Celestia Educational Activities - NEW and Updated

[fsgregs]

Hi everyone:

In response to lots of emails I have been receiving about my Celestia Educational Activities, it is time to announce that I have spent the last four months of my life updating and revising all of the Educational Activities that exist for Celestia. Updates include new facts and information gleaned in the last year on various Astronomy topics, dozens of new cel:url locations, and two new Activities.

These two new Activities are: Activity 9 - The Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, and Activity 10 - The Primitive Earth and Moon. I can state with certainty that both of them are spectacular, and make use of some great new add-ons. Visually, they are a rich journey through the universe and through time.

All Activity updates and new Activities will be posted on the Motherlode, and on my own personal website, hopefully in the next two weeks or so. I would post them now, but I am waiting for Fridger and Toti to release their new Celestia version 1.4.0 FT 1.1. I would greatly like to use it for the Activities, and tailor them to take advantage of some of that version's great new features.

As soon as Fridger finds the time to release 1.4.0 FT1.1 ( HINT ... HINT!!!), I will make some final changes to the Activities and completely update the Motherlode with the updates. Note that they will take the place of existing Activities and existing add-ons. You will need to delete the educational-extras folder and general-addons folder you may already have, and reinstall all activities again. The time to do so, however, will be worth the effort. The changes are very exciting.

Until them .....

Frank

[buggs_moran]

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it's a making me wait, makin' me waaaaiaaaiaaaiaat such a long time.

Can't wait. Shoot, dated myself again...

[t00fri]

Frank,

I think it is far from clear how we shall release Celestia-FT1.1 in relation to previous official Celestia versions. I have not yet contacted Chris and do not feel particular hurry to do so at this time. He might also contact me but didn't. Last contact with Chris was on July 26, i.e 2 1/2 months ago!

The code changes are so vast meanwhile that Chris will hardly have the time for reviewing the new code in any detail. So I confess that given my previous experience and frustration in this context, I forsee again substantial delays when trying to unify the new code in an official Celestia version, endorsed by Chris.

Given this somewhat untransparent (temporary) situation, it is not clear how for your educational CD project you will be able to refer to Celestia-FT1.1. The various FT upgrades might well reside for a while at least -- for all platform versions -- in a directory on my TextureFoundry site (i.e. on Chris machine in Seattle ) .

No version of Celestia-FT is to be uploaded to the Motherlode.

Bye Fridger

[fsgregs]

Fridger:

I will obviously abide by your wishes regarding any release of FT 1.1. That said, when you do release it, someone has to plan to avoid problems in how the files are posted on the web. As you mentioned in your main thread regarding FT1.1, it will be necessary for someone to assemble a complete Windows distribution, to include the FT 1.1 application, your seven pts files in the models folder, and all of the other files in the latest cvs build. Remember, one of them has been changed somehow since 1.4.0pre6 and they must be included in FT 1.1 so that there is no Ctrl + V crash.

I was going to do that and post it on the Motherlode so that there is just one file for us all download. Since you wish to have no such posting, would you be willing to prepare the Windows distribution for posting on your site? If folks are to be able to enjoy all of your beautiful hard work, we do need a means of downloading the files.

Thanks again for your efforts. FT 1.1 is a major advance, and I am anxiously waiting for its release ASAP.

Let us know what you want us to do.

Frank