I've been having a go at creating my own star textures for Celestia, and I put the files with the same names as the originals (e.g. "mstar.jpg") in the hires directory.
So I go off to Proxima and change the texture resolution (SHIFT+R). Interestingly, nothing happened.
I then switched the original mstar.jpg to the hires directory and my replacement to the medres directory. My new texture was loaded.
I then tried changing the texture to low-resolution. Again, no luck: the program only loaded the medres texture, not the lores texture I had expected.
I then decided to start the program with low-resolution textures. Same as before: the program only uses the medres texture.
I would have expected the program to reload the star textures as well on a resolution change, not just those for planets.
Applies to Celestia v1.3.1 under WinXP.
v1.3.1: Star textures only loaded from 'medres' directory
Re: v1.3.1: Star textures only loaded from 'medres' director
chaos syndrome wrote:I would have expected the program to reload the star textures as well on a resolution change, not just those for planets.
I'm not sure if this is "as designed" or if it is actually a bug. Hopefully Chris will let us know.
-Don G.
My Celestia Scripting Resources page
Avatar: Total Lunar Eclipse from our back yard, Oct 2004. Panasonic FZ1 digital camera (no telescope), 36X digital zoom, 8 second exposure at f6.5.
My Celestia Scripting Resources page
Avatar: Total Lunar Eclipse from our back yard, Oct 2004. Panasonic FZ1 digital camera (no telescope), 36X digital zoom, 8 second exposure at f6.5.
Availability of hires and lores textures for nebula
I've found the same issue with "Nebula" objects as Chaos observes with "Star" objects. Celestia will only display the texture in the medres directory, not a higher resolution texture of the same filename in the hires directiory or a lower resolution texture of the same filename in the lores directory. I've found this to be a feature in all versions of Celestia 1.3.1 and 1.3.2 that I have used. It would be nice if the change of resolution feature was available for nebula and star objects, not just planets and moons.
One question I have about how Celestia loads multiple resolution textures - are all resolutions of a texture automatically loaded when an object is brought into the field of view, or is just the default medres texture loaded unless an "R" or "Shift-R" key is pressed? The reason I ask is because the size of loaded textures drastically affects the speed of rendering when multiple objects are in the field of view. I am compiling an Add-On of all 110 Messier objects as 2D billboard Nebula objects, which I want all to be loaded at once. This is not a problem if lores 256x256 pixel textures are used, as they only use about 0.2MB of graphical memory each when loaded (if my assumptions are correct), and so all 110 Messier objects can be in the field of view without rendering slowing to a crawl on a system with a 32MB graphics card. 512x512 textures use about 0.8MB of memory each, 1024x1024 use 3MB, and 2048x2048 use a whopping 12MB each when loaded. I would like to have only the 512x512 textures for the Messier object Nebula billboards in the medres directory loaded by default, but for the user to be able to select (using "R" or "Shift-R" keypresses) higher or lower resolution textures to be loaded when they are available in the hires or lores directories. This would mean that I could release just one version of the Messier object billboards Add-On with 3 sets of texture files for the user to select from in the medres, hires and lores directories, rather than three versions each with different sized texture files necessarily stored in the medres directory, which is currently my only option.
Please advise me if my assumptions about how Celestia operates are wrong in this area - I am not familiar with the actual coding of the program and am deriving my conclusions from observation.
Tim Mc
One question I have about how Celestia loads multiple resolution textures - are all resolutions of a texture automatically loaded when an object is brought into the field of view, or is just the default medres texture loaded unless an "R" or "Shift-R" key is pressed? The reason I ask is because the size of loaded textures drastically affects the speed of rendering when multiple objects are in the field of view. I am compiling an Add-On of all 110 Messier objects as 2D billboard Nebula objects, which I want all to be loaded at once. This is not a problem if lores 256x256 pixel textures are used, as they only use about 0.2MB of graphical memory each when loaded (if my assumptions are correct), and so all 110 Messier objects can be in the field of view without rendering slowing to a crawl on a system with a 32MB graphics card. 512x512 textures use about 0.8MB of memory each, 1024x1024 use 3MB, and 2048x2048 use a whopping 12MB each when loaded. I would like to have only the 512x512 textures for the Messier object Nebula billboards in the medres directory loaded by default, but for the user to be able to select (using "R" or "Shift-R" keypresses) higher or lower resolution textures to be loaded when they are available in the hires or lores directories. This would mean that I could release just one version of the Messier object billboards Add-On with 3 sets of texture files for the user to select from in the medres, hires and lores directories, rather than three versions each with different sized texture files necessarily stored in the medres directory, which is currently my only option.
Please advise me if my assumptions about how Celestia operates are wrong in this area - I am not familiar with the actual coding of the program and am deriving my conclusions from observation.
Tim Mc
Thanks go to Selden for looking into this topic ... it appears that this behavior is "as designed". However, that doesn't stop anyone from posting a "Feature Request"! 
-Don G.
My Celestia Scripting Resources page
Avatar: Total Lunar Eclipse from our back yard, Oct 2004. Panasonic FZ1 digital camera (no telescope), 36X digital zoom, 8 second exposure at f6.5.
My Celestia Scripting Resources page
Avatar: Total Lunar Eclipse from our back yard, Oct 2004. Panasonic FZ1 digital camera (no telescope), 36X digital zoom, 8 second exposure at f6.5.
Tim,I dont think its possible to change the texture resolution for a model (Nebulae) whilst Celestia is running.As far as I know you must always have textures for models in the 'medres' folder but if you want higher res textures just make sure it is the same name as the existing one and the same format and put in 'medres' folder.It doesnt matter what size it is so long as dimensions are allowable in Celestia (ie 512x512,1024x512,1024x1024,2048x1024,2048x2048,4096x2048,4096x4096 etc or any combination)so long as your graphics card can handle it of course.I guess you could include all 3 different resolutions in their respective folders but include a read me to say to put which texture you want to use in 'medres' folder,Jestr
ps-actually you can change the texture of a model using the Altsurface command,so long as the model has no texture internally specified,but this only works with ssc files,not with dsc's unfortunately
ps-actually you can change the texture of a model using the Altsurface command,so long as the model has no texture internally specified,but this only works with ssc files,not with dsc's unfortunately