New Celestia-1.4.0pre-FT1.1 Version for Download

[t00fri]

Frank, once more:

from your screenshots above, I can see that your are INDEED using the 2million stars rather than the default stars.dat. With your admittedly weak 1.6 GHz CPU this explains why your fps rates are comparatively low under FT1.1.


Cheers,
Bye Fridger

[t00fri]

The Milky Way is OK for me.
I don't see any reason to hardwire it dimmer or brighter.
One can adjust to one's taste very easily playing either within the os or the monitor settings.
I think the current rendering is a good compromise given the many kind of different displays out there.
It can be adjusted with the AbsMag parameter in deepsky.dsc anyway, right?

Boux,

thanks for your feedback. That helps. I'd appreciate more people's opinion of course.

Everyone, as you emphasize, can easily adjust the actual brightness to taste via the GUI for the graphics card.

I have averaged also over 2 TFT (LCD) screens that usually create a less intense display related to the extreme pixel sharpness. I guess Frank did not compare 4 different monitors before complaining.

Bye Fridger

[Boux]

The Milky Way is OK for me.
I don't see any reason to hardwire it dimmer or brighter.
One can adjust to one's taste very easily playing either within the os or the monitor settings.
I think the current rendering is a good compromise given the many kind of different displays out there.
It can be adjusted with the AbsMag parameter in deepsky.dsc anyway, right?

Boux,

thanks for your feedback. That helps. I'd appreciate more people's opinion of course.

Everyone, as you emphasize, can easily adjust the actual brightness to taste via the GUI for the graphics card.

I have averaged also over 2 TFT (LCD) screens that usually create a less intense display related to the extreme pixel sharpness. I guess Frank did not compare 4 different monitors before complaining.

Bye Fridger

During the past couple days, I have played with two laptops (800x600 and 1024x768) and several desktops equipped with either a 1024x768 17" CRT or 4 types of lcd displays (1024x768 15", 1280x1024 17", 1280x1024 19" and 1366x768 26".
This makes a total of 7 different displays!
They all render differently (contrast, intensity, gamma, color temperature).
The default setting is definitely a good compromise.
It merges nicely with the multi-million stars database.

[fsgregs]

Fridger:

My last post was a sincere compliment to your abilities and an attempt to explain why I have been impatient in seeking to include your work in my CD project.
I wanted to include your work because it is the best, and I admire and respect your high quality. It has nothing to do with profit. Frankly, I doubt that I'll earn more than a few hundred bucks off the entire damned project. Celestia, and all of my work, is FREE on the Motherlode website. Just how many teachers are going to pay money to buy what they can get for free.

I have spent over 300 man-hours this summer, working on those projects. I intend to post them to our communal website ... at no charge.
Your reply is insulting It suggests I am pestering you so I can make more money off my CD's, and your labors, and the entire thing was just a bunch of complaining.

You!!!

Apparently, you read none of the intent of my message. You ASKED FOR COMMENTS ON FT 1.1. To take my comments as "complaints" frankly, is unfair to me and ... ahhh ... forget it.

I guess I was wrong about you!

PS - I am NOT using the 2M star.dat in FT 1.1. It is straight off your download. I am using the 1M stars.dat on the first image only.

[t00fri]

Dear Frank,

I said beforehand that I sincerely apologize if there was no truth in my supposition. There was certainly no intention to offend you. Why should I want to do this?

Fridger:
...
It has nothing to do with profit. Frankly, I doubt that I'll earn more than a few hundred bucks off the entire damned project. Celestia, and all of my work, is FREE on the Motherlode website. Just how many teachers are going to pay money to buy what they can get for free.

I have spent over 300 man-hours this summer, working on those projects. I intend to post them to our communal website ... at no charge.

Sorry but isn't that the standard scenario? One offers things for free download on a Website and in parallel packs a CD with everything on it, including a bound manual for a fair price, e.g. for schools and other educational institutions. Am I really so far off with my supposition??

My old friend Elwood Downey, the author of the famous XEphem astronomical software is doing precisely this for example.
http://www.clearskyinstitute.com/xephem/xephem.html

I think there is nothing bad about this, hence no reason to get upset, really. It just seemed to make a lot of sense to me that your CD publisher is getting impatient, since I am sure that he will want to earn something from the deal...

So do I understand from your anger correctly that I am all wrong, and in your various pushing mails (and there were many) you were exclusively thinking of those thousands of school kids that would be deprived for another month or so from enjoying the grandeur of all those galaxies in FT1.x?

Again, if this is so, please accept my apologies.

Last not least, both Toti and I have certainly worked for 300 hours each during this summer to get Celestia-FT on its way...

Cheers,
Fridger

[t00fri]

...
Apparently, you read none of the intent of my message. You ASKED FOR COMMENTS ON FT 1.1. To take my comments as "complaints" frankly, is unfair to me and ... ahhh ... forget it.
...

