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

[maxim]

Since there can be a lot of these templates defined, objects are loaded when they are about to be rendered.
This is exactly the same behaviour as with other Celestia objects (eg. planets, probes, etc.)
All this is not included in this FT1 test release.

Thanks for clarification Toti

- As I understand, every line in the .pts file correspondents to the coordinates of a small glowing blob of the viewed model - it may be x,y,z and size/brighness. So how about allowing a negativ forth value, indicating a /dark/ blob, so dark bands of matter could be also modeled inside galaxies?

AFAICS there's an OpenGL 1.2 limitation there.

You don't mean negative numbers here to you?
I just proposed to (mis)use the sign as a flag for emissive/nonemissive drawn blobs - and be stripped off before handing over the value to OGL functions.

maxim

[Toti]

Hi,

Perhaps you can help us to debug this one: what happens if you use the "latest CVS" celestia.exe file Selden posted (page 5) ?

Hello Toti,

The same thing happens, I lose vertex/Nvidia combiners; that is, no normal maps, no specular reflections and no atmospheric effects for Earth. Ctrl v behaves in the same way as I described in my previous post. This is with Seldens copy of celestia.exe you directed me to on page 5 of this thread.

My original exe file (1.4.0pre6) works as it should and everything is restored when I put it back (ctrl v, i mean).

Many thanks for your help!

So as I expected the problem was already in CVS and it's not a side effect of our modifications. Chris probably made a change in the openGL capabilities querying stuff.

Bye

[danielj]

Of course,I understand.But in the readme,it??s not clear that requires a recent compilation for Windows and not the regular one I downloaded last november.
Ok,I know there is a compilation free in last posts,but I don??t know if I have to compile it further.
Anyway,it??s too complicated and I??m no expert in English,so I will wait a while before trying again...

[abramson]

People,

I don't know if this information helps, but I just succeeded in building the last CVS (I just commented out the dts_ keywords that my compiler somehow can't handle). I then copied FT1 and the rest of Fridger's files and run it. Good news 1: I recovered the vertex/combiners path. Good news 2: the Ctrl-V crash when selecting FX path has disappeared.

Guillermo

[t00fri]

Of course,I understand.But in the readme,it??s not clear that requires a recent compilation for Windows and not the regular one I downloaded last november.
Ok,I know there is a compilation free in last posts,but I don??t know if I have to compile it further.
Anyway,it??s too complicated and I??m no expert in English,so I will wait a while before trying again...

I don't think you understood, unfortunately. I wrote you should take celestia-1.4.0pre6. This is as clear as it can be. RIGHT?? You don't have to understand anything else. So why did you write above it was not clear???

[t00fri]

People,

I don't know if this information helps, but I just succeeded in building the last CVS (I just commented out the dts_ keywords that my compiler somehow can't handle). I then copied FT1 and the rest of Fridger's files and run it. Good news 1: I recovered the vertex/combiners path. Good news 2: the Ctrl-V crash when selecting FX path has disappeared.

Guillermo

Guillermo,

first of all: CONGATULATIONS!

So that is certainly good news for you , still Toti and I and others remain mystified why this crash undoubtedly occurs frequently (but not always). But in any case the reason for the crash is PRE- FT1.

Cheers,
Fridger

[danielj]

I have the Celestia 1.4.0 pre 6 version,but you said that only the recent compiled versions( I don??t have one) don??t have the bug of Control-V and rendering paths.I didn??t understand that I have to create ANOTHER folder with Celestia 1.4.0 pre 6,although you said it was a TEST version.I will wait until the FT1 works in a usual Celestia version and not a compiled one.

[Toti]

- As I understand, every line in the .pts file correspondents to the coordinates of a small glowing blob of the viewed model - it may be x,y,z and size/brighness. So how about allowing a negativ forth value, indicating a /dark/ blob, so dark bands of matter could be also modeled inside galaxies?

AFAICS there's an OpenGL 1.2 limitation there.

You don't mean negative numbers here to you?
I just proposed to (mis)use the sign as a flag for emissive/nonemissive drawn blobs - and be stripped off before handing over the value to OGL functions.

No, it's just that we are using additive blending which gives a nicer look and avoids the need to sort objects from back to front prior to render them.
Given this additive form, rendering another blob always increases brightness and never decreases it, no matter how dark it is.
There are possibly some ways to circunvent this without changing the blending function for bright blobs, being one of them to split the template into an emissive part and an absorptive one, but this could bring newer blending artifacts where the objects merge, etc.

[t00fri]

...

Code: Select all

            double distance    = obsPosition.distanceTo(_obj->getPosition())
                               -_obj->getRadius();
            if (distance<0) distance = 0;


- Hank

Hank I just recompiled the Windows code with the obvious addition,

Code: Select all

if (distance<0) distance = 0;


Everything is fine, now. The Milky Way is back in full glory also for Windows!

Thanks again for the hint.

Cheers,
Fridger

[t00fri]

I have the Celestia 1.4.0 pre 6 version,but you said that only the recent compiled versions( I don??t have one) don??t have the bug of Control-V and rendering paths.I didn??t understand that I have to create ANOTHER folder with Celestia 1.4.0 pre 6,although you said it was a TEST version.I will wait until the FT1 works in a usual Celestia version and not a compiled one.

PLEASE, I never said that. Go slowly about it, please...

Since you were asked to replace the celestia.exe file by our new provided Celestia.exe from the FT1 version, all these differences you hang on to are entirely IRRELEVANT for YOU!

