Help for a computer illiterate

[Oldwindbreaker]

I have fumbled around blindly in Celestia, in my computer software and in my hardware (figuratively speaking) and still have questions so basic as to probably bumbfound the learned with the depth of my ignorance. Is there a better forum than this one for questions by computer illiterates? As an example, I spent days discovering that I had accidentially hit the "r" key and that "shift-r" fixes it (thanks to the Celestia Users Guide). My immediate questions concern open GL (whatever that is) and whether my settings (whatever they are) are right and why I can only step through four reneder paths instead of five and one of them doesn't match what the guide says I should see.

[ar81]

I had some of my tech questions answered at the Atari forums. People there are friendly and likely to help you.

http://www.ataricommunity.com

Go to the Community chat forum.

[selden]

While there usually aren't any real OpenGL experts here (Chris doesn't have much free time), there are plenty of people with experience with Celestia.

If you don't ask your questions, you won't get answers.

But since we can't look over your shoulder, you'll have to describe what you actually do see.

[Oldwindbreaker]

ar81..thanks, I might try that if nothing else helps.

Selden...You're right, I didn't really ask a question..so here it is. I am running XP on a pretty good home built PC..ASUS A7V8X-X mother board with an AMD 1700 megahertz AMD Atholn XP 2000+ CPU and an ASUS V1700 PRO64 display adapter that uses an NVIDIA GeForce2 MX400 GPU. I have a 512 meg memory module installed and the video card has 64/32 MB of what ASUS calls "frame buffer". Not sure how that translates to board memory. ASUS calls the card a Graphics Card, not a video card.
What I see on my screen when I run Celestia compared to what I read about in the various discussions of the program make me wonder if there is something I have to do to my video card to "turn it on". Earth looks pretty good at the beginning of the program but I certainly cannot zoom in on any features and have them clear. When Lake Superior fills my screen, fuzzy green fuzzily transitions into fuzzy blue. When I use "CTRL V" to step through the "render paths", I get "Basic", then "multitexture", then "NVIDIA Combiners" and then "NVIDIA Vertex program and combiners". The Celestia Users Manual I downloaded leads me to expect a fourth render path that is "Open GL", and a fifth one that is "Open GL/NVIDIA combiners". When I open the Celestia Help menu, I see that I have an Open GL info option and when I open that, I see lots of stuff, but have no idea what should be there. So, I wonder if there is something on my card or in my computer that I have to "set" or "turn on". I also note that the Celestia Users guide also mentions that some graphics cards that use the GeForce GPUs are really not "video" cards and don't give all the good stuff Celestia is capable of. Do you think that might be my limitation, or do I have to turn on something (although I can't find any place in my card menu where I can do anything to help or hinder.) I am not sure that is a question, so perhaps I should just ask for a comment.

[selden]

Owb,

Graphics cards usually are the ones which generate computer graphics output, while video cards usually are the ones that take video in from other sources.

Unfortunately, Nvidia's MX series of graphics chips are lacking hardware features that Celestia requires for some of its eye candy. If you can afford to upgrade to a card based on Nvidia's FX 5200 chipset (or better), then you'll be able to see everything that the current versions of Celestia can draw.

The low and medium resolution surface textures that are included with Celestia probably are lower resolution than you're expecting. You can switch between low, medium and high resolutions by typing "r" and "R". To see high resolution surfaces, which are not included with Celestia because of their size, you either have to install some very large texture Addons into the hires folder or install the appropriate "Virtual Texture" Addons. Some by Don Edwards are available at http://www.celestiaproject.net/~impulse/New_Ea ... ral_4.html
Some by t00fri are available at http://www.celestiaproject.net/~t00fri/texfoundry.php4
Some Virtual Textures are available at http://www.celestiamotherlode.net/

[t00fri]

I had some of my tech questions answered at the Atari forums. People there are friendly and likely to help you.

http://www.ataricommunity.com

Go to the Community chat forum.

Charming



Can one still buy one of those somewhere!? Or do these guys just wine about passed times (apart from being friendly towards frustrated Celestians)?

Once upon a time I had 3 Atari's with 4MB storage each in my environment: 1 in the office, 1 for my wife and 1 for me.

The 4MB machines of course were the non-plus ultra ...
GIGANTIC monsters.

Bye Fridger

[WildMoon]

Two of my 1 1/2 floppys (not the floppy kind) can hold as much space as your Atari!

[Oldwindbreaker]

Selden...Ok, then, in your learn-ed opinion...is my NVIDIA GeForce MX 400 based card adequate to render the basic Celestia program as downloaded without the big 'eye candy' downloads?? I could certainly afford any kind of card I want, but at my stage in life I want neither the hassels that will surely result from removing the cover to my computer nor the use of the precious time it would take my woefully inadequate dial-up to download big files.

[selden]

MX cards cannot draw ring shadows on planets.
They also cannot draw eclipse shadows from more than two light sources (a v1.4.0 feature). They should be able to do specular reflections and bumpmap shadows, however.