Frank,

here I am really sorry. My using of "complaint" in this context was definitley the wrong wording! Unfortunately, the literal translation into German has a much less "agressive" meaning...

Bye Fridger

[PlutonianEmpire]

In the version just before this, i encountered extremely slow framerates whenever i have galaxies turned on...

Well, right now FT1 and FT1.1 use 10600 galaxies by default, which is a LOT, despite our advanced culling technique. Of course, for people less interested in galaxies, I can always release a strongly reduced deepsky.dsc file with <~ 1000 galaxies only, corresponding to a magnitude cutoff around 13.

But clearly this is much less fun: The famous Stephan's quintet would only show ONE member instead of five. Galaxy clusters would be entirely absent etc. The conceptual advantage of the present deepsky.dsc file is also that it simply includes ALL galaxies of the revised NGC/IC cataloge! So it will happen very rarely that Celestia will not know a particular galaxy...

My feeling is that people planning to run /many/ add-ons, 2m stars AND 10600 galaxies need a fairly modern machine and a decent graphics card.

++++++++++++++++++
One of the urgent GUI projects ahead of us, would finally be a load facility that allows (without restarting Celestia!) to load and unload specialized catalogs of objects for particular display purposes.
++++++++++++++++++

Bye Fridger

Thanks. On my computer, the only addons i have are either my own, or clusters I generated using rassilon's globular cluster generator. I don't plan on using the 2 million star database anytime soon. If I run out of stars to have planets orbit around, THEN i'll go to 2 million.

Also, if i want to, when installing ft 1.1 (this one under discussion right now on this thread), i can have it install into my current celestia folder instead of just installing into a separate folder?

[Toti]

The Milky Way is OK for me.
I don't see any reason to hardwire it dimmer or brighter.
One can adjust to one's taste very easily playing either within the os or the monitor settings.
I think the current rendering is a good compromise given the many kind of different displays out there.
It can be adjusted with the AbsMag parameter in deepsky.dsc anyway, right?

The rendering of galaxies has a strong dependence on blob's distances to origin, so changing the Milky Way template even slightly would have dramatic effect on what's visible from Earth and what's not.

You can always adjust the light gain using the Shift ( and Shift ) shortcuts.

[cartrite]

For all those out there that want to dimm galaxies, I was looking at page 7 of this thread and Fridger wrote:

Come-on everybody:

do you want me to dim the milky way brightness? Nothing easier than that...Let me know.

Bye Fridger


I asked about this a couple of weeks ago. I looked into it and found that if you change the AbsMag value to -1 then the gallaxy dimms to a default low value. You can also play with the value to suit your needs. The Abs Mag value is in the deepsky.dsc for any galaxy you may want to dimm.

cartrite

[t00fri]

...
Thanks. On my computer, the only addons i have are either my own, or clusters I generated using rassilon's globular cluster generator. I don't plan on using the 2 million star database anytime soon. If I run out of stars to have planets orbit around, THEN i'll go to 2 million.

Also, if i want to, when installing ft 1.1 (this one under discussion right now on this thread), i can have it install into my current celestia folder instead of just installing into a separate folder?

Given enough CPU power, the 2m stars are indeed nice. Andomeda (M31 ) appears embedded in /hundreds/ of faint stars...

Could you show us such a typical cluster!? Toti and I are looking next into cluster rendering...So...

As to the FT1.1 installation, YES, all preset names are only defaults and may be modified while the installation program is running. You may best try out, provided there is NO other Celestia distribution in 'C:\Program Files\Celestia'.

Bye Fridger

[t00fri]

For all those out there that want to dimm galaxies, I was looking at page 7 of this thread and Fridger wrote:

Come-on everybody:

do you want me to dim the milky way brightness? Nothing easier than that...Let me know.

Bye Fridger


I asked about this a couple of weeks ago. I looked into it and found that if you change the AbsMag value to -1 then the gallaxy dimms to a default low value. You can also play with the value to suit your needs. The Abs Mag value is in the deepsky.dsc for any galaxy you may want to dimm.

cartrite

Certainly, Cartrite,

for your application the modification of AbsMag in deepsky.dsc was the simplest approach. But if really a number of people would want to JUST have the Milky Way dimmed there is nothing easier than that for FT1.2.

As of FT1.1, I can even adjust the brightness of the Milky Way (as appearing from within the galaxy! ) INDEPENDENTLY from the brightness of all other galaxies.

Bye Fridger

[PlutonianEmpire]

provided there is NO other Celestia distribution in 'C:\Program Files\Celestia'.

what's that mean, exactly?

[abramson]

Come-on everybody:
do you want me to dim the milky way brightness? Nothing easier than that...Let me know.

The brightness of the Milky Way is ok also for me. I have 17" TFT's both at home and at work, 1280x1024. I don't find it brighter than what you see from a dark place (even if it appears more colorful, but that's nice too). I suppose that from above the atmosphere it would be even more conspicuous.

