Has core Celestia development stopped?

[t00fri]

I am exclusively concerned with MAJOR coding steps in the CORE of Celestia. Structural issues in the code etc that we really need to move ahead significantly.

I'd like to emphasize that for a lof of people it's not these major steps which matter, but the polishing - i.e. easily available documentation and a nice out-of-the-box experience. A lot of users don't really care about inaccuracies in the data. For those users it's more important to have a lot of stuff to investigate without going through the additional step of finding, downloading and installing Addons. I am not saying that scientific accuracy should be traded for more fancy stuff, but that when you can have both there is no reason not to include the latter.

Examples:
- IMHO some or all of the Messier objects should be included in the default Celestia installation. This doesn't necessarily have to include textures, it's just important to show that the universe isn't filled with just a couple of stars.
- how about more surface locations on Earth? The data is available and is AFAIK accurate (is this true?)... We just would have to trim it if we want to save space.
- why not add a few scripts and make it easier to access them? They hardly take any space and provide real additional value for any newcomer. We just have to decide which ones...

This is not that much work, but it simply isn't happening. Maybe there is something wrong with these ideas, but I believe it's simply because there isn't anybody around who takes care of stuff like that, and lack of feedback is turning down everybody who's going to try...

Of course this has nothing to do with the improvements you wrote about, I am just pointing out often the small bits are neglected.

3) The Earth is 200AU from the coordinate origin, which introduces huge parallax effects for nearby stars, but this has not been rectified because it would "break cel URLs".

Apparently the cel URLs are going to be broken anyway, so this may be the right time to do it... And IMHO they should be broken in a way that Celestia doesn't even accept the old URLs anymore (it should display an error message explaining that old-style URLs are no longer supported), unless a compatibility mode can be provided.

Another thing which IMHO needs to be fixed:
- the 16kly limit for stars.

Harald

Harald,

you were touching upon one crucial aspect that I did not want to bring up (now):

What's the design purpose of Celestia in the future??

The lack of a clearing-up discussion about this crucial prerequisite for further coding development of Celestia was actually part of the reasons why Grant went away...

Which kind of users is Celestia supposed to address in the first place?
Is the target to maximize the number of users irrespective of their interests??
What "services" is Celestia supposed to provide foremost?

...etc.

But anyhow,

If you like to polish, please spend your time polishing...

If that's it, then there would be NO reason for me anymore to spend further time with Celestia development.

Bye Fridger

[Harry]

If that's it, then there would be NO reason for me anymore to spend further time with Celestia development.

I don't get it. I clearly stated that I don't want to compromise scientific accuracy, and that this wouldn't be necessary anyway. So please explain why making Celestia easier to use for a newcomer is a reason for you to no longer "spend further time with Celestia development."

I hope you simply misunderstood me....

Harald

[t00fri]

If that's it, then there would be NO reason for me anymore to spend further time with Celestia development.

I don't get it. I clearly stated that I don't want to compromise scientific accuracy, and that this wouldn't be necessary anyway. So please explain why making Celestia easier to use for a newcomer is a reason for you to no longer "spend further time with Celestia development."

I hope you simply misunderstood me....

Harald

Harald,

I think there might have been a /mutual/ misunderstanding.

I was trying to address the essence of future Celestia development. If the /essence/ will be mainly concerned with " making Celestia easier to use for a newcomer" then indeed my motivations are gone...

I am sorry, but over the years I just got quite allergic as to that hypotheical "dumb user" who is unable to READ, to CONCENTRATE a bit or to MEMORIZE anything ...He tends to provide the universal "alibi" of zillions of commercial software companies!

Sure enough, the /essence/ of most commercial software development is to make the products "easier to use for a newcomer", since then the respective company can hope to sell more copies.

Of course, it's perfectly fine with me to try and do a good job in assigning e.g. systematic key names or try to come up with good documentation or also to try to have systematic menu structures etc.
In my view such criteria should naturally form a significant part of a well-designed piece of software.

But I would certainly not want such efforts to cost a /significant/ or even dominant fraction of the time I can invest into Celestia-development, given that there are so many really challenging horizons to get to!

