical formulae specific to individual planets, and these wouldn't suffice for Celestia.(5) App. Magnitude display for non-stellar objects. Good idea?There are two things I want to do: add animation support to cmod files, and create a variant of .xyz files that contain orientations. The first would be used for animating individual parts of a spacecraft, the second could be used to rotate the entire object.(6) Some way of better representing orientations for Spacecraft, and some way of changing the orientations via a script-like file, but a file that would act like an addon to an ssc. This is ESA's biggest feature request in celestia also, it's not just me banging on about it all the time. And if celestia is to get big, ESA are a great way of promoting it.I'm very interested in seeing what these script files look like!I have an idea for what kinds of commands etc the script file would have, and i'll post it if anyone's interested.
--Chris
If I may make a suggestion, these animation information and stuff are all very good.
About formats I have nothing against cmod or 3ds in general. But and a big one.
3ds is already being deprecated over collada and other project formats in Maya and 3d Studio Max.
They already produce broken 3ds files.
It would be handy to take a look (and do more: implement it) at collada.
It supports a lot of features and is very good supported.
This allows to not having to reinvent the wheel, again, not literally.
To convince everybody that it can deliver, here is a list of the more relevant features collada has:
Here are features that are interesting for celestia addon makers/developers:
-COLLADA defines an XML Namespace and database schema
-COLLADA can be lossless: Retains all information - even multiple versions of the same asset (<versioning, interesting for addon makers)
-Compressed Archives (.ZAE Zipped Exchange Archive format) Without compression .dae extension
-Node proxies (Level of Detail and Streaming) handy for celestia handling different scales (virtual textures)
-core collada 1.4 features:
* Mesh geometry
* Skinning
* Morphing
* Animation
* Assets
* Data validation
- Asset Geolocation (added in collada 1.5) handy for Geographical Information Software, handy for Celestia addon builders making stuff that is located on a surface
-COLLADA is an open, archive-grade format that retains meta information
- Kinematics
- COLLADA Physics! Physics! (can be useful when working with physics simulations and exporting them for viewing in celestia, celestia doesn't have to support it but the physics applications can support it and create exchangeable physics!
Very educational.)
* Rigid Body Dynamics
* Rag Dolls
* Contraints
* Collision Volumes
- COLLADA FX; cross-platform standard shader and effects definition written in XML
* Next generation lighting, shading and texturing
* High level effects and shaders
* Support for all shader models (OpenGL: 1.x, 2.0, 3.0 ) under CG and GLSL profiles.
- Broad support from applications like maya, blender,...(Playstation 3)
This will make celestia being able to render far more files than it has now.
It has all the desired features and some handy for in Celestia where the developers wouldn't have thought off.
Official site: http://www.khronos.org/collada/