Spiral Galaxy Template set for CVS

[ElChristou]

I'm not sure this is useful for stars because only a few have labels... (oops, are they all labelled with the new code? (I'm unable to test it unfortunatly))

[Cham]

I'm not sure this is useful for stars because only a few have labels... (oops, are they all labelled with the new code? (I'm unable to test it unfortunatly))

That's what I meant.

[ElChristou]

Definitively I need to take more time in reading the threads... Sorry Fridger...

[Vincent]

Vincent, could you post more pictures of the before/after blurr results, in Celestia ? What about the side views ? Please, post some larger pictures.

I made some further testing about the MilkyWay template. Waiting for the tutorial about template making in CelestialMatters, and to make sure the template is accurate, I didn't start from scratch. I simply modified ElChristou's version. The size of the .png template is 256*256.

- Click on the pictures to enlarge :







PS : Fridger, I received your new render.cpp file that includes opacity varying labels for stars. I'm going to test it right now. Thanks.

[ElChristou]

Vincent, could you post more pictures of the before/after blurr results, in Celestia ? What about the side views ? Please, post some larger pictures.

I made some further testing about the MilkyWay template. Waiting for the tutorial about template making in CelestialMatters, and to make sure the template is accurate, I didn't start from scratch. I simply modified ElChristou's version. The size of the .png template is 256*256.

Vince, all is possible, but don't forgat we were working on an "official" set, so like for models we must limit ourself to keep things light and fast in rendering.
A new line of addon is now available in the form of galaxy templates, you are free to customize any galaxy with whatever size of template and propose them for download...

[ElChristou]

BTW, is "Le queue de serpent" correct? For me should be "La queue de serpent"; I send to Christophe a few weeks ago this comment but recive no response so I'm now doubting about the name of this constelation in French...

[Vincent]

Vince, all is possible, but don't forgat we were working on an "official" set, so like for models we must limit ourself to keep things light and fast in rendering.
A new line of addon is now available in the form of galaxy templates, you are free to customize any galaxy with whatever size of template and propose them for download...

Chris,
The accuracy of the template you made is undisputable, and I'm really impressed by the work Fridger and you have done there.
But IMHO, their visual aspect could still be improved. That's what I'm trying to do here.
As you can see on the following shot, the 128*128 version of my modified template is as accurate as yours.
But IMHO, it looks a little bit better, and may surely look even better with other users' opinions.



So, I have just anticipated a little bit the testing phase Fridger was talking about...

Certainly, during the pre-1.5.0 testing phase, we may still straighten out or tune some possibly unsatisfactory aspects, should they arise.

Now, if the devs team think that it is not worth making some tunning about the "visual aspect" of the templates, I will of course keep my modified versions for the "Add-ons forum", with no problem at all .

[Christophe]

BTW, is "Le queue de serpent" correct? For me should be "La queue de serpent"; I send to Christophe a few weeks ago this comment but recive no response so I'm now doubting about the name of this constelation in French... :oops:

Sorry about that, I must have missed your email. It's of course a typo, "La queue du Serpent" is correct.

[t00fri]

Vincent,

of course, it's great if you and others test and try to improve the templates.

Honestly, I don't understand why you constantly display your new attempts in a way that does not really allow to judge possible improvements. I don't think I can make out any clearcut improvement from what you show.

As I previously indicated, you should use SHIFT+mouse left AND CTRL+mouse left movements to adjust the display such that --on the one hand- the inner galaxy part is not entirely overexposed and -on the other hand- the outer arms are not too "sharply" defined. In other words, the galaxies are MADE for being used at larger distance. So when closely inspecting them via the G key, you should compensate/adjust the view as I indicated.

Another caveat: since much structure of the spirals comes from random variables in the code, you should always take into account that a single judgement of the image is absolutely insufficient. To isolate clearcut features you should repeat the Celestia start several times...

Bye Fridger

[ElChristou]

...Now, if the devs team think that it is not worth making some tunning about the "visual aspect" of the templates, I will of course keep my modified versions for the "Add-ons forum", with no problem at all .

Please, don't misunderstand me; of course a tuning of the official templates is welcome, but then we should stay in the 128x128 frame.
If folks want to do some tries, we should open a thread specialy for this, but with one rule: making available the png for testing in live...

Now if for example you want to propose a 256 set, great, but this is more for an addon...

[ElChristou]

BTW, is "Le queue de serpent" correct? For me should be "La queue de serpent"; I send to Christophe a few weeks ago this comment but recive no response so I'm now doubting about the name of this constelation in French...

Sorry about that, I must have missed your email. It's of course a typo, "La queue du Serpent" is correct.

Ah ok... between Spanish, English and French, I begin to lose my Latin!

[Malenfant]

The line running along the middle of the disc there looks way too sharp to me - looks too artificial.

[Vincent]

As I previously indicated, you should use SHIFT+mouse left AND CTRL+mouse left movements to adjust the display such that --on the one hand- the inner galaxy part is not entirely overexposed and -on the other hand- the outer arms are not too "sharply" defined. In other words, the galaxies are MADE for being used at larger distance. So when closely inspecting them via the G key, you should compensate/adjust the view as I indicated.

Fridger, that's exactly what I did. Didn't you notice that the FOV was set to ~ 14?° in the 1st shot ? I conscientiously followed your advice, as I did when I was a pupil at school. The problem is that I still need to practice to be more precise. You would be a very demanding teacher...

