New Celestia-1.4.0pre-FT1 (galaxies) for Testing

[abramson]

Fridger, Toti, congratulations and thank you for this pre-release. The views are wonderful.

Problem: I have also seen that celestia crashes when pressing ctrl-v to change the rendering mode. (P4 on an Intel 865 motherboard, 2GB RAM, GeForce Fx 5200 128MB, Windows XP Pro)

Regards,

Guillermo

[t00fri]

Fridger, Toti, congratulations and thank you for this pre-release. The views are wonderful.

Problem: I have also seen that celestia crashes when pressing ctrl-v to change the rendering mode. (P4 on an Intel 865 motherboard, 2GB RAM, GeForce Fx 5200 128MB, Windows XP Pro)

Regards,

Guillermo

Guillermo,

thanks for the compliment!

Just a quick check: Do you have a /modern/ NVIDIA driver installed? Did you never have such crashes with the celestia-1.4.0pre6 version?
Which rendering path are you using normally and where was the crash?

I have a look in my Windows XP desktop tonight. It has a FX-5900Ultra card. On my XP notebook (with a simple ATI card), I toggled through the rendering paths (only 2) without problems.
Under Linux (with the FX-5900Ultra) I also checked /all/ rendering paths and use OpenGL 2.0 normally, without any problems.

Bye Fridger

[selden]

Fridger,

I can see dim grey blobs when looking toward Sagittarius from a viewpoint in the Solar System when running Pre6. Wide angle views also display a grey blobby band going across the sky -- the Milky Way.

Unfortunately, I can see no blobs or band when looking toward Sagittarius when running FT1, even when I hold down the ) key, turning up the galaxy limiting magnitude to its maximum. I can see M31 glowing brightly, however.


I also experience the crash. It happens when looking at the Earth and a single Ctrl-V is typed. It does not happen when looking at M31.
It happens both on my system here and at home.

System:
512MB, 2.4 GHz P4; Win XP Pro, SP2
128MB FX 5200, ForceWare v66.81
Celestia v1.4.0 FT1

at home:
1GB, 3.4GHz P4-550; Win XP Pro, SP2
128MB GF 6600GT, ForceWare v77.72
Celestia v1.4.0 from CVS

[edit]Note: Celestia v1.4.0pre6 does *not* crash in this way.[/edit]

[danielj]

I mean the galaxies are showing up,but nebulas like M1,M42,M16(and billboards) and others had disappeared,but in a later post,I saw this will be correceted in the next pre realeases...

[hank]

Anyway: Noone else of the people who wrote so far had this strange effect that you describe, e.g. that the "head" galaxy ngc 5195 of the Whirlpool is missing while M51 is shown??

If you look at M51 from the wrong direction you may not see NGC5195.

- Hank

[t00fri]

Selden,

OK I shall check that thoroughly at home with my Win XP desktop and the FX5900Ultra card. Unfortunately with the notebook, where I did all the XP compiling, I only have 'basic' and 'multiview' paths .

Under Linux, I never experienced a crash so far, but we'll see.

Another note as to the Milky way views: the template for the Milky way relative to the CVS version (that you may be using) is different.
That means the detailed views may be quite different since I now implemented a /barred/ spiral template as it should be.

Can you see the milky way band somewhere with FT1 from the standard start-up position, say, after typing in Milky <Tab>?
The detailed bubble structures may be stubstantially different now.


Bye Fridger

[selden]

I see the same "problem" with M51. If you track it and orbit around it (or GoTo it) it seems that the companion galaxy is much closer to us than the main body. It should be very slightly further away, connected by a "bridge" of stars.

This is, I suspect, because of the way the catalog was constructed algorithmically from several catalogs.

Feature request:
It'd be nice if Replace worked for DSC objects. Then we could have the base DSC catalog of galaxies that's created algorithmically, plus a hand-crafted catalog that would repair the defects in individual objects that have been well studied on their own.

[t00fri]

Anyway: Noone else of the people who wrote so far had this strange effect that you describe, e.g. that the "head" galaxy ngc 5195 of the Whirlpool is missing while M51 is shown??

If you look at M51 from the wrong direction you may not see NGC5195.

- Hank

Notably if you type G with M51 selected, you will only see M51 and NOT ngc 5195. Right? But that's of course as it should be.

Bye Fridger

[abramson]

Just a quick check: Do you have a /modern/ NVIDIA driver installed? Did you never have such crashes with the celestia-1.4.0pre6 version?
Which rendering path are you using normally and where was the crash?

Hi. Thanks for the answer, Fridger. The driver is very recent, version 77.77. I have collected more information on this crash, and what I experience is similar to what Selden reported. Given my total ignorance on "modes" and such, the following description is purely phenomenological:

When centered on M 31, I can cycle through Ctrl-V options without problem. (I do not get the vertex/combiners option, which was present in previous releases, even in 1.4pre6.)

When centered on Earth (or other round Solar System object, such as Mars, the Moon, or Ceres) I get a crash whenever the Ctrl-V cycle passes through the FX option.

If I center on M 31 and chose any mode other than FX, I can then center on Earth, no problem, and cycle until I try to reach the FX mode, then crash.

The crash does not hapen on non-round objects, such as Phobos, or the Sun.

If I approach the Earth from far away, I can use the FX mode until I am at about 9700 km from the planet. Then I get the crash.

