Binary stars don't orbit each other?

[rikchik]

Rigel Kentaurus A and B orbit each other in an 79.92 year period. In Celestia, you can sit on A and stare at B and crank up the time, but B doesn't budge. Is this fixable? Is there an add-on or something that corrects this?

[t00fri]

Rigel Kentaurus A and B orbit each other in an 79.92 year period. In Celestia, you can sit on A and stare at B and crank up the time, but B doesn't budge. Is this fixable? Is there an add-on or something that corrects this?

What a heading!?

Sure they do...

first of all, when reporting a potential bug, it is most important to specify the user environment as accurately as possible. What version of Celestia did you use? Did you use Rigel Kentaurus from nearstars.stc or from my visualbins.stc file etc?

Anyhow if I place myself on A, B moves around A if the time scale is cranked up /a lot/. Well I always use Celestia FT1.1 (of course )

Bye Fridger

[rikchik]

OK, I'm using Celestia 1.3.2 on Windows 2000, and the data files that come with it. I don't have either of the files you name. I have these:

asterisms.dat
boundaries.dat
starnames.dat
stars.dat
deepsky.dsc
asteroids.ssc
comets.ssc
extrasolar.ssc
outersys.ssc
solarsys.ssc
solsys_locs.ssc
spacecraft.ssc
world-capitals.ssc
cassini.xyz
galileo.xyz
huygens.xyz

Does it matter which of those two files I use? Do I need to remove one of the ones I have to avoid getting duplicate stars?

[selden]

Displaying the orbital motions of stars requires one of the prereleases of Celestia v1.4.0.

The Windows version of Celestia v1.4.0pre6 is available at
http://www.celestiaproject.net/~claurel/celest ... .0pre6.exe
(pre7 probably will be formally announced RSN)
For details, see http://www.celestiaproject.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=6098

Alternatively, the Windows version of Celestia v1.4.0-FT1.1 (a temporary offshoot) is available at
http://www.celestiaproject.net/~t00fri/celesti ... -win32.exe
For details, see http://www.celestiaproject.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=8111

[rikchik]

Thank you very much!

[t00fri]

...
Celestia v1.4.0-FT1.1 (a temporary offshoot)

Ah, that's what Celestia-FT1.1 is called since Chris' surprising reappearance this morning

Bye Fridger

[Malenfant]

Ah, that's what Celestia-FT1.1 is called since Chris' surprising reappearance this morning

Personally I wouldn't say that Chris has "reappeared" until he actually posts something - he's shown up on the list of users occasionally previously and done nothing.

[t00fri]

Ah, that's what Celestia-FT1.1 is called since Chris' surprising reappearance this morning

Personally I wouldn't say that Chris has "reappeared" until he actually posts something - he's shown up on the list of users occasionally previously and done nothing.

There was a little more this time: yesterday he posted two mails on the developers list that he was going to release 1.4.0pre7 for Windows today. That was also what Selden was referring to above...Nothing so far. I wrote him a mail right yesterday. 30 hours after my mail, no answer yet (as usual) ...


EDIT: Just got Chris' answer...

Bye Fridger

[Malenfant]

Well that's good news I guess (though I'll still believe it only when I see the pre7 install file ). What's pre7 got that FT1.1 doesn't have though?

And is he just going to return to months of silence after pre7 comes out?

And why can't he just post something here for once instead of on the developer's list?

[Cham]

And what this official 1.4.0pre7 will includes, compares to TF1.1 ? Is it the same with a different version number ? Why the pre7 ? It should be simpler to call it Celestia 1.4.1, isn't !?

[selden]

pre7 will be an official prerelease of v1.4.0 for Windows created by Chris using the sourcecode that's on SourceForge. Much of the code that's in the FT prereleases has not yet been uploaded to Sourceforge.

The official final release of v1.4.0 won't happen until Chris is satisfied with the stability of the code that's on SourceForge. There are some known bugs in the multiple-light-source code, for example.

Then development will start on v1.4.1, unless it's called something else.

[Cham]

Does that means it will take a full year again before we could see an official version of the FT version ? This is insane.

[Malenfant]

pre7 will be an official prerelease of v1.4.0 for Windows created by Chris using the sourcecode that's on SourceForge. Much of the code that's in the FT prereleases has not yet been uploaded to Sourceforge.