Bye Fridger

[Paolo]

...
Just a few examples:

1) Precession of the equinoxes.
2) Stars with the same coordinates in stars.dat and in an stc do not plot in the same position.
3) The Earth is 200AU from the coordinate origin, which introduces huge parallax effects for nearby stars, but this has not been rectified because it would "break cel URLs".
4) A number of custom orbits are still quite badly in error.
5) We have no custom orbits for a number of major moons for which suitable formulae are available.
6) Node and pericentre precession is not implemented.
7) We can't select a view by sky coordinates and corresponding grids in any of the standard astronomical frames.
8.) After all this work on multiple star 3d graphics by Chris and my extensive orbit data preparations, we still don't have a decent multiple-star browser GUI, such that people can actually localize all the thousands of binaries!
9) many further much discussed issues like "filters", "cosmo-Celestia", modified "goto" for binary systems etc.
10) improved manoeuvring on the surface of objects

+ .....

Bye Fridger

Fridger please allow me to make a little criticism.
Often you have an approach that is not practical. You love discussions. I think that is a professional bias of the scientist and researchers.

Beside this in the middle of the large amout of words in your previous posts, in the above quoted part of the message there is a real good starting point.

In order to develop the Celestia Core it is necessary to:
- make the list of the things to do;
- assign priorities;
- discuss the implementation;
- encourage new coders to submit their patches in order to solve the issues as previously discussed.

If those things will be more publicized it will be possible to involve more people.
Celestia is very large and can surely frighten the new coders. Instead if the tasks should be well defined the contributors should concentrate and work on a limited part of the code. This code should be discussed and analyzed in the forum.
If necessary when the patches reaches a good level then should be submitted to Chris in order to be tested, approved and eventually corrected and included in Celestia.

IMHO this solution should work at least for the things that do not concern to advanced OpenGL techniques. Almost all the points in your list ?€¦

Bye - Paolo

PS: If it is necessary to line up you can consider me for the scientific accuracy.

[t00fri]

Core development on the level of a whole forum with members whose qualifications are undefined will never work.

Bye Fridger

[Evil Dr Ganymede]

1) Precession of the equinoxes.
2) Stars with the same coordinates in stars.dat and in an stc do not plot in the same position.
3) The Earth is 200AU from the coordinate origin, which introduces huge parallax effects for nearby stars, but this has not been rectified because it would "break cel URLs".
4) A number of custom orbits are still quite badly in error.
5) We have no custom orbits for a number of major moons for which suitable formulae are available.
6) Node and pericentre precession is not implemented.
7) We can't select a view by sky coordinates and corresponding grids in any of the standard astronomical frames.
8.) After all this work on multiple star 3d graphics by Chris and my extensive orbit data preparations, we still don't have a decent multiple-star browser GUI, such that people can actually localize all the thousands of binaries!
9) many further much discussed issues like "filters", "cosmo-Celestia", modified "goto" for binary systems etc.
10) improved manoeuvring on the surface of objects

Well, this list is definitely a good start with regard to what still needs to be sorted out in Celestia's core.

Personally, let me just stop the world on its axis by generally agreeing with Fridger - right now I think that much of the visible development of Celestia has been in what is essentially optional eye-candy; things like ever-increasing levels of detail in textures, adding more and more feature names, etc. There are already plenty of people doing these, and it doesn't require much specialised knowledge. IMO this is just 'background noise' on the forum - it doesn't particularly interest me, and I'm sure people will keep on doing it anyway regardless of how realistic Celestia becomes. But that's not the point really.

What we need is for knowledgeable, capable, committed people to start tackling the points on this list. Arguments about what Celestia is supposed to be used for, what its future purpose is, or who it is aimed at are essentially irrelevant - at its base, Celestia is a very good educational, expandable, and versatile astronomy visualisation software package. That versatility and expandability also means it can be used for non-educational purposes, but that doesn't mean that all of a sudden its base purpose is invalidated. All developers need to do is to focus on addressing the outstanding issues listed here - if they don't, then Celestia WILL just end up being the playground of people who just want to add spacecraft models and make fictional systems, or "polishers" who want to just refine textures and add more feature names to existing bodies. Not to say that "polishing" isn't useful (and there will always be people who are willing to do that), but you can only polish something so much - if the core doesn't improve or expand, then the polishers would run out of things to refine.

Fact is, there will be always be people who lack the specialised knowledge and skills who will want to add more eye-candy and who think that Celestia is just for visualising their fictional systems or just generally playing around with - that's just a fact of life around here now. But people who want to develop the useful, functional, educational core should still be encouraged to do so regardless. If developers leave because they perceive that Celestia is "losing its direction" then that is not really helpful at all - if a developer leaves, then that's one less person around who can steer the ship back to its proper course so to speak, in which case the ship continues to blunder off the edge of the world .


