Status of realistic features in Celestia?

[Evil Dr Ganymede]

Further to my thread about splitting fact from fiction on the Users board...

I think it would be very useful if people who are developing realistic material could post an update on what they're doing and how far they've got here. That way people (like me ) will know the status of the latest versions. I'm posting this here on Development because this stuff should be core Celestia that ought to be (or could be) included with the basic package while adding to its educational/simulationist purpose.

I'm talking about things like:

- expanded list of asteroids and comets in the solar system.
- new small satellites around the bodies in our own solar system.
- lists and locations of nearby and/or newly discovered stars.
- extrasolar systems. But just the core data - orbital characteristics, masses of bodies, and that's it. Textures and satellites for these bodies are fictional.
- cosmological/sky survey/nebula addons.
- multiple star systems (again - orbital characteristics, masses of bodies, barycentres etc. Textures count as fictional).
- updated REAL textures for known bodies. This means that if parts of the body are unmapped or at lower resolution they should be left incomplete or at that resolution, without fictional filler added.
- anything else that can be used for accurately describing the real universe.

I also think it'd be useful to know where to find the latest versions of all of these files - most of these are going to be SSC or STC files (some will have textures).

If you're a developer of such material, please post on this thread and tell us where to find your work and how its development is going. Thanks!

[t00fri]

Sorry, but I will not switch my developer status reports to this board for various reasons:

1) This board to my taste has been pretty boring and thus not very relevant in the past. Many people consider it technical and not worth visiting. It hosts a large number of "feature requests" that are either naive, unrealistic or irrelevant for various reasons. Many people made proposals without having the slightest idea of the code layout of the Celestia engine ...

New users will certainly NOT start reading here!

2) When I regularly undergo the (time consuming) effort to inform people in a hopefully understandable manner about the status of my development activities, I want to reach as many users as possible. Old ones /and/ new ones, in order to clearly illustrate the fact that Celestia development is actively devoted to a scientifically accurate simulation of the universe. My work is usually well suited for that purpose!

Therefore I traditionally put my status reports into 'users'.

3) If this meets significant opposition, I may as well stop these popular reports in the future and switch to the SourceForge developer list when I have developer matters to discuss. This alternative is appropriate in principle and costs /much/ less effort than putting things together in a pedagogical manner...There are a number of Celestia developers that NEVER or rarely show up in the forum!

These comments are not intended to sound agressive in any way. They are just meant to serve as an explanation of my motivations to place my status reports into 'users'. When I do things in an apparently unconventional way, you may assume that I did some thinking beforehand.

Bye Fridger

[Evil Dr Ganymede]

I'm not asking this for the benefit of new users.

This is part of Celestia's development. I'm asking here so that there is somewhere that DEVELOPERS and people interested in development can keep track of what's going on. In Users, there's a lot of stuff that isn't relevant to developing realistic addons for Celestia and it's easy to lose notices in there - this board on the other hand doesn't get so much traffic.
(and to be honest, I don't know why anyone would put development posts on the users board in the first place. If everyone was interested in getting the maximum people viewing their posts then there'd be no point in having any other boards at all).

Of course, if what you're saying is correct and even the developers aren't interested in reading this board and instead use another list that people aren't aware of, then there's little point in having this board in the first place.

[Bob Hegwood]

Of course, if what you're saying is correct and even the developers aren't interested in reading this board and instead use another list that people aren't aware of, then there's little point in having this board in the first place.

Good Doctor,

Even I, the Brain-Dead forklift driver from hell, read all of the posts
entered in not only this topic, but in ALL of the Celestia Users Group Forum
topics.

Sad, but true... I read every message posted on this entire Forum.

Would love to be able to contribute to the development of Celestia (and its
realism, but I just don't have the smarts for anything besides Touring
scripts. Sorry, but them's the facts. On the off-chance that you're interested,
I have just finished a realistic Tour of Mercury. Has taken me well over a
month to do even this. It's not available yet, but will be just as soon as
I can package it, and write the documentation for it.

Hope that helps...

Take care, Bob

[Oni2501]

Hey Bob!

Please do keep writing those touring scripts! I think they're great myself and I look forward to any new scripts you post. Can't say I read all the posts in the forum, but I do check it nightly for anything new I keep an eye out for certain names, yours being one of them. Those are the people that have given so much to the rest of us. I have written a couple of small scripts and modified others to work with my system, but I'm a long ways off from creating anything like you guys!

[t00fri]

...
(and to be honest, I don't know why anyone would put development posts on the users board in the first place. If everyone was interested in getting the maximum people viewing their posts then there'd be no point in having any other boards at all).
...