That doesn't really specifically answer the question of what pre7 would have that FT1.1 doesn't . Is there a list of features that will be added to pre7 that aren't in FT1.1? I'd hope that the versions will be merged into one thing, because it'd be a shame to lose the extra stuff that's in F1.1.

The official final release of v1.4.0 won't happen until Chris is satisfied with the stability of the code that's on SourceForge. There are some known bugs in the multiple-light-source code, for example.

Does this mean Chris is taking an active role again? Or is he just going to disappear for months again? At least with the FT versions I can be more convinced that they'll be updated more often. But Chris hasn't exactly given us any reason lately to believe that he's committed to developing Celestia. In fact I'd be more inclined to say it's false hope to believe that a final 1.4.0 will ever happen.

[selden]

Mal,

I answered with what I know.

I don't know how much of the code written by Toti and Fridger has been included. Nobody has done a line-by-line comparson. I suspect Chris hopes to include most or all of it, perhaps modified slightly.

I don't know how active Chris will be. I suspect he hopes to be able to do more, but only time will tell.

[Fightspit]

I find this:
http://sourceforge.net/mailarchive/foru ... um_id=9864

[Malenfant]

I find this:
http://sourceforge.net/mailarchive/foru ... um_id=9864

Hm. There's a later post where he says that pre7 for Window can be found at:
http://www.celestiaproject.net/~claurel/celest ... .0pre7.exe

I think you found that post though judging by your post on the Users board. Though it'd be useful if someone could tell us what is actually new in this that wasn't in pre6 and isn't in FT1.1.

[t00fri]

I am in communication with Chris...(which usually takes its time ) . We have to negotiate the concrete future procedure, before FT1.1 may be integrated into the main branch as well as the possibility of other options.

1.4.0pre7 as I have seen it so far has NOTHING new relative to what we started with BEFORE FT1, except a few corrections by Grant in data files. The galaxies are not quite as pink anymore.

At this point, there is NO element of FT1.x included in 1.4.0pre7. Besides the lacking high efficiency octree culling for DSO's, this means that is uses a badly outdated deepsky.dsc file with only 942 entries instead of 10600 in FT1.1, and many galaxy distances being largely uncertain. There are plenty of bugs in the pre7 galaxy code which leads to incorrect orientations and wrong size scales.

I compared the performance yesterday by using the FT1.1 deepsky.dsc file with 10600 galaxies in pre7:

Comparing at exactly the same conditions (like size etc) I get in Windows:

Code: Select all

  20 fps in 1.4.0pre7
100 fps in FT1.1


This can be rephrased by saying that that due to the new, optimized DSO octree structure in FT1.1, we can operate at exactly the same performance rate with FT1.1 and /10600 galaxies/ that you get in 1.4.0pre7 with only /942 galaxies/...did you ever inspect the famous Stephan's quintet with the <1000 "castrated" deepsky file? Only 1 of 5 is displayed...None of the most impressive galaxy clusters can be seen etc.

In addition we have a sophisticated color rendering and many other features like relative brightness fidelity, multiple name display and searching, fast picking, non-overlapping labels like with location labels etc.

Well after all, Toti and myself collaborated intensively for > 6 months before FT1.1 was released.

All of the 1.4.0pre7 features are also part of FT1.1, like Dr. Joe's orbit patches etc.

The best idea is just to try things out yourself (provided Chris ever releases 1.4.0pre7...)


Bye Fridger

[Malenfant]

Well in that case there's no reason for me to change from FT1.1 to pre7.

I hope that either way development of FT continues...

[Cham]

Then, this means that the "new" 1.4.0pre7 is a HUGE step backward, relative to FT1.1. There is really nothing new in this version ?

But what the hell makes Chris so sensitive and hesitant ?

[t00fri]

Then, this means that the "new" 1.4.0pre7 is a HUGE step backward, relative to FT1.1. There is really nothing new in this version ?

But what the hell makes Chris so sensitive and hesitant ?

1.4.0pre7 appears to reflect the actual state of the CVS, which apart from some changes in data files by Grant, had his last check-in many months ago! Chris yesterday wrapped this all up into 1.4.0pre7.

Unlike the CVS code, pre7 does not exhibit the CTRL+V bug anymore, since Chris now included the missing shader file...

But what the hell makes Chris so sensitive and hesitant

Producing new code usually takes a lot of time, also for Chris...

Bye Fridger