HELP- Upgraded Sun texture not working

[jhalderman]

This may seem like a topic for another forum, but given my problem seems to be specific to the ED version of Celestia, I'm hoping the users of this forum will be more familiar with any eccentricities of that version of Celestia.

I am trying to prepare a presentation for an elementary school class tomorrow. I have the ED version of Celestia installed, with the GeneralActivities141 pack and all the Activities installed over that. All the planet and moon textures I've reviewed have their textures upgraded, but for some reason the Sun is not displaying the higher resolution texture map or flares (it actually appears to be displaying the generic gstar texture). I have installed the standalone Sun addon from Frank Gregorio as per its ReadMe, even though it is supposed to come with the GeneralActivities pack, no change. I tried installing the TH_Sun addon as per its Readme with no luck.
I've put the addons in the Extras/Addons folder, the EducationalExtras/Addons folder, the Extras folder, the EduactionalExtras folder, and even dispersed the contents to the respective data, models, and textures folders. Nothing seems to affect the Sun. Since I can't find any entries defining the Sun as an object with textures anywhere, I can't even try hacking the paths into it.

The weird thing is, I've got the TH_Sun addon working on another computer with the standard edition of Celestia (but running the standard version application in the Celestia-ED resources folder doesn't help)

Where am I going wrong?

Thanks for any help.

[rthorvald]

The weird thing is, I've got the TH_Sun addon working on another computer with the standard edition of Celestia (but running the standard version application in the Celestia-ED resources folder doesn't help)

My (TH sun) does not work with Celestia 1.5; it is more than two years old, and only work with 1.4.x. An upgrade will be forthcoming sometime later this year (after 1.5 official is out).

- rthorvald

[jhalderman]

Thanks for responding. I just checked to be sure, I'm actually running version 1.4.1 of Celestia-ED, which appears to be based on the 1.4.1 build of standard Celestia (that app is included in the distro). Is there anything else you can think of. What's suprising is that F. Gregorio includes his own Sun modification with the Education resources pack, which I believe is based on your TH_Sun. Part of the documentation for the "Activity" relies on the functionality of the flares, so I'm pretty sure it is supposed to work as distributed. BTW- I am running in HiRes texures, though have also tried the other mode, I have also cylced through all the OGL rendering modes. What I can't find is anywhere Sol's textures are actually set up in the standard resources so that I can try to change it directly there.

[rthorvald]

What I can't find is anywhere Sol's textures are actually set up in the standard resources so that I can try to change it directly there.

The default Sol texture is just the generic Star texture. The TH Sun texture does not replace this, it just hides it: it is added as an extra sphere enclosing the real Sol, named "Sun" in the SSC file.

PS: make sure cloud maps are turned ON in your preferences: the flares are defined as cloudmaps.

- thorvald

[jhalderman]

Oh, well that explains why I couldn't find any reference to it

I definitely have made sure clouds were turned on, but now that you explain how TH_Sun works, it seems to me like the real issue may be that the extra Sol model is not being loaded or displayed, or at least not in the correct place in the universe. It may be something in the Educational Activity scripts, they seem to tend to load things on an as-needed basis. Still, I would have at least expected F. Gregorio's version to work with his scripts. I may just have to give up on this one.

BTW- On the topic of the Sun, have you checked this out already? http://www.esa.int/esaSC/SEMNA6R08ZE_index_1.html

The hi-res WMVs are especially impressive http://mfile.akamai.com/14448/wmv/esa.download.akamai.com/13452/wmv/RollInFOURLimbFlare.asx

[fsgregs]

HI jhalderman:

Sorry that I just visited the forum now and saw your post.

The sol add-on from the educational activities will work fine with Celestia 1.4.1, and 1.4.1-ED. It is based on Runar's more detailed Sol add-on, but has been modified in size and color. It is a modification of the default sol texture, and is supposed to be placed in the educational-extras folder, inside the "general" folder. Here is now it works.

Celestia uses a file called a configuration (cfg) file, to specify which add-ons to load. The default cfg file that comes with Celestia 1.4.1, specifies the "extras" folder as the place the program should look for its add-ons. In the educational version of Celestia-ED, the cfg file that is installed when Celestia-141-ED is installed, specifies the "general/educational-extras" folder as the place Celestia-ED should look for add-ons.

The SOL add-on is automatically placed in that folder when you unzip and install the program, and then unzip and install the General-Educational-Download from the motherlode website. It works fine, and this is the first report of the add-on not working on someone's system. I also placed it on the motherlode as a separate add-on in the sun section. Others have had no problem running it.

If you are not seeing the add-on when you run Celestia-ED and go to the Sun, then I can think of only a few causes:

1. The add-on is not unzipped and located inside the general/educational-extras folder.

2. You do not have clouds or nebula selected on the render menus.

3. Your graphics card is not working properly.

4. Your cfg file that came with Celestia-ED was overwritten by some other cfg file, and Celestia is not going to the educational-extras folder.

You do not need Celestia-ED to see the add-on. The regular version of Celestia 1.4.1 will also display the add-on sun, if you place it in the "extras" folder.

Try some additional debugging, and you can email me separately. I'll try to walk you through some additional tests. My email is: fsgregs@comcast.net

I'm confident we'll get things working.

Frank

[jhalderman]

Thanks for the additional information. I'm pretty sure I've ruled out all your possiblities listed here, but I'll make one more sweep through the steps of reinstalling the addon. I'll e-mail you what I find.

Thanks,

Jay