Ideas for next version of Celestia

[t00fri]

I've got an idea. How about a .ssc editor that has a frontend?

You know, like a little form you fill out, and the program would generate the code for the planet/moon/satellite/asteroid/whatever else you want to put in.

It could also have a little texture previewer.

In my "Celestia Texture Foundry" WEB interface that I am currently coding & testing for shatters.net, the following feature is being implemented:

If you click on the Help entry for a particular texture, the portion of solarsys.ssc referring to that texture will automatically be generated by means of a Perl-Html script.

To do a frontend as you propose by means of Perl-CGI for the WEB is almost trvial...

Bye Fridger

[Ortolan]

There may already be a way of doing this that I've missed but I'd like to see a .celestia config file so I don't have to reset the various options I like each time I run celestia (show clouds, stars as points etc).

[t00fri]

There may already be a way of doing this that I've missed but I'd like to see a .celestia config file so I don't have to reset the various options I like each time I run celestia (show clouds, stars as points etc).

That's what I do since a long time via 'start.cel' as follows:

{
renderflags { set "cloudmaps galaxies nightmaps eclipseshadows" }
setambientlight {brightness 0.0}
...
}

It may be that the option 'eclipsesshadows' only works as of the CVS version, but that's at least the general idea.

Bye Fridger

[Guest]

Hi,

It would nice to set an end-date for some objects like the MIR. After that date, the object is invisible or deactivated.

MfG

DaB.

P.S: Sorry for my bad english!

[Mikotaj]

Hi,

It would nice to set an end-date for some objects like the MIR. After that date, the object is invisible or deactivated.

MfG

DaB.

P.S: Sorry for my bad english!

How about procedure of MIR's fall? For realistic disappearance...
question: How turn off objects?
Mikotaj

[Mos]

It'd be nice if I could manually swoop around objects (like 2002 MN) for better views. Sort of a "rotate around object" key. That way, you can get just the perfect view of your created asteroid slamming into the planet.

[Ortolan]

I would to see a feature whereby you could place objects on the surface of a planet or moon via a ssc file. ie:

"USN Enterprise" "Sol/Earth"
{
ObjectMesh "cvnenterprise.3ds"
Position 92*43'15" 86*06'57" #latitude & longitude in D/M/S.
Displacement -8.3 #vertical displacement in meters
}

[sigSEGV]

I think it would be extremely cool if you could enable Relativistic effects - such that your max speed would be c and time dilation was implemented. E.g. how fast would I truly appear to be traveling as I zoom through the solar system at .99 c and how fast is the clock moving (according to Earth time)? What about .999c? And maybe even include red and blue shifting. Would make for a good physics tool.

[Guest]

After playing with Celestia a lot this last week, I found the gaps in the scripting language quite frustrating. Some of the things I was trying to do were reposition objects in space (requires a restart), and script a fixed camera tracking a moving object ('track' is not supported in the script - or at least its not documented. I checked the strings in the exe around the other script commands and nothing jumped out)

A lot of the time I also found myself wanting to 'record' a script - not a movie - from keystrokes, and load up both a new .ssc and .cel at the same time.

It seems to me that a better design would be to unify the user interface and scripting systems. If the UI essentially generated script events, it would be straightforward to tap this event queue to record sessions.

In order for this to work properly, you need to go the whole hog and break any celestia 'plugins' that affect object/camera positioning into 2 halves - those that generate script, and those that plug under the scripting engine to provide new primitives (in the lisp sense).

Which brings me to the ssc files - these should be combined with .cel files into a single scripting system, which would allow objects to be added/removed/replaced at runtime. Having objects that can be changed at runtime would have a big impact on celestia. Uses include:

- simulation of historic events with a start/stop, where the objects change. Eg, Apollo moon landings (each stage), Shumacher-Levy 9
- simulation of events where the object stays the same but the orbital elements change, eg SL9 again (though this would be inaccurate), spacecraft manoeuvering in orbit (small thrusts followed by stable orbits)
- authoring scripts within celestia

Oh yeah and comets and nebulae please ;)

[ba22a]

comment above was mine... login timed out I guess.

[Mutos]

Well well well, after reading all this, i also give my own opinions ^-^ Of course I speak w/ in mind my use of celestia as a dev tool for my SF universe. So here are my priorities :

1/ Global speedup on lowend graph cards, but PLEASE no more unswitchable graphical features, moderate realism is cool but frankly i don't give a damn w/ die-hard realism, i'm more concerned about flexibility & ease of use

2/ Enhanced directories structure :
- A "default" directory w/ the usual ones (data, fonts, models, scripts, textures) except extras
- An "extras" directory w/ cloned structure so that extra models, scripts, fonts & all don't have to overwrite default
- "extras/*" being searched for subdirs, so as to be able to properly organize large sets of custom files
- An extras on/off GUI feature, might even select/deselect any "extra/*" subdir. Might be a startup panel or a config editor, no real need to have it on the fly

3/ Scripts dealing w/ variables & event binding on objects. I just need it for hyperspace jumppoints but it actually blocks me off !

Apart fro that Celestia is the best thing i found around from some times !

[Robert Panduru]

I don't want to bring back the old StarStrider 2 topic, but the feature that I've longed to see in simulators (both space and flight) is the ability to have real 3D offered by anaglyph stereo rendering. Although I'm aware that this will put an additional burden on the video card's processing power, the feature actually allows you to see where the objects are with respect to each other. That, coupled with the ability to load various previous saved simulations together with audio comments would transform Celestia in an unbeatable space presentation support.

[jrobert]

I know the difficulty in creating a 3D model from something that's only been seen as a 2D image all the while making it look good while inside as well as from a distance. But wouldn't it be wonderful to be able to be able to index and visit nebulae as easly as visiting the various stars?