I also do not mind about the comma in the year format. What's wrong with it? It is rather standard to separate digits in groups of three with either commas or points, isn't it (this last is the most common in my country, in any case).

Regards,

Guillermo

[t00fri]

provided there is NO other Celestia distribution in 'C:\Program Files\Celestia'.

what's that mean, exactly?

1) You first make sure in the 'Control Panel-> Add and Remove Programs' that there is no standard Celestia Installation (e.g. 1.4.0pre6 or earlier). If there is one, you must uninstall it first (by clicking Remove) . If not you are safe.

2) Check in c:\Program Files\Celestia and make sure there is nothing you want to retain. If (1) and (2) are OK, you may just delete the Celestia directory (and its possible content) altogether.

Then you start the FT1.1 installation by running the .exe. You are then given the possibility to modify default directory names etc during installation.

Bye Fridger

[PlutonianEmpire]

And If i wanna install into it withOUT deleting anything, then what?

[t00fri]

Come-on everybody:
do you want me to dim the milky way brightness? Nothing easier than that...Let me know.

The brightness of the Milky Way is ok also for me. I have 17" TFT's both at home and at work, 1280x1024. I don't find it brighter than what you see from a dark place (even if it appears more colorful, but that's nice too). I suppose that from above the atmosphere it would be even more conspicuous.

I also do not mind about the comma in the year format. What's wrong with it? It is rather standard to separate digits in groups of three with either commas or points, isn't it (this last is the most common in my country, in any case).

Regards,

Guillermo

Thanks Guillermo,

for your feedback. Since the respective date output is from a Microsoft system routine, it should not be all that incorrect . Personally I prefer the display without any commas, though.

Perhaps not everyone was aware that these various options are adjustable via the Control Panel.

Cheers,
Fridger

[t00fri]

And If i wanna install into it withOUT deleting anything, then what?

... then you better do it by hand, slowly and carefully! I guess you know that a regular installation goes along with a corresponding entry in the Registry, that doesn't like to be confused!

Suppose you want to use some of your add-ons or textures with FT1.1. Then I would first copy these textures and add-ons to some safe place and then deinstall Celestia. Next, you install FT1.1 with standard Celestia directory and icon names and copy the saved textures and add-ons into the new FT1.1 installation directory.

Bye Fridger

[PlutonianEmpire]

Well, the reason why i asked the question in the first place was i didn't want to break any copyright rules by accident or something like that.

[BrainDead]

Good Doctor Schrempp and Master Toti...

Have uncovered my particular FPS problems with FT1.1 thank you very
much.

Your installation includes a 2048 x 1024 texture of the Earth in the medres
folder. As I have mentioned before, my particular machine cannot
even normally display a 2k texture. For whatever reason here, it does
allow the Earth texture to be displayed and used, but at the cost of FPS.

Just thought I'd make your day here. <Hee, hee>

Seriously though, all I had to do was copy a 1k version of Don Edwards'
beautiful Earth into my medres folder, remove the 2k version which came
with the install, and now my FPS are HUMPIN.



Thank you both for the help and advice you gave me while trying to
find out what my troubles were. Toti and Fridger, you guys are the
BEST.

Hope this advice helps someone else here.

Thanks.

[fsgregs]

Fridger;

I wanted to include FT 1.1 in my CD for ONLY one reason. It is worth it! I am not going to sell any more CD's because of FT 1.1 Teachers will not know it is even present. They will buy Celestia Educational Activities because they want a stunning educational program to take their kids into space. Whether the CD includes 1.4.0pre6 or FT1.1 will make no difference in sales, or in my profits.

What it will do is give everyone who experiences Celestia for the first time the thrill of seeing the universe's true glory .... its galaxies. That was always the main weakness of Celestia, and you and Toti fixed it. I wanted anyone buying the CD (or downloading my Activities for free from the web) to have the pleasure of experiencing that ... of experiencing your work!!!! The universe is worth it. It deserves the beauty that you have just built into it!!! If we all have gotten so much enjoyment out of journeying through space, why not share it with as many people as possible?

If I make any money on offering my Activities to schools ... great. If I don't ... so what! For three years, I've been a volunteer contributor to Celestia as a labor of love anyway.

THAT is why I have been pushing you to release FT 1.1.

I don't give a damn about the date. It looks funny to have a comma in it, but if you won't change it ... no big deal! Distance and speed displays are easier to read with commas and they should stay.

If you can dim down the Milky Way from Earth's viewpoint, or at least give folks the option to do so if they desire, I believe it will better represent the true brightness of the haze of the Milky Way as seen from Earth. If you won't do that either ... I'll live with it.

I "suggest" that you remove the "set Marker" option in Start.cel. In my humble opinion, Celestia should open without a red box centered in the middle of Earth.

Frank