More seriously, I also took shots with the inner part of the galaxy saturated because I'm using the following photo of the M109 galaxy to compare with the rendering of the Milky Way template (see this post : http://celestiaproject.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=7607&start=21 ).


Finally, I agree that we should start a new thread in which we could post not only some shots but also the modified templates in order to make everybody test them on their system. And of course, I would have published my template after I had got some feedback about the shots I posted.

[t00fri]

Vincent,

I just opened a new "Joint Galaxy Template Design Effort" thread in the Developer Talk board including some basic illustrations about our typical multi-layer setup.

M 109 is only /generically/ like the Milky Way. But we have really incorporated all /precise/ known arms of our galaxy.

Bye Fridger

[t00fri]

This is to let people know that I now have committed my galaxy improvements and the new Titan atmosphere parameters to CVS as part of 1.5.0pre1

In detail:

-- various improvements to the MilkyWay & galaxy template display
(dust line in galactic plane weakened and made more irregular,...)
-- add E0 template, giving better E_n, n=1..7, displays via scaling
* add E0.png in celestia.iss
* add E0.png in models/Makefile.am
-- reverse MilkyWay template orientation to fit observations
-- prevent galaxy code from crashing if a template is missing
-- fix sizes of irregular galaxies (factor of 2!)

-- add new code featuring varying label transparency for galaxies

-- add new parameter set for Mie atmosphere display of Titan. I have
strongly reduced the purple/blue intensity while
achieving even better agreement with cyclops color imaging

Someone should check whether things work fine (loading of E0.png!) under
Windows. I checked all Linux distros.

Bye Fridger

@Cham: my varying label transparency code for stars is still pending, since Chris did not reply (yet)....We should first contemplate a new switch to make it optional.

[Cham]

Thanks Fridger.

Update done on my HD,

Built successfull,

Now testing, and already found several glitches :

1- Celestia now starts with a full white screen, while showing it's logo.png file. After it goes to Earth, everything appears to be fine. But why the white screen at startup ?

2- Some galaxies (the magellan clouds) appears to be a bit too strong now, too luminous. I'm not sure this is normal.

3- The planets and the sun now have a HUGE problem ! Look at the picture below :



It has been too long a problem , the glare effect on stars, and now this ?? Come on, Chris !

Fridger ;

the dark line on the MilkyWay looks fine now, thanks !


EDIT : About the white screen, I think it's caused by two things : it start too close from the Sun, and it also may be related to that huge glowing balls problem.

[t00fri]

Thanks Fridger.

Update done on my HD,

Built successfull,

Now testing, and already found several glitches :

1- Celestia now starts with a full white screen, while showing it's logo.png file. After it goes to Earth, everything appears to be fine. But why the white screen at startup ?

2- Some galaxies (the magellan clouds) appears to be a bit too strong now, too luminous. I'm not sure this is normal.

3- The planets and the sun now have a HUGE problem ! Look at the picture below :



It has been too long a problem , the glare effect on stars, and now this ?? Come on, Chris !

Fridger ;

the dark line on the MilkyWay looks fine now, thanks !


EDIT : About the white screen, I think it's caused by two things : it start too close from the Sun, and it also may be related to that huge glowing balls problem.

Cham,

thanks for checking.

I basically need to collect a user-average as to the preferred default brightness tuning of the galaxy display.

There are several issues to consider.

a) with automag ON.
-----------------------

That the best choice for most things related to galaxies at least . I have it always on, since I coded the automag long ago.

The advantage is that the galaxies look dim when they are small like naked eye vision would show, while they show their splendor when zooming in (smaller field of view).

So with automag the sensitivity to some default brightness level is much smaller than without automag.

b) There is a STRONG dependence on the monitor adjustment. It's often different and NOT gauged according to existing standards. In such cases it would be bad to take such information into account.

The other glitches are to Chris' address...

The startup with a "white" screen is just a closeup of the solar disk, of course. You may easily modify it if you don't like it.

Bye Fridger

[Cham]

Fridger,

I'm also using "automagn" all the time. But I still believe the galaxies luminosity is a bit too strong. I can rise it up (using the "(" and ")" keys), but I can't reduce it. Can't it be modified so we could reduce the luminosity ?

[t00fri]

Fridger,

I'm also using "automagn" all the time. But I still believe the galaxies luminosity is a bit too strong. I can rise it up (using the "(" and ")" keys), but I can't reduce it. Can't it be modified so we could reduce the luminosity ?

Easily, but images from your monitor always strike me as VERY bright. So I want to hear other opinions first.

You may easily experiment yourself with the best brightness. Tell me what is best for you.

Just load src/celengine/galaxy.cpp into an editor and change the number in front of line 317.

Replace the float number 5.0f in line 317 by something slightly smaller, compile and check. It should not be smaller than say 3.5f

Bye Fridger

[t00fri]

It would also be good to get some impressions from people about my new Titan atmosphere settings in the CVS.

Of course I cannot make it better than Chris coded it , but I think this is meanwhile a remarkably good compromise, notably the backlit view and looking over the rim towards the sun. In the latter case it's best to take the haze off (I-key).

With the yellow haze active the purple-blue outer atmosphere is barely visible now, just as it looks with true-color imaging, as I was explained by the Cyclops lead scientist.

Bye Fridger