About constellations

[ElChristou]

Hi guys,

I wondering about having the constellations lines semi transparent like in pict 2. I think the interest is pretty obvious...



Is this possible or not?

Now to stay in the topic, just an idea for script writers:

What about a script in which we could:
1- select a constellation
2- display the names of all stars participating in the construction of the constellation figure

Is such a script (if possible) of any interest?

[Boux]

You are right. With pointstars rendering which I prefer because it is clean and crisp, many stars are hidden behind the constellation outline.
Colors and transparency are hardwired in the code.
As I believe that you know how to build your own executable, here is the trick.
Open the "render.ccp" source file.
Look for the block which processes asterisms/constellations

Code: Select all

    // Render asterisms
    if ((renderFlags & ShowDiagrams) != 0 && universe.getAsterisms() != NULL)
    {
        glColor4f(0.28f, 0.0f, 0.66f, 0.96f);


change the glColor string into:

Code: Select all

        glColor4f(0.28f, 0.0f, 0.75f, 0.50f); // red, green, blue, alpha


The new figures make the lines more transparent (alpha). I put some more blue to compensate for the resultant lower contrast.
Save and build.
Here is the result:

[ElChristou]

Many Tx Boux, indeed pretty easy to do!!

Dev team? should this little change could be done in the code for further versions?

[Brendan]

How about making the OpenGL colors for constellation lines, constellation boundaries and coordinate grid settings in celestia.cfg? I tried that before and might try getting that to work if I could figure out how to make makefiles to compile with mingw. I tried the Microsoft compiler on my new amd 64 system and the linker gave errors about it being on an amd 64 system.