One thing I find a little troubling is that Chris hasn't said anything on this thread, so we don't know his opinions or even if he knows this discussion is going on. I know there's a developers mailing list, but I wonder if it may make discussion easier if someone set up a new discussion forum (like the current boards) open to a small, select, invited core group of developers with useful specialised knowledge only. It seems to be straightforward enough to do, assuming someone has the server space, and it wouldn't be TOO much traffic. That could perhaps bring more focus to development, and provide less distraction and frustration.

[Paolo]

Core development on the level of a whole forum with members whose qualifications are undefined will never work.

Bye Fridger

Fridger

Really... its amazing.
You are a scientist, and so it is supposed that one of your aims is to popularize the knowledge at any level.
You've asked for and started a specific forum for the discussion of astrophysics and cosmological issues. Many times you've posted with patience long explanatory messages.

Now you get out with the above message...

Since you have a lot of credit inside the community, everyone that is reading this message can understand that almost everyone of us that should be interested in helping the development is a fool, because only a few superman will be able to go straitght forward and give a little bit of improvement to Celestia. And so you won't be available to explain or discuss of very complex things with people that hasn't at least a university degree in Physics or Astrophysics. Should be only a big waste of time.

It's a little bit offensive.

As we perceive you as a leader specially now because lately for different reasons Chris, Christophe, Selden and Grant are almost missing from the forums, I think that the yours is the wrong attitude to manage these kind of dicussions.

Probably you are right: discuss at forum level "will never work"... It should be said with more diplomacy.
If you won't change this attitude and you won't work to reconstruct the team spreading enthusiasm I feel that the future of the entire project is in great danger.

Come on Drive the situation in a positive way Give to the community a chance to grow Don't slate every tentative and scare any possible newcomer to the development team

I'm not touchy but since I haven't a university degree and I'm not an OpenGL guru I'll get out for a while. These are things out of my capabilities.

[Evil Dr Ganymede]

I think what Fridger is trying to say in his characteristically undiplomatic way is basically what I was saying earlier - that there will just be chaos if we just leave it to ALL members to contribute to Celestia's core development. First, because of the large number of people involved, and secondly because there are plenty of people who don't know as much as they think they know about the technical aspects of astronomy required to develeop the core.

I don't think that we should have an easy-going, laissez-faire attitude where everyone can chip in here - that's not going to be productive on the core front. What we need is a directed, focussed approach where everyone involved is an expert in their field and is enthusiastic and commited to developing the program. It shouldn't matter if you don't have a university degree or PhD so long as you can demonstrate that you know your subject well - but that said there shouldn't be a completely open door for anyone to step in unless they have suitable, useful knowledge and the will to apply it.

The Celestia community at large will obviously continue to grow - but the people involved in active development should be limited in number, and very selectively picked.

[t00fri]

Paulo,

it seems you felt offended by some of my above statements. Let me strongly emphasize that this was certainly not intended. Perhaps you just misunderstood or overreacted a bit...

Core development on the level of a whole forum with members whose qualifications are undefined will never work.

Bye Fridger

Fridger

Really... its amazing.
You are a scientist, and so it is supposed that one of your aims is to popularize the knowledge at any level.

Yes certainly, but please try to understand that given the present rather desperate status of development, I am also walking a bit "on my nerves"...

Here is just one recent illustration:

I had spend much of my little spare time to extract and prepare thousands of binary orbit data from scientific catalogs, when I got stuck and needed to get some feedback from Chris. The crucial question was how to treat /missing/ orbit data items.

After 2 or 3 resendings of my questions, I finally got an answer from him about 6 weeks later...

Now you get out with the above message...

Since you have a lot of credit inside the community, everyone that is reading this message can understand that almost everyone of us that should be interested in helping the development is a fool, because only a few superman will be able to go straitght forward and give a little bit of improvement to Celestia. And so you won't be available to explain or discuss of very complex things with people that hasn't at least a university degree in Physics or Astrophysics. Should be only a big waste of time.

Please note that I never implied anything like this.

It was always CHRIS who invited certain people with respective know-how to participate in the development, NOT ME or anyone else.

And CHRIS always preferred to have some control over who is committing code. I just happen to largely share his views about that matter, since I am aware as well about the inherent complexity with regard to Celestia's scientific content.

If he likes to have 20 people submit code, he also has to coordinate all that ...and I just doubt that it will work. It is my honest conviction.

Probably you are right: discuss at forum level "will never work"... It should be said with more diplomacy.

