New model for Celestia in construction (DOWNLOAD link)

[Cham]

I just made a lighter version of the SS Kepler. This was easy : I just had to erase most details. Here's a link to the lighter version, with MUCH less details (if it still can't work properly on your system, then I'm really sorry) :

http://nho.ohn.free.fr/celestia/Cham/SS ... _Light.zip (10.5 MB zip file)

Please, tell me how it performs on your system. What is your frame rate in Celestia, at which resolution and are you using FSAA. Please, be precise : tell if you're using the complete (detailed) version, or the lighter version.

NEXT : I'm starting a variation, inspired by one very nice spaceship from 2001 A space Odyssey :



That model should work on any system, since it's just a small part of the SS Kepler. This spaceship is in the spirit of that one :

[bh]

Stunning work Cham...well done.

[ANDREA]

I'm starting a variation, inspired by one very nice spaceship from 2001 A space Odyssey

Cham, as you are starting a major change to your project, please allow me to make engineering thoughts.
From a "expense" point of view, very high for such a spaceship, as you say, the most important target is "obtain the maximun at the lower price".
Well, and this is not a critic, but only reflections, I don't think that space engineers would project a ship with all that waste of available space.
The structure, if seen sideway, looks truly "empty", so I think they would fill it up to the maximum possible, or would make it slimmer/shorter/lighter or what else.
I repeat, I love SS Kepler and I've already inserted it in my "Space Conquest show", but my aircraft engineering experience suggested me to address this.
Waiting for your next project, bye

Andrea

[selden]

I get 7 or 20fps with the light version on my system. Unfortunately, it isn't obvious what causes the different performance values.

It was 20 fps when I started Celestia the first time to look at it. It was 7fps when I started Celestia the second time after inspecting (but not changing) the antialiasing settings. It's been 20fps for several subsequent restarts.

config:
1GB 3.4GHz P4-550, WinXP Pro SP2
128MB GF 6600GT, ForceWare v91.47
8XS FSAA, 16x Anisotropic filtering
1600x1200
Celestia from CVS

On the system below, I get only 2-2.4 fps

512MB 2.4 GHz P4, WinXP Pro SP2
128MB FX 5200, ForceWare v91.31
antialias settings are "Application controlled"
4X FSAA specified in celestia.cfg
1600x1200
Celestia from CVS

With FSAA disabled I get ~3fps

[Chuft-Captain]

The other extreme (performance wise) from Andrea's ...

config 1:
LAPTOP
Pentium M 1.5GHz 248MB RAM, WinXP Home
64MB Intel 82852/82855 GM/GME Graphics
1024x768 32bit depth
Celestia 1.4.1

SS Kepler (light) in orbit around Mars: 3 FPS
SS Kepler in orbit around Phobos: 2.5 FPS

config 2:
Same LAPTOP, but loading and running Celestia and Kepler models off a USB Memory Stick

SS Kepler (light) in orbit around Mars: 2.5 FPS
SS Kepler in orbit around Phobos: 2 FPS

Not too bad, eh?

[ANDREA]

This is the result at 1600x1200 32 bit, Antialiasing OFF, in the background Mario's m46v2_16k_315deg-180.jpg 16k Shaded Mars texture



As you see it still works at 15 FPS.
Bye

Andrea

[CurlSnout]

The "lite" version (same parameters as I listed above for the "heavy" version) gives me 42.5 FPS.

The new craft (the bit inspired by 2001) looks wonderful.

THANKS again.

cs

[chris]

GeForce 8800GTX with 16x antialiasing
60fps (refresh rate limited) - this hardware is amazing.



--Chris

[Cham]

The structure, if seen sideway, looks truly "empty", so I think they would fill it up to the maximum possible, or would make it slimmer/shorter/lighter or what else.

Andrea, you may be right. But from my point of view, the large structure is used to hold some trusters, the parabolic antennas, and is pushing on the head. It's also holding the bigger tanks. And it was built this way so the ship could sustain tidal stress from planets like Jupiter. A slimmer/lighter structure would have more difficulties with these constraints. So I don't think the emptiness is really "illogical" in an economical sense. And if the enginneers add a maximum of stuff inside the structure (of the same dimension), it would cost more and the ship would be heavier !

