1.5.0 prerelease 2

[chris]

I've built a new prerelease package for Windows:

http://www.celestiaproject.net/~claurel/celest ... .0pre2.exe

A lot of bugs in 1.5.0pre1 have been fixed, and a few new features added:

Code: Select all

* Handle zero duration goto object commands
* Fixed too aggressive rounding in time rate display
* Fixed Pluto system in solar system browser; parent object of Nix and Hydra
   was incorrectly set to Pluto-Charon instead of Pluto.
* Improved selection of galaxies by taking into account their 3d shape
* Made selection only work for currently visible (enabled) objects
* Fixed problems with disappearing orbit paths
* Enable z writes when drawing orbits so that orbits nearer to the camera
  always overlap the ones in the background
* Fixed precision problems in code to display location labels (that were
  causing jittering and disappearing labels.)
* Fixed bug that prevented caching of ScriptedRotation results (causing huge
  slowdowns in some circumstances.)
* Improved precision of LongLat object locations
* Made glare halos fade as objects grow larger than a single pixel.
* Added check to stc loader that rejects stars near origin when the brightness
  is specified by apparent magnitude
* Matched Titan's color parameter to atmosphere color
* Changed time rate display to correctly show slowed rates less than 1/10
* Added filledsquare and disc marker types
* Star rendering improvements:
  - Improved glare texture
  - Glare is drawn in front of object, to avoid strange behavior where a
    dark object silhouette sits in the middle of the glow
  - Stopped using atmospheres to give stars a fuzzy fringe (it was
    making stars look worse, not better)
  - In 'fuzzy points' mode, glare halo doesn't disappear as a star becomes
    resolvable as a > 1 pixel disc
  - Set a maximum size for scaled disc stars
* Corrected format of time scale message
* Fixed bug that made moons disappear as a planet approached stellar transit
* Mac: prevent browser window from shrinking too far
* Linux: added vsync support
* Windows: Fixed crash that occurred when star browser was closed
* Windows: changed solar system browser to ignore invisible objects


--Chris

[Cham]

Chris,

I've just recompiled Celestia, few minutes ago, and tested it. It's worst than before ! The star are now a complete disaster ! They are looking like a dull glowing orb, without any atmosphere, and the star texture is, well, almost inexistant. The glow effect is still disappearing in an abrupt manner, if I move away from the star, and there is still a huge problem with the albedo of all objects around the star. And the orbital paths problem with "holes" is still there. I'm very disappointed of this version.

[ElChristou]

... The glow effect is still disappearing in an abrupt manner, if I move away from the star...

Cham, what render path are you using?

Chris, have you committed your last star code (from dev list)? because I don't have anymore this behavior using it (in older render paths)...

[Cham]

Cham, what render path are you using?

I'm always using OGL 2.0 render path.

[chris]

Chris,

I've just recompiled Celestia, few minutes ago, and tested it. It's worst than before ! The star are now a complete disaster ! They are looking like a dull glowing orb, without any atmosphere, and the star texture is, well, almost inexistant. The glow effect is still disappearing in an abrupt manner, if I move away from the star, and there is still a huge problem with the albedo of all objects around the star. And the orbital paths problem with "holes" is still there. I'm very disappointed of this version.

A few points:

- I intentionally removed the atmospheres, because I think that stars look better without. It also makes eclipses look better.
- I worked hard to eliminate all the abrupt changes; I'm puzzled that you still see one. Which star mode?
- The glare texture is being overlayed on the star, washing out some of the detail in the star texture. Personally, I think that this is an improvement.

--Chris

[Cham]

- I intentionally removed the atmospheres, because I think that stars look better without. It also makes eclipses look better.
- I worked hard to eliminate all the abrupt changes; I'm puzzled that you still see one. Which star mode?
- The glare texture is being overlayed on the star, washing out some of the detail in the star texture. Personally, I think that this is an improvement.

