The Feature Requests Collecting Thread

[ar81]

Feature request:

1. Realistic representation of small objects.
If you see Earth and all the space junk in orbit, you may not see all the junk in real life. Or am I wrong?
2.Nebula activation on demand. Nebulae that are not visible shouldn't be rendered, or just rendered as dots if they have a very small aparent diameter. Apply that for galaxies too. That might increase performance.
3.Display selected object label only.
4.Sync orbit between 2 objects not connected by orbit profiles. i.e. Voyager and Saturn.
5.Galaxies and clusters displayed as faint as they should when they are away. It helps you to have better awareness of real relative magnitude.

[Planet X]

Feature request:

1. Realistic representation of small objects.
If you see Earth and all the space junk in orbit, you may not see all the junk in real life. Or am I wrong?
2.Nebula activation on demand. Nebulae that are not visible shouldn't be rendered, or just rendered as dots if they have a very small aparent diameter. Apply that for galaxies too. That might increase performance.
3.Display selected object label only.
4.Sync orbit between 2 objects not connected by orbit profiles. i.e. Voyager and Saturn.
5.Galaxies and clusters displayed as faint as they should when they are away. It helps you to have better awareness of real relative magnitude.

Amen! Later!

J P

[Discovery One]

I'd like to see planetary rings done properly. I understand that only Saturn's rings are substantial enough to see from here, but I can't see the other giant's rings at all, even when I'm right on top of them...

I'd also like to be able to see the ring's shadow on the planet.

[Discovery One]

I'd also like an update of more recently discovered moons, TNO's, etc.

[Discovery One]

Nebulae and more realistically rendered galaxies.

That's it!

[BlindedByTheLight]

How about the ability to divide up the galaxy into small cubes of say, a few parsecs wide (or a user-specified area, or even a sphere). Then eliminate all other objects except for everything within the selected area of the galaxy.

It would REALLY help when you want to see the relationships and distances between a group of nearby stars and star systems. It's currently virtually impossible to judge distances in celestia without moving the camera angle. If a flat plan or grid could be overlayed under the selected area and lines drawn to connect the stars to this grid, it would be incredibly useful.

Here's an example of what I mean, taken from a book:


You can clearly see where each star is located, dispite not actually being able to see it in true 3D.

Surely there is a way of doing this in Celestia?

Stangely, some of those stars are not found in the Celestia database...

I second this one WHOLE-HEARTEDLY... part of the brilliance of Celestia is helping the viewer get a sense of scale - and this is a great way of doing it.

[selden]

No changes are needed to Celestia to do this. Although they aren't cubical, I've created several types of "graticules" to help visualize the size of the universe. You can too.

See http://www.lepp.cornell.edu/~seb/celest ... cules.html

[ElChristou]

Selden,
I have just tested your graticules, and I was wondering why they can't be implemented in Celestia like others guides (boundaries, coordinates grid)... perhaps a cubical one can also help...

[selden]

It's not that such things couldn't be implemented in the source code, it's just that external models can be created by people who aren't on the development team.

[Tech Sgt. Chen]

Would it be possible to script Celestia so that it displays (randomly) a specified number of star textures. For example: Astar1, Astar2, Astar3.
This way you could load 3 or 4 A star textures into the Textures folder and Celestia would randomly apply them every time you visit a different (A catagory) star. This way every A star would not appear the same (hue, same sunspots, etc.). It would be an incentive for those graphically inclined to create different star textures. Celestia users can then choose a specific number of the textures they prefer to be displayed for each star catagory. Just a thought!

[BlindedByTheLight]

No changes are needed to Celestia to do this. Although they aren't cubical, I've created several types of "graticules" to help visualize the size of the universe. You can too.

See http://www.lepp.cornell.edu/~seb/celest ... cules.html

Hey Selden... just checked out your graticules... in a forum often filled with hyperbole, I still feel comfortable saying they are insanely cool. A belated thank you. As for being coded directly into Celestia... who do I need to prod to make such a thing happen?

Seriously, though - they seem like such an indispensable tool, I'm surprised they are not already hard-coded (did I just make that up? does it mean what I hope it means?).

As for prodding... are bribes allowed on the forum? Because, if so, I will gratefully send my three precious copies of Star Trek: Enterprise scripts to the first coder who throws them into the main engine (with your permission, of course) with an easy keyboard shortcut to turn 'em on (if there are any left...).

[selden]

BlindedByTheLight,

I understand that there are hopes to include something similar in a future version of Celestia. It may take a while, though, since other improvements have a higher priority.

Hang on to your Enterprise scripts.

[bdm]

I have noticed that Celestia 1.4.0pre6 has barycentre definitions in STC files. A similar barycenter definition for SSC files would be useful for planets where this is needed for a more accurate simulation. A barycentre defintion would be particularly useful for the Pluto/Charon system, where the barycentre lies between the two bodies.

[Spaceman Spiff]

Hmm, surely what was done in the topic would suffice?

Double Body Problem ( http://www.celestiaproject.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=7674 ).

Spiff.

[selden]

While it probably would be convenient to have them in SSC files, they work fine as they are: Barycenters can orbit stars and planets can orbit Barycenters.

FWIW, my understanding is that some thought has been given to eventually merging STC and SSC files into one type of catalog file, but it won't happen soon.

[bdm]

Hmm, surely what was done in the topic would suffice?

Double Body Problem ( http://www.celestiaproject.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=7674 ).

Spiff.

The "invisible" class you referred to should do nicely, but it's not documented in the SSC Scripting Guide for Celestia 1.3.2. I intend to experiment with it to see how it works. Selden also mentioned that barycentres can orbit stars, but I believe barycentres are introduced in 1.4.0. Looks like I will need to play around with Celestia a bit. As if I needed an excuse....

[spacedonkey]

I would like to be able to control Celestia by sending commands to it over a network interface. A remote computer would connect to the Celestia host with a TCP/IP connection and then send text strings using the same command language as the scripting feature.

[phoenix]

I would like to be able to control Celestia by sending commands to it over a network interface. A remote computer would connect to the Celestia host with a TCP/IP connection and then send text strings using the same command language as the scripting feature.

would the remote computer connect to celestia or celestia to the remote-pc requesting the data?
i really advise against celestia having some open port as it would create a major security risk for everyone and celestia would need significant code-changes in order to be secure again.

rather than an open tcp/ip port i suggest to make celestia able to do http and https requests and then process the incoming-data as a script.
of course to get that working we need a server-application (or script) which returns the proper script-data on a request.

i'm currently working on such a patch and server (still in planning-phase), but i don't think that's what you had in mind.

greetings
phoenix

[spacedonkey]

Hi,

I am wanting to use Celestia as a 'display device' for an interactive display in an educational environment. As such I want remote control of Celestia so that I can navigate to different places and change displays 'on the fly' rather than under script control.

I thought that a socket interface (TCP or UDP) would be a farily simple way of getting commands and parameters into Celestia. As for security, for my situation I don't see the problem. The interface could be enabled/disabled at the Celestia console or protected by a password set in an INI file perhaps?

Thanks.

[selden]

Don't forget that Celestia can be controlled by sending commands to the operating system. E.G.

Code: Select all

celestia --url filename


tells Celestia to execute the script that's in the specified file.

Under Windows, at least, that comand line is sent to the currently running copy of Celestia. If Celestia isn't running, Celestia is started with that command line.

It's slower than sending a command directly to Celestia would be, but your network program can write a file containing one or more .CEL or .CELX commands and then tell Celestia to run that script.