Probably YES, but my straght 2-line sentence was nothing but an attempt to be SHORT this time, after you had reproached to me the length of my previous mails...

Bye Fridger

PS: I just noticed EDG's mail above mine: Indeed I agree with every word he wrote...

[trenner]

Hi Folks
Periodically I read through Celestia Developement, and understand very little
This particular thread is making me a bit nervous, so I thought I might express my experience, as a person who couldn't get past Qbasic.
I've been fighting, screaming, and clawing myself through computer education for about 15 years now - I am a very old-school 56 years old.
With Celestia, I feel I have been enjoyably nurtured to a higher understanding of simulation, astronomy, scripting, the space program, and general computer manipulation. I feel like I now know the face of Mars as well as I know Earth. I love passing on what I have learned through NASA, Hubble, or International adventures. I hope and look forward to seeing simulation of the Impact project in the future, and the Rosetta project. And JWST. And so many others - future Moon projects.
And all this because of Celestia. And I have dabbled with a LOT of software programs
Each time I bring up one of the Celestia programs - I have 14 versions in my program files - I do a bit of tweaking, learning, experimenting, and who knows, I may eventually even make some sense of C++
You have guided me well. Thank you. I do hope this is for the long term.

Regards
Terry Renner

[wcomer]

Personally, let me just stop the world on its axis by generally agreeing with Fridger

God save us. I do believe this is the final sign of the apocalypse.

[t00fri]

Personally, let me just stop the world on its axis by generally agreeing with Fridger

God save us. I do believe this is the final sign of the apocalypse.

Walton,

you missed another one

...
Bye Fridger

PS: I just noticed EDG's mail above mine: Indeed I agree with every word he wrote...

[Evil Dr Ganymede]

Well, it's kinda reassuring that me and Fridger at least agree on where Celestia should be headed .

[Brendan]

Don't worry about Celestia dying. The galaxy rendering we're talking about in the users forum may be The Next Great Thing to be added to Celestia.
I also agree that the list of 10 things Fridger gave earlier could be a good start for a list of things to do.

[t00fri]

Don't worry about Celestia dying. The galaxy rendering we're talking about in the users forum may be The Next Great Thing to be added to Celestia.
I also agree that the list of 10 things Fridger gave earlier could be a good start for a list of things to do.

Yes, indeed, the ongoing new round about rendering of /all/ standard galaxy types (from catalog information)

http://www.shatters.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=7012

is very important, seems to have some fresh 'momentum' and is fun...

That is a long overdue feature which would allow to incorporate all ~10000 objects from the professional NGC catalog or similar data bases!

Bye Fridger

[Paolo]

Fridger
I've appreciated the content and the renewed entusiasm of your last posts. We can understand perfectly the frustration caused by the current situation. We all know the hard work behind the binaries catalogues.

Yes, indeed, the ongoing new round about rendering of /all/ standard galaxy types (from catalog information)

http://www.shatters.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=7012

For a stroke of luck the above mentioned thread happens exactly at the right moment to restart this discussion.

The Toti's is the type of thread that I would like to see more often in the Development forum.
But it is not enough. I would like to see the C++ code not only screenshots. I would like to discuss about theory, implementation (data structures, classes, methods, algorithms), optimization and integration in Celestia.

Incidentally to further clarify my previous posts I've never said that I would like to extend the commit and update access to the original Celestia CVS tree to many people!
I've always spoken of a small team of selected official developers that has to be involved and trained because things are complex and now this team is gone lost!

The nice work of Toti will be surely evaluated by Chris before being integrated in a future release of Celestia.
But when Toti will publish the code many of us will be able to test, debug, discuss and improve it independently by Chris. Many of us will be able share their opinions and specific expertise speeding up the development process of this /patch/.

IMHO this approach can lead to succesful results at least for some of the previously mentioned top 10 improvements to Celestia core.

My final suggestion is to start a new thread as tentative with the aim of implementing a patch for one of the /easyer/ and /simpler/ top 10 points.
The subject will be your choice because you have the competence to do it.

The thread must invite explicitly new contributors to participate to the discussion and to the coding activities. Hopefyully a new patch like the Toti's one will be prepared in a short time. The Official Developers will be in charge to drive the development for the specific aspects (scientific accuracy, integration, performace, compatibility, OS porting etc.).

The community will be able to grow step by step in terms of competence and number. In the future it will be possibile to face more complex issues and even to extend the official development team.