[NecroBones]

I posted this in another thread elsewhere, but it probably belongs here more... My original message follows below... but the gist of it is that I'd really like for the camera to be able to enter realistic orbits around planetary bodies, just as easily as you can track, follow, or sync now, and change to different orbits in that mode just by using the mouse-wheel to change distance, as you can now... the only difference being that you're in an orbit. The tedious part, I would think, is adding mass data for each object. Coding this sort of thing shouldn't be too difficult otherwise. Perhaps I'll take a peek at the sourcecode one of these days. :)

-snip-

First off, I must grant the usual praise... An amazing program, beutiful in it's simplicity, and yet elegant in design.

Anyway... I know people have talked about making spacecraft simulations based off of this, but here's an idea for a feature that might satisfy a few people without at all changing the concept of the program.

The "follow", "track", and "sync" options are really nice, but perhaps a new "orbit" feature/selection might be nice. Basically what I'm thinking is to have an option that you can select that will calculate a roughly appropriate orbital period for a circular orbit for the camera, based on the camera's current distance from the object you're locked onto. That way you can follow an object as if you were in orbit around it, rather than always being in geosynchronous orbit all the time, or always watching it at the same angle as you follow it. If you were to change your distance, your orbital period will likewise change... a low orbit will have a fast period, a high orbit will have a much slower one. This would allow you to some degree "pretend" you're watching the planet through a viewport from a spacecraft a little better than is possible now. Right now if you want to approximate this sort of thing, you need to place a spacecraft in orbit by editing the SSC files and then follow it. I love watching the planet slowly roll past in low orbit. :)

Is anything like this on the drawing-board? I realize this would require encoding mass for each object, and that would be a pain... but still, it would be cool, and useful. :)

-snip-

[Ortolan]

For those interested in an 'orbit' mode, I think there's already a gravity effects addon for celestia that will do what you're looking for (search the previous threads for the topic).
One other thing I'd like to see is a seperate 'show orbit' option for planets, moons, asteroids/comets, and spacecraft/satellites.

EDIT: Just thought of something else. Making labels visible only if they are not obscured by an object in the foreground.

[Mutos]

Hi everybody,


I come back to my latest post to strike once more on the need to have Celestia search subdirs of "extras" directory. I'm beginning to have a fine number of files in the extras dir & it's getting unmanageable ! I'm already shivering when i think i'll end up w/ at least 1000 files in that one dir ^-^ That's the estimate i have for all the inhabited or explored systems i need.

Thanks Chris for all that was acomplished since now & thanks in advance for what Celestia will become in the future !


Best regards,

[chris]

Hi everybody,


I come back to my latest post to strike once more on the need to have Celestia search subdirs of "extras" directory. I'm beginning to have a fine number of files in the extras dir & it's getting unmanageable ! I'm already shivering when i think i'll end up w/ at least 1000 files in that one dir ^-^ That's the estimate i have for all the inhabited or explored systems i need.

Thanks Chris for all that was acomplished since now & thanks in advance for what Celestia will become in the future !


Best regards,

This is an excellent idea . . . I'll see what I can do to get this implemented for 1.2.5. Overpopulated texture and model directories is another big problem, though a good solution for this is more involved.

--Chris

[Mutos]

Thanks Chris for ur appreciation,


I recently posted (Tue Jul 30, 2002 4:48 am) about enhanced directories structure, that i modified today w/ new ideas :
- A "default" directory w/ the usual ones (data, fonts, models, scripts, textures) except extras
- An "extras" directory w/ cloned structure so that extra models, scripts, fonts & all don't have to overwrite default
- "extras/*" category subdirs being searched for subdirs, so as to be able to properly organize large sets of custom files
- Might even be a substructure "extras/<name of subset>/<cloned structure>"
- An extras on/off GUI feature, might even select/deselect any "extra/*" subdir. Might be a startup panel or a config editor, no real need to have it on the fly

Might get something like that :

Code: Select all

celestia
  default
    data
    texture
      ----
    scripts
    ssc
    models
  extras
    extra-realism    (if i'm a die-hard astro fan)
      scripts
      ssc
      texture
        ----
      models
     hoshikaze    (for my Hoshikaze universe)
      scripts
      ssc
      texture
        ----
      models
     star-trek    (if I'm a Trek fan)
      scripts
      ssc
      texture
        ----
      models
     star-wars   (also a Wars fan ^-^)
      scripts
      ssc
      texture
        ----
      models
     dune        (another on !)
      scripts
      ssc
      texture
        ----
      models
 

This kind of structure could enable Celestia to manage multiple universes at a time, and even evolve one day into builtin dataset management menus allowing to switch datasets w/o restarting Celestia.

Also I recently found out labelled stars list should be independant, now tweaking the main config file is needed if one wants to change stars labelling.


@+

[NecroBones]

Another thing I'd love to see implemented eventually, and I'm sure someone's metioned it before, would be black-holes. Though I'm not sure how much data there is out there for the positions and sizes (masses) of theorized black holes.

In their simplest form, they could be displayed as nothing more than a black silhouette sphere, representing the event-horizon. Granted, truly doing them justice would require significantly more than that... some of which would be rather complex. Ideally, they'd have to have a hazy halo of light-distortion around them, and the positions of distant stars and objects behind them would be bent and shifted. Additionally, in many cases there would be a disc of swirling matter that is being drawn in or orbiting the black hole, also creating radiation emissions as it decays into the event horizon. Not to mention possible polar emission streams as well.

*drool* That would be fun to play with. :)

[billybob884]

I was thinking, for the next version of celestia that comes out, why not have a better way to organize the star systems. So I came up with a great idea. I drew it into a picture so it's easier to understand. Click here to see it http://www.geocities.com/billbob884/index.html

Let me know what you think!

Mike M.