Please read this paragraph until you understood

The differences are NOT irrelevant for us,however, since the FT1 version builds on top of the CVS version and not of the celestia-1.4.0pre6 one.

But you just don't have to care about it. Just READ a simple README.1st file and do EXACTLY what was written there. Which you have NOT done. God knows why.

[ogg]

Thanks to all involved for release, it's great to have something new to play with and this is the first time I've gone back to playing with Celestia for quite a while. Getting all nostalgic.

I take it that once the code issues are sorted out, this catalog/template combo is capable of being extensively tweaked? It would be great to have some specific special-interest galaxies have their own unique 'template' to more accurately model them, the Milky Way being the obvious case. It'd be great to see the spiral arms positioned the way the best-guess renderings have them:

http://apod.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap050825.html

[Guckytos]

Thank you very much Fridger and Toti for the beautiful work on the galaxies.
Had some time yesterday and did as the readme.1st said, which is quite clear in it's instructions btw, and used a trusty old 1.4.0pre6 from November.
With my lil' old system (specs are down) is was able to cruse through the universe at 160+ fps between galaxies and still had 30+ fps in the milky way.
So you did a very fine job with the speed.

Regards,

Guckytos

[t00fri]

Thank you very much Fridger and Toti for the beautiful work on the galaxies.
Had some time yesterday and did as the readme.1st said, which is quite clear in it's instructions btw, and used a trusty old 1.4.0pre6 from November.
With my lil' old system (specs are down) is was able to cruse through the universe at 160+ fps between galaxies and still had 30+ fps in the milky way.
So you did a very fine job with the speed.

Regards,

Guckytos

Guckytos,

thanks for the compliments. It's good to learn about the typical fps rates from users. Since I have a very fast system, I can hardly take my fps as a reference. I am typically around 100 fps or more when displaying galaxies. But 30 fps should be quite OK for a smooth display. But you see since we plan to go on with incorporating clusters etc along similar lines we are happy to have some reserve as to speed...

Bye Fridger

[PlutonianEmpire]

Are you still working on the ctrl+v problem, or has that been fixed?

[t00fri]

Are you still working on the ctrl+v problem, or has that been fixed?

The problem is twofold:

-- we are not responsible for introducing that bug. It was clearly there in the CVS code on which FT1 was built. Presumably introduced by Chris when he integrated DrJoe's orbit patches etc (in a bit of a hurry ) . So it's kind of tedious to search in code that is clearly Chris' expertise...

--I cannot reproduce that crash with my FX5900Ultra despite being able to cycle through all render paths with CTR+V. Also my simple ATI card does not provoke the crash. There are other reports from people that also don't see that crash. So it's a bit of a mystery...

So from my part it's really hard. We should best try and motivate Chris to search for a fix, but well...

Perhaps Toti has an idea he knows a bit more OpenGL than me.

Bye Fridger

[PlutonianEmpire]

Alrighty. thanks

[ANDREA]

Code: Select all

            double distance    = obsPosition.distanceTo(_obj->getPosition())
                               -_obj->getRadius();
            if (distance<0) distance = 0;


- Hank

Hank I just recompiled the Windows code with the obvious addition,

Code: Select all

if (distance<0) distance = 0;


Everything is fine, now. The Milky Way is back in full glory also for Windows! Fridger

Hello Fridger, the celestia-win32-1.4.0pre-FT1.zip file has been updated after this?
Thank you for the info.
Bye

Andrea

[t00fri]

ANDREA,

We shall release a FT1.1 (dot) release within the next days, when all these little things have been fixed. Unfortunately, we don't have yet a solution for the leftover CTRL-V crash from the CVS code that some people (not me) are getting.

Bye Fridger

[PlutonianEmpire]

ANDREA,

We shall release a FT1.1 (dot) release within the next days, when all these little things have been fixed. Unfortunately, we don't have yet a solution for the leftover CTRL-V crash from the CVS code that some people (not me) are getting.

Bye Fridger

I noticed that when i got the first test release, i noticed that i couldn't see the specular highlights of a planet. Will i be able to see the speculars in your next release?

[Toti]

Are you still working on the ctrl+v problem, or has that been fixed?

The problem is twofold:

-- we are not responsible for introducing that bug. It was clearly there in the CVS code on which FT1 was built. Presumably introduced by Chris when he integrated DrJoe's orbit patches etc (in a bit of a hurry ) . So it's kind of tedious to search in code that is clearly Chris' expertise...

--I cannot reproduce that crash with my FX5900Ultra despite being able to cycle through all render paths with CTR+V. Also my simple ATI card does not provoke the crash. There are other reports from people that also don't see that crash. So it's a bit of a mystery...

So from my part it's really hard. We should best try and motivate Chris to search for a fix, but well...

Perhaps Toti has an idea he knows a bit more OpenGL than me.

Bye Fridger

My computer only admits the Basic and Multitexture render paths and obviously I can't reproduce the problem; since the bug doesn't appear in Fridger's computer it's even more difficult for us to fix it.
The renderer and OpenGL stuff is clearly Chris' terrain... we took special care not to interfere with it.

We shall release a FT1.1 (dot) release within the next days, when all these little things have been fixed. Unfortunately, we don't have yet a solution for the leftover CTRL-V crash from the CVS code that some people (not me) are getting.

Bye Fridger

I noticed that when i got the first test release, i noticed that i couldn't see the specular highlights of a planet. Will i be able to see the speculars in your next release?

Do you get the same problem using Selden's executable? (it's on page 5)

Bye