Virtual Textures don't work (Linux)

[medusa]

Hi folks,

after a long time I'm back from outer space... needed some months to aquire new graphics hardware to run Celestia.

Now, first thing I require when back here is HELP. Virtual textures don't work at present for me.
At the moment I run the following hardware:
Celeron 2.5 GHz, i865 chipset, 1GB RAM, Geforce FX 5500
OS:
Debian 3.1 Sarge, Nvidia drivers 7676, XFree86 4.0.3

Celestia 1.3.2 complied from tar.gz, installed all required libraries for glut / gtk / gnome frontend versions from Debian packages. All three binaries work, but none of them wants to load .ctx files. Message always: unrecognized or unsupported file type.

I already searched the forum and read Selden's addon-intro and texture web pages but found no useful information. Running Linux / OpenGL, I didn't try dds based VTs but downloaded the jpg version of Jestr's Earth. I also changed all file names to lowercase as suggested by Selden, still didn't work.
Last thing I tried was to put all stuff direct into the textures/hires directory (renamed the file to "earth.ctx") to use it by typing the "R" key. Didn't work, same error message.

What else can I do?

Grateful for help,

~Diane (Medusa).

[selden]

Are you specifying the VT in its SSC catalog as "texture.*" or as "texture.ctx" ?

The Windows version of Celestia complains about the filetype being unrecognized when it actually can't find a file at all. Here's what I see when there are no hires images:

If the Linux version of Celestia generates this misleading message, too, perhaps your VT isn't in the directory where Celestia is looking.

Rather than summarizing the error messages, could you show them in full?
Often details that don't seem important actually contain the information necessary for resolving the problem.

[medusa]

Selden,

the error messages look exactly like the ones you displayed. I suspected first that Celestia can't find the original package files for I dropped them into a wrong place inside extras/ - so I moved the .ctx file to textures/hires/ (and of course the directory containing level0 to level5). File structure now is following:

texture/hires/earth.ctx
texture/hires/earth/level0/tx_0_0.jpg
texture/hires/earth/level0/tx_0_1.jpg

and so on. Edited earth.ctx to get the right directory name. I also modified the file solarsys.ssc to try to use ' Texture "hires/earth.ctx" ' as default, also didn't work - it falls back to medres, same as with ' Texture "earth.*" '.
I guess I did some really stupid mistake, but at the moment all seems to be in the right place.

~Diane.

[selden]

Selden,

the error messages look exactly like the ones you displayed. I suspected first that Celestia can't find the original package files for I dropped them into a wrong place inside extras/ - so I moved the .ctx file to textures/hires/ (and of course the directory containing level0 to level5). File structure now is following:

texture/hires/earth.ctx
texture/hires/earth/level0/tx_0_0.jpg
texture/hires/earth/level0/tx_0_1.jpg

They should be in
textures/hires/earth.ctx
Note that textures ends in an S
It's subtle details like that which matter.

and so on. Edited earth.ctx to get the right directory name. I also modified the file solarsys.ssc to try to use ' Texture "hires/earth.ctx" ' as default,

You must not specify the folder in the texture name. Celestia always looks in all three. The order depends on which resolution you've selected from the keyboard by typing r or R.

also didn't work - it falls back to medres, same as with ' Texture "earth.*" '.
I guess I did some really stupid mistake, but at the moment all seems to be in the right place.

It would help if you showed what you actually did rather than telling us second hand. By this, I mean, copy and paste the contents of the ctx file and the SSC entry that you're using for Earth into your post. Too often we see what we believe is there instead of what actually is there. Typos are very hard for people to see (like your misspelling of "textures" above), but Celestia will stumble over them every time.

[John Van Vliet]

hi you may have the .ctx a bit wrong hear is a copy of my earth.ctx
in the hires dir

hires/Earth.ctx
hires/Earth
hires/Earth/level0
hires/Earth/.......

Code: Select all

VirtualTexture

{

        ImageDirectory "Earth"

        BaseSplit 0

        TileSize 512

        TileType "png"

}

in solarsys.conf

Code: Select all

.......
Earth sol/earth
.............
TextureMap "Earth.ctx"
...........


[medusa]

Hi,

thanks to you all to be so patient about all my typo errors (I know it must be textures/ and so on). I'll seriously remember the hint to quote original files next time instead of typing them. Promised.

In a sleepless hour at dawn I found the error. Usually I compile Celestia --with-prefix=/home/celestia which for some weird reason worked only for the first time. All following compilations installed all stuff to the default location /usr/local/share/celestia - which then was used at runtime. AND OF COURSE there weren't the hires files. As I guessed, a really stupid mistake, I should have checked for earlier.
It works now fine. (@Jestr: love your textures!)

I think about the reason the files don't go to my home directory at installation. Does the sequence of the configure parameters matter? Must a directory parameter end in a slash? E.g., should I type

./configure --with-gtk --with-prefix=/home/celestia/

instead of

./configure --with-prefix=/home/celestia --with-gtk

Just curious about the latter.... again, thanks to you all for your patience.

~Diane.

[John Van Vliet]

i do the stupid mistakes to, normaly at 4 or 5am right befor i go to bed