None of this happens in Celestia 1.4.0pre6 or previous versions (checked all the available modes).

More details on my system:

2GB, 3GHz P4, Intel 865; Win XP Pro, SP2
128MB GeForce FX 5200 (MSI), ForceWare v77.77, Bios v4.34.20.22, AGP 8x (I see also the following information, which I do not understand: display driver, v6.14.10.7777, referring to nv4_disp)

Regards,

Guillermo

[Toti]

Hi,

Does this "FX render path" crash happen with latest CVS sources (ie. after v1.4.0pre6) ?

[selden]

Yes.

[abramson]

Does this "FX render path" crash happen with latest CVS sources (ie. after v1.4.0pre6) ?

Hi, Toti. I think the answer is yes. The crash happens with the FT1 release (http://www.celestiaproject.net/~t00fri/celesti ... re-FT1.zip). It does not happen with the 1.4.0pre6 release that I downloaded in installable form (http://www.celestiaproject.net/~claurel/celest ... .0pre6.exe).

I tried to compile the latest CVS myself, but I got an error:

Code: Select all

\res\celestia.rc(226) : error RC2104 : undefined keyword or key name: DTS_RIGHTALIGN

as reported in another thread (http://shatters.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=7913), to which nobody replied .

Cheers,

Guillermo

[t00fri]

Hi,

Does this "FX render path" crash happen with latest CVS sources (ie. after v1.4.0pre6) ?

Sorry friends,

I am sitting here in front of my Windows XP desktop (P4 3.2 GHz, 3 GB Ram) , with my FX5900Ultra/256MB card and driver 71.84. Whatever I try going with CTRL-V through all the render paths including of course FX and OpenGL 2.0 , everything is nice and smooth. I focussed on Earth, Mars and M31.

My resolution is 1280x960/32 col and I tried fullscreen and windowed mode.

Actually, we have changed almost nothing in the OpenGL sector, since at least I am not very knowledgeable in OpenGL (unfortunately).

No idea what it could be...

Did anybody check whether the crash occurs with a Windows version compiled from the latest CVS!? Of course our version bases on that and NOT on celestia-1.4.0pre6!

If nobody did, I shall quickly compile the latest CVS exe for Windows. Just let me know...

Perhaps it is relevant, that none of my Celestia versions here are entered into the registry (i.e installed with the installation script). I just have several compiled sources with Celestia.exe being located in the celestia root dir. I start it from there.

Bye Fridger

PS: I also cycled with CTRL-V through the two render paths for my ATI card on the notebook. Result is the same. All fine.

[t00fri]

Yes.

Well then this is NOT our "glass of beer" in the first instance.

But why am I unable to provoke that crash???

Bye Fridger

[t00fri]

Next point:

I can confirm that anything sitting in the extras dir is NOT rendered. So if you have nebulae there they are switched off for the time being.

This will come back of course ASAP...

The code changes were so massive that we had to really go "back to the roots" as a start.

Bye Fridger

[ANDREA]

... On my XP notebook (with a simple ATI card), I toggled through the rendering paths (only 2) without problems.
Bye Fridger

First of all, Fridger and Toti, thanks a lot for this patch. I'll use it for a .cel script that will show Hubble's Galaxy classification.
Regarding the rendering, I've a strange result: while in the previous Celestia 1.4.0pre06 I had all the four rendering possibilities, but after installing the new celestia.exe I have only two, Basic and Multitexture.
Anyother with the same problem?
Bye and thank you again for your effort.

Andrea

[t00fri]

... On my XP notebook (with a simple ATI card), I toggled through the rendering paths (only 2) without problems.
Bye Fridger

First of all, Fridger and Toti, thanks a lot for this patch. I'll use it for a .cel script that will show Hubble's Galaxy classification.
Regarding the rendering, I've a strange result: while in the previous Celestia 1.4.0pre06 I had all the four rendering possibilities, but after installing the new celestia.exe I have only two, Basic and Multitexture.
Anyother with the same problem?
Bye and thank you again for your effort.

Andrea

Andrea,

I really don't know what is going on here:

I certainly have all the rendering paths including FX and OpenGL 2.0 on my desktop with XP and a FX 5900Ultra card. I also have no crashes (unlike some).

And...remember we based our new version on the latest CVS (NOT 1.4.0pre6) which may have all sorts of problems for which we are nor liable .

Last not least: this new version may hardly be called a PATCH anymore. If you'd see how vast the code changes are, you'd see what I mean


Bye Fridger

[hank]

What happened to the view splitting keys?

- Hank

[Vincent]

Regarding the rendering, I've a strange result: while in the previous Celestia 1.4.0pre06 I had all the four rendering possibilities, but after installing the new celestia.exe I have only two, Basic and Multitexture.
Anyother with the same problem?

I have exactly the same problem with a NVidia GeForce MX 440 SE (with AGP 8X) and the lastest drivers installed (78.01 from the 08/02/2005).

But over all, thanks for this release !

[t00fri]

What happened to the view splitting keys?

- Hank

Chris has rebound the galaxy brightness adjustment keys a while ago to ( and ) in the CVS version. So there is no interference anymore.

Well I just noticed that for KDE the horizontal and vertical splitting is out of function with FT1. This problem is NOT part of the latest CVS code. So it's our glass of beer

Bye Fridger