Display problems.

[guest jo]

deleted

[chromium]

Thanks, guest jo. I just upgraded to 256 MBytes and to the latest ATI driver. It runs more stable now, but still sooner or later (= within three minutes, not anymore within ten seconds), I get the blue screen. Under Windows ME, it runs fine, also with the educational packs and high res textures installed.

[selden]

Chromium,

I'd be concerned that there's something wrong with one or more of the chips on your older memory modules. Try removing the older SIMMs and running without them to see if that helps the system stability. Of course, the system will be extremely slow as it pages frantically to and from disk...

[chromium]

Thanks for your suggestion, Selden, but wouldn't faulty chips cause issues with other software as well? The only two apps I have that bring my system to its knees are Celestia and a 3D game for kids that relies on Direct X. Both of these apps run seamlessly and for hours on exactly the same computer under Windows ME (dual boot). To me, it therefore really looks like an issue with the Win XP graphics drivers of the ATI card, likely indeed in combination with my somewhat older hardware. Anyway, I'll keep checking the new ATI drivers now and then. Thanks for all the feedback!

[selden]

Celestia puts more of a stress on the system than most other applications do. It uses a lot of memory, I/O, CPU and Graphics. It's usually very hard to determine the cause of the problems when one of them is slightly flakey.

Good luck!

[jherschmann]

Hi all,

I just tried out the recent 1.4 pre7 version and came across this issue (tried it on two different machines with NVIDIA and ATI cards and both showed the same effect):

Nebulae won't render at all and galaxies only very dimly (barely visible). If I use the 1.4 pre6 executable and leave the rest of the 1.4 pre7 install as is everything still works fine. So I guess something in the rendering routines in the 1.4 pre7 executable is still shaky.

Hope this helps! Let me know if I am to provide more info...

Joachim

[selden]

Galaxy brightness is adjustable with ( and ) keys. (Shift-9 and Shift-0 on US keyboards.)

[jherschmann]

Selden,

thanks for the hint. However, the nebulae still remain invisible...

Joachim

[markus]

Hi,
I have the same problem like jherschmann with nebulae display in Celestia 1.4.0 pre7... moreover, the visibility depends on the angle I look on them (looking at a galaxy from the side shows more of it than from above).
My OpenGL info:
Vendor: Intel
Renderer: Intel 855GM
Version: 1.3.0 - Build 4.14.10.3943
Max simultaneous textures: 4
Max texture size: 2048

-markus

[selden]

The keyboard command in v1.4.0pre7 to toggle the display of Nebulas is "^" (caret = shift 6). There is not yet a "View Options" entry for it.

[Péji]

Hi,

The v1.4.0pre7 works without any crash on my PC, but doesn't display nebulae.

Another problem : the JMII virtual textures of Earth look like this :



My computer : AMD64 3000+, nForce3 chipset, ATI Radeon 9800Pro.

PJ

[selden]

P?©ji,

The v1.4.0pre7 works without any crash on my PC, but doesn't display nebulae.

Did you try typing a ^ ? Perhaps you need to type a space after it on your system. That's often necessary on systems designed for languages that have diacritical marks.

I don't know what you mean by "JMII virtual textures". Please spell it out.

[Péji]

Hi Selden,

Thanks for your answer.

Excuse me ! The screenshot shows the "64K Jestr Earth Mark II" virtual textures..

PJ

[LWK]

Hi! This is my first post, but I'm using Celestia since many years. Great program!

Alas, I'm posting here because I also have a problem, with the OpenGL 2.0 rendering engine: planets with specular and normal maps appear in a magenta-blue and yellow-green shades that form many little triangles all over the sphere of the planet. A mess . In particular Earth with JestrMarble II does this effect. Instead Saturn, with a specular map, in OpenGL 2.0 is almost totally white.

I'm currently using the old OpenGL renderer.
I have a Pentum IV 3.200Mhz, 1GB ram, ATI Radeon X800SE 128MB, that should widely support OpenGL 2.0.

Anyway, this is my shaders.log:

Code: Select all

Vertex shader source:
  1: uniform struct {
  2:    vec3 direction;
  3:    vec3 diffuse;
  4:    vec3 specular;
  5:    vec3 halfVector;
  6: } lights[1];
  7: uniform float shininess;
  8: varying vec4 spec;
  9: varying vec2 diffTexCoord;
 10: varying vec2 normTexCoord;
 11: varying vec3 lightDir0;
 12: varying vec2 nightTexCoord;
 13: varying float totalLight;
 14: uniform float textureOffset;
 15: attribute vec3 tangent;
 16:
 17: void main(void)
 18: {
 19: float nDotVP;
 20: float nDotHV;
 21: nDotVP = max(0.0, dot(gl_Normal, lights[0].direction));
 22: nDotHV = max(0.0, dot(gl_Normal, lights[0].halfVector));
 23: spec.rgb += lights[0].specular * (pow(nDotHV, shininess) * nDotVP);
 24: totalLight += nDotVP;
 25: totalLight = 1.0 - totalLight;
 26: totalLight = totalLight * totalLight * totalLight * totalLight;
 27: vec3 bitangent = cross(gl_Normal, tangent);
 28: lightDir0.x = dot(tangent, lights[0].direction);
 29: lightDir0.y = dot(-bitangent, lights[0].direction);
 30: lightDir0.z = dot(gl_Normal, lights[0].direction);
 31: diffTexCoord = gl_MultiTexCoord0.st;
 32: diffTexCoord.x += textureOffset;
 33: normTexCoord = gl_MultiTexCoord1.st;
 34: nightTexCoord = gl_MultiTexCoord2.st;
 35: gl_Position = ftransform();
 36: }