I makes perfectly sense, when I place major status reports on scientific level development results as a developer and co-author of Celestia into the 'users' board. My reports typically also contain data files or textures for download and final testing before they will be committed into the official Celestia distribution on SourceForge.

For the same reasons, Chris also places his announcements of new developer versions of Celestia (Celestia x.x.x.pre.y.exe) into the 'Users' board rather than into 'Celestia Development'.

This is entirely appropriate, since in both cases preliminary results about Celestia
are communicated that are of interest to all users of Celestia!

Examples besides Chris' "Pre"-versions are my original Titan texture, recent updates thereof, my binary orbit results, my various importance-weighted location files etc..

These are NOT add-ons but represent development material of the regular Celestia distribution.

Bye Fridger

[Bob Hegwood]

I keep an eye out for certain names, yours being one of them.

Man...

You really need to raise your expectations a little bit.

I have written a couple of small scripts and modified others to work with my system, but I'm a long ways off from creating anything like you guys!

So, post them to the Motherlode, why don't you? I also collect other scripts.

Take care, and thanks for the kind words. -Bob

[Evil Dr Ganymede]

I makes perfectly sense, when I place major status reports on scientific level development results as a developer and co-author of Celestia into the 'users' board. My reports typically also contain data files or textures for download and final testing before they will be committed into the official Celestia distribution on SourceForge.

For the same reasons, Chris also places his announcements of new developer versions of Celestia (Celestia x.x.x.pre.y.exe) into the 'Users' board rather than into 'Celestia Development'.

This is entirely appropriate, since in both cases preliminary results about Celestia
are communicated that are of interest to all users of Celestia!

Examples besides Chris' "Pre"-versions are my original Titan texture, recent updates thereof, my binary orbit results, my various importance-weighted location files etc..

These are NOT add-ons but represent development material of the regular Celestia distribution.

Bye Fridger

So... what's the Development board for? The "development material of the regular Celestia distribution" should surely be posted HERE on this board shouldn't it?

What is Development if it isn't the creation and testing of new features and tweaking things that may or may not eventually make it to a final distribution? It seems much more sensible to put all that sort of thing in one place (i.e. on the Development board) than on Users or anywhere else. Otherwise, this board serves no purpose.

I should also note that the description for the Development board on the main forum page says: "The place to discuss creating add-ons, porting, and modifying the source code", whereas Users is "General discussion of Celestia, including help and feature requests" and Addons is "Add-on creators: post images, descriptions, and links to your work here". If these descriptions are inaccurate, then they should be changed - otherwise there's little point in dividing the forum up at all if people are just going to ignore the stated purpose of the boards.

[t00fri]

I makes perfectly sense, when I place major status reports on scientific level development results as a developer and co-author of Celestia into the 'users' board. My reports typically also contain data files or textures for download and final testing before they will be committed into the official Celestia distribution on SourceForge.

For the same reasons, Chris also places his announcements of new developer versions of Celestia (Celestia x.x.x.pre.y.exe) into the 'Users' board rather than into 'Celestia Development'.

This is entirely appropriate, since in both cases preliminary results about Celestia
are communicated that are of interest to all users of Celestia!

Examples besides Chris' "Pre"-versions are my original Titan texture, recent updates thereof, my binary orbit results, my various importance-weighted location files etc..

These are NOT add-ons but represent development material of the regular Celestia distribution.

Bye Fridger

So... what's the Development board for? The "development material of the regular Celestia distribution" should surely be posted HERE on this board shouldn't it?

I do not know what it is good for. To repeat myself: a number of the Celestia developers never or rarely show up in the forum...It takes a lot of time...

I usually never read the Development Board in the forum. Chris rarely posts there either. He mostly posts in 'Users' and 'Bugs'. On SourceForge, the developers list exists precisely for discussing technical aspects of development among the people who really know how Celestia works. Selden posts there frequently, too.

Apart from that, why don't you suggest to Chris to post the PRE-versions to this board. Then others might follow. But I am convinced that is is perfectly OK to place important developer results to 'Users' since this concerns the USERS. Technical discussions should go to the developer list anyhow.

I think you should try to discuss this with Chris...I am getting tired...

What is Development if it isn't the creation and testing of new features and tweaking things that may or may not eventually make it to a final distribution? It seems much more sensible to put all that sort of thing in one place (i.e. on the Development board) than on Users or anywhere else. Otherwise, this board serves no purpose.

Well normally Development is done by the people who know the code and|or have other special know how ...thats why some of us became developers|authors.

Just go ahead and discuss the rest with Chris, if you feel YOU have to get things in order here...

Bye Fridger