Sorry, I strongly disagree with all this. To me, this is a strong downgrade ! The stars are looking fake, now.

I'm using OGL 2 and stars as points (more realistic).

[Cham]

Do you really think this is better ?



It looks lame to me !

[Cham]

This is the planets, as seen far away. They look like brighter than the sun itself. There's a huge problem with albedo with any objects (this problem isn't new. It occured with most versions of 1.5.0) :

[chris]

This is the planets, as seen far away. They look like brighter than the sun itself. There's a huge problem with albedo with any objects (this problem isn't new. It occured with most versions of 1.5.0) :

It's only a problem with point stars, I think. The problem is that stars, but not planets, get rendered as points. I think that changing the code to also render distance planets with points should fix the problem.

--Chris

[Cham]

I'm getting a similar problem with all star renderings. Here's an URL showing the star glare disappearing abruptly :

cel://Follow/Sol/2006-12-06T16:39:23.65 ... 79&lm=2048

Just move a bit, and the glare disappear completelly.

Here are two snapshots, with info on the left corner :

[selden]

Sometimes you just can't win for losing...

1. Unfortunately, on my system at work, Celestia 1.5.0pre2 is once more showing the "white spot in the middle of the star" syndrome and otherwise no glare effect at all. I agree that Planetary albedos look way too bright.

This is with Scaled Discs and OpenGL 2.0 render path:



The Sun is in the left pane and the Earth and Moon are in the right pane, not a double star

2. Eclipses cause the Earth to be drawn red (shader code error: this was reported for pre1, too).

It seems to me that an acceptable short-term workaround would be to automatically disable cloud shadows when Celestia otherwise would draw a planet red.

System:
2GB 1.86GHz E6300, WinXP Pro SP2
128MB Quadro FX 550, ForceWare v91.36
Celestia v1.5.0pre2

[PlutonianEmpire]

Question: how long before the new atmosphere code will work for planets with 2 suns? Just curious.

[Dollan]

Probably a minor thing in the face of what everyone else is talking about, but in the Pluto system I see only Charon and Pluto, and neither of the two new moons.

...John...

[chris]

Probably a minor thing in the face of what everyone else is talking about, but in the Pluto system I see only Charon and Pluto, and neither of the two new moons.

That's odd . . . Is the file numberedmoons.ssc present in the extras folder?

--Chris

[selden]

No, it's not: it's missing from pre2.

[edit]
It also was not included with v1.4.1Final or v1.5.0pre1.
[/edit]

[jdou]

About the Sun,

With this version, the Runar Thorvaldsen's texture does not work well

[chris]

No, it's not: it's missing from pre2.

[edit]
It also was not included with v1.4.1Final or v1.5.0pre1.
[/edit]

Ah that's right--this file never has been in the standard distribution. Not a problem then. I actually don't want to include it until there's a way to filter out the clutter of tiny moons.

--Chris

[Johaen]

I'm getting a similar problem with all star renderings. Here's an URL showing the star glare disappearing abruptly :

Just move a bit, and the glare disappear completelly.

While I can see the change in the glare, it is nowhere near as dramatic for me as it is in the pics you posted.

[Kolano]

Though I voiced this at least once previously in the User forum, I'll do so again now that it's come up here. Though I appreciate that having the halo's makes it easier to see small objects, I really dislike the unnatural look the halos give things.

I'd like to see things shrink to pixel size as they actually get that small, and then swap to using a variable degree of transparency as they shrink below pixel size. Ending when they are less than 1/256 of a pixel, when they would become completely transparent (presuming the cutoff went linearly, though that may be inappropriate for realism).

For now, can an option please be added to turn halos on/off ?

[t00fri]

I put forward some essential criticism of Chris' new star rendering before it's coding even started.

Here is a reminder

http://www.celestiaproject.net/forum/viewtopic ... 30&start=0

I think the physics should be cleared up among people who understand these things before the coding takes place...

Bye Fridger