Fragment shader source:
  1: uniform vec3 ambientColor;
  2: vec4 diff = vec4(ambientColor, 1.0);
  3: uniform vec3 lightcolor0;
  4: uniform vec3 lightspecColor0;
  5: varying vec4 spec;
  6: varying vec2 diffTexCoord;
  7: uniform sampler2D diffTex;
  8: varying vec2 normTexCoord;
  9: varying vec3 lightDir0;
 10: uniform sampler2D normTex;
 11: varying vec2 nightTexCoord;
 12: uniform sampler2D nightTex;
 13: varying float totalLight;
 14:
 15: void main(void)
 16: {
 17: vec4 color;
 18: vec3 n = texture2D(normTex, normTexCoord.st).xyz * vec3(2.0, 2.0, 2.0) - vec3(1.0, 1.0, 1.0);
 19: float l;
 20: l = max(0.0, dot(lightDir0, n)) * clamp(lightDir0.z * 8.0, 0.0, 1.0);
 21: diff.rgb += l * lightcolor0;
 22: color = texture2D(diffTex, diffTexCoord.st);
 23: gl_FragColor = color * diff + color.a * spec;
 24: gl_FragColor += texture2D(nightTex, nightTexCoord.st) * totalLight;
 25: }

Vertex shader source:
  1: uniform struct {
  2:    vec3 direction;
  3:    vec3 diffuse;
  4:    vec3 specular;
  5:    vec3 halfVector;
  6: } lights[1];
  7: uniform vec3 ambientColor;
  8: varying vec4 diff;
  9: varying vec2 diffTexCoord;
 10: uniform float textureOffset;
 11:
 12: void main(void)
 13: {
 14: float nDotVP;
 15: diff = vec4(ambientColor, 1.0);
 16: nDotVP = max(0.0, dot(gl_Normal, lights[0].direction));
 17: diff.rgb += lights[0].diffuse * nDotVP;
 18: diffTexCoord = gl_MultiTexCoord0.st;
 19: diffTexCoord.x += textureOffset;
 20: gl_Position = ftransform();
 21: }

Fragment shader source:
  1: varying vec4 diff;
  2: varying vec2 diffTexCoord;
  3: uniform sampler2D diffTex;
  4:
  5: void main(void)
  6: {
  7: vec4 color;
  8: color = texture2D(diffTex, diffTexCoord.st);
  9: gl_FragColor = color * diff;
 10: }


Thanks for any future help, sorry for the long and tedious post...

[selden]

LWK,

Please read the Prelimiary User's FAQ, which is a sticky near the top of the Celestia User's Forum. The colorful symptoms you describe usually are caused by defective vertex shader routines in the drivers for the graphics card. The drivers in your system probably need to be upgraded.

Which operating system are you using?
Which version of Celestia are you running?
Which version of the graphics drivers are you using?

Please be sure to specify a version number for each.
Different versions have different problems.
The phrase "the most recent" doesn't mean anything.
All of them are upgraded more often than you'd believe.

[LWK]

Sorry Selden, I forgot to say many things...:

- I'm using Windows XP Pro (regularly updated)
- Celestia is version 1.4.0pre-FT1.2
- I'm using ATI Catalyst 5.11 with Catalyst Control Center (I tried 5.12 today but went back to 5.11 because couldn't start the control center), also I have installed the .NET Framework 2.0.

I also tried to activate the IgnoreGLExtensions [ "GL_ARB_vertex_program" ] line, but apparently my problem is't related to bump maps, because the bumps disappeared, but the glitches remained.
They seem related to the use of reflection maps, because planets with bump and normal maps aren't affected.

If it turns out that my graphic card doesn't support OpenGL 2.0, I'll stop posting for help, and switch to OpenGL vertex program.
I'd like to try to understand the origins of this bug, if it's related to my card model, for example.

Thanks again for your time!

[diogen]

I think font problems must be here as well.

HUD/OSD fonts do not display cyrillic (and I guess other non-latin) characters at all. Shall it be another (unicode) font for this? How can I workaround it?

[Qqq]

Hi and thanks for the great software!
I decided to post about a problem since I seem to be able to find any light on what goes wrong with my Celestia installation.

Problem: For some reason Celestia does not use hardware acceleration and instead chooses to use software emulated opengl and is consequently too slow to use.

I got Win XP x64 and Nvidia GeForce 8600M GT. I tried updating drivers to 179.48 (all components 6.14.11.7948) from NVidia, and tried disabling then enabling hardware acceleration, but no help. OpenGL info just reports:

Vendor: Microsoft Corporation
Renderer: GDI Generic
Version: 1.1.0
Max simultaneous textures: 1
Max texture size: 1024
Point size range: 0.500000 - 10.000000

Supported Extensions:
GL_WIN_swap_hint
GL_EXT_bgra
GL_EXT_paletted_texture

Any ideas appreciated?

[cartrite]

Do you have on board graphics? If so you may need to disable it in the bios or with Device Manager.
That way you Nvidia card will be the only active Display Adapter.
cartrite