Of course, this model is just science-fiction, and can't be considered as an "accurate" view of the future. There are surely lots of other ways to build a spaceship with the same mission. And don't forget that in 80 years, the world economy will be very diferent than ours (especially because of the global warming issues, China and India superpowers, etc), and at that time we will have lots of new technologies, new materials (nanotech, superconductivity, fusion reactors ? etc). And as I said earlier, this model is associated with an "optimistic" scenario for mankind.

Personally, I'm of a very pessimistic nature (realist ?) and I don't think we will ever go to Mars. Global warming will cost too much, and manned space exploration may come to an end ! My model is just the expression of a day-dream of mine.


EDIT : Hmm, the server which is holding my model and my pictures appears to be offline.

[Fightspit]

GeForce 8800GTX with 16x antialiasing
60fps (refresh rate limited) - this hardware is amazing.
--Chris

Already get it ? At first day of official launching of 8800 GTX (compatible DX10) ?

This graphic card cost more than 600?‚¬ (or $)

I reade some test about it and it is amazing because in a lot of games under DX9, it is almost equivalent at 7900GTX in SLI or X1950XTX in Crossfire in hight resolution

Do you plan for a SLI with Geforce 8800GTX ?

[ANDREA]

Hello Cham, after a longer check, I found this strange problem:



It's accompanied by clear lines,



and black lines





and it occurs on my PC at all the antialias (No to 8x)/anysotropic (No to 16x)/screen resolution (1024x768 to 1600x1200, 16 and 32 bit) settings I used in my tests.
May be your cmod is optimized for 1.5.0 release, is it?
I've obtained this image using the video capture in Celestia and checking image after image, because the defects last a very short time, too short to be captured with image capture, but they occur frequently.
Any idea? I have the feeling that some poly in the model is different from all the other ones, and this gives the problem. Is it a mad fantasy?
Anyone with the same problem?
Bye and thank you.

Andrea

[fsgregs]

Cham:

On my same system at home, I am getting 12 fps with the lighter version of the model, with 4X antialiasing on. Recall that I got 9 - 10 fps with the bigger model. To my surprise, there was no change at all in fps when I turned antialiasing off via the Nvidia control panel. I tried relaunching Celestia and again, it came in at 12 fps.

That is OK. I will try out the model on my school computers ASAP and let you know.

Andrea, is over 60 fps what I can expect if I get 4 MB of RAM and a 512 MB VRAM video card? WOW

Frank

[chris]

GeForce 8800GTX with 16x antialiasing
60fps (refresh rate limited) - this hardware is amazing.
--Chris

Already get it ? At first day of official launching of 8800 GTX (compatible DX10) ?

This graphic card cost more than 600?‚¬ (or $)

I reade some test about it and it is amazing because in a lot of games under DX9, it is almost equivalent at 7900GTX in SLI or X1950XTX in Crossfire in hight resolution

Do you plan for a SLI with Geforce 8800GTX ?

No SLI for me--one of these boards is plenty It's going to be a good platform for Celestia HDR development

--Chris

[Cham]

Andrea,

the problem you are experimenting is most probably caused by your video card drivers or video card limitations. I'm totally sure it isn't the model at all. The mesh is "clean". Maybe it's the conversion to CMOD which introduced something weird, since I used the new version of the CMODTool, made with 1.5.0 in mind. I don't have any problem in Celestia 1.5.0, related to the model. I didn't tried the model in Celestia 1.4.1, however. Maybe there's something wrong with 1.4.1 and the latest CMOD conversion utility, but I'm confident that it should work nicely in 1.4.1 too. I'll try it tonight, when I'll be back home.

Anyone else confirm Andrea problems ?

[Cham]

Andrea,

I've just tested my model with Celestia 1.4.1, and there's no problem at all on my system. The animation is very smooth and the rendering is perfect. In wireframe mode (ctrl-W), I can clearly see all the triangles (at close range) and nothing is bad there. All triangles are at their proper place (okay, I didn't checked them all, but the model is looking correct in wireframe mode). So the CMOD file is ok, AFAIK. I strongly suspect that your problem is caused by a faulty video card driver, or you're reaching your video card memory limit. This isn't very surprising, since the model as more than 1 million of triangles !

This model is a good 3D testing ground for video cards, since it doesn't have any textures. I'm personally very surprised that it works so perfectly on my system, with both versions of Celestia, considering the large number of triangles.

[ANDREA]

Andrea, I've just tested my model with Celestia 1.4.1, and there's no problem at all on my system. The animation is very smooth and the rendering is perfect. In wireframe mode (ctrl-W), I can clearly see all the triangles (at close range) and nothing is bad there. All triangles are at their proper place (okay, I didn't checked them all, but the model is looking correct in wireframe mode). So the CMOD file is ok, AFAIK. I strongly suspect that your problem is caused by a faulty video card driver, or you're reaching your video card memory limit. This isn't very surprising, since the model as more than 1 million of triangles !
This model is a good 3D testing ground for video cards, since it doesn't have any textures. I'm personally very surprised that it works so perfectly on my system, with both versions of Celestia, considering the large number of triangles.

OK Cham, thank you for testing my problem.
I'm going to upgrade my nvidia drivers from 91.47 to the latest 93.71, but I have many doubts that this will solve my problem because, if my system is at its memory capacity limits (but as you see here below I have a 512 MB 7900 GTX SLI card, coupled with 4 GB of RAM) what should happen to lower systems? You could not even open it, IMO!
Anyone else with slower cards has such problems?

Added later: I think I solved the problem!
Cham, you was half right, and half wrong.
Right because your cmod works perfectly, wrong because the problem is not due to the driver or the card, but due to my error.
My SS Kepler tests were performed using a fresh installation of Cerlestia 1.4.1, with the addition of Vincent's celestia_win32_1.4.1_patch3, copied from a previous installation (NOT launched from the patch itself), and the problem was ON.
After that I have re-installed Vincent's patch (from the patch itself), , and now it works perfectly.
Perhaps a bad installation of the original patch, something missing for my error, or a corrupted file, don't know, but it was the fault.
Yahoooooo!
Thank you again for helping me.
Bye

Andrea

[ANDREA]

Andrea, is over 60 fps what I can expect if I get 4 MB of RAM and a 512 MB VRAM video card? WOW
Frank

Frank, I have limited the FPS to 60, it's useless to go over that, but surely with this system the rate can be even higher, but I didn't test it.
BTW, I absolutely don't remember how I set this limit, shame on me!
Bye

Andrea

[danielj]

It??s NOT incredible.Your model is very,very heavy,since you have a MONSTER computer with 4 GB of RAM,7900 GTX in SLI and Athlon FX-57.
I won??t even try with my modest configuration.
If this continues,soon Celestia only will be COOL to people with TONS OF MONEY.
Many developers are more concerned in developing models that only works well in SLI than building a 32k map of Moon or Mars,for example.And we have plenty of data for both...

Here's a download link to the model.
If you use the model, please, tell me your frame rate in Celestia, and if you have antialiasing, so I can know if it's really worth it to make other models of that resolution.

Cham, it's almost incredible, but here is what I see on my system, at 1024x768 16 bit screen resolution and antialiasing OFF:



As you can see at lower right, my rate was a stunning 60 FPS, with SS Kepler rotating smoothly without stops.
A very good couple with your Mars Relay Station.
Very very appreciated, indeed, I love it!
Bye and many thanks.

Andrea

[selden]

Daniel,

Many developers have modest systems. Mine is much less powerful than yours. The detailed models are for looking at and admiring. They are not intended for high speed flybys.

Most people in the 3D modelling community don't even try to do realtime 3D. They make pictures with software renderers that take hours to generate a single frame.

Be happy with what you've got!

[Fightspit]

Many developers have modest systems.

Except chris and t00fri