3DMars update

[cartrite]

I uploaded one of my Mars models that seems to be performing well with my new card. This is about the same model that is on the motherlode except that the features, Olympus Mons and the Vallesmarineris have textures assigned to them.

These first 2 shots are from Celestia cvs 5/20/2007






These next 2 shots are from the official version 1.4.1




This shot is from Celestia 1.3.2 Remember that version?


In the older versions of Celestia I'm getting between 30 and 60 fps. I guess that is because some of the features are not working with those versions.
With the current cvs I'm getting between 20 and 25 fps. My older card which was a ge fx5500 256 ram got between 5 and 10 fps with the cvs versions.
Here is a link to the model page. The download speed was pretty slow so......

cartrite

[cartrite]

For those of you with newer graphics cards and lots of ram, I uploaded the larger textures of the vallesmarineris for the model. There are 4 8k x 4k jpg files that let you get pretty close to the surface as you can see here.

With the system specs at the bottom of all my posts I'm getting around 20 fps and maxing out my ram.













They are available here.

As a comparison I took a screen shot running the model and another screen shot running the mars sphere with the closeup vt and this is what the difference is.





cartrite

[bh]

Looks stunning cartrite... going to have to try! Cheers.

[cartrite]

Just be sure that you have the hardware. Remember, even with this computer's ram and processor the model barely ran. It wasn't till I upgraded my graphcs card to the GeForce 8600 GTS that I got workable frame rates. It will probally run alright on 7000 series cards. Not sure about 6000 series. My old fx 5500 got frame rates below 1 when the model was fully loaded with the 4k textures. I was able to use bookmarks for navagation and enjoy still shots. Nowadays, well, I'm still learning how to fly around at low altitudes.

cartrite

[ANDREA]

...Nowadays, well, I'm still learning how to fly around at low altitudes. cartrite

Cartrite, if you want try this url:

cel://Follow/Sol:Mars:Mars2/2003-07-27T ... =2563&lm=0

On my machine it runs smoothly using your medres textures, and I'm going to try it with the hi-res pack, I'll inform you later.
Bye

Andrea

[ANDREA]

I just tried the hires textures, and even if the smoothness is reduced a bit, it's anyhow a wonderful show, I'm sure my students will highly appreciate it.
Two little notes:
1- if I look at the Valley deep toward horizon, I see the V shaped valley, but obviously the atmosphere starts higher, as shown here:



So I'm obliged to put atmosphere OFF, and this is the result, better, but not so much:



But I see in your images that you have not this problem, so could you please be so kind to give me your solarsys.ssc file? Probably mine has some mistakes, e.g. the planet radius.
EDITED LATER, sorry, from your Mars1.ssc I've just seen that you are using 1.5.0prex, while I'm using 1.4.1. I'll try it with the new version.

2- will it be possible to have the start and end portions of Valles Marineris, i.e. from the Eos Chasma to the Noctis Labyrinthus, in order to show it in its full beauty?
Have you got any intention to do it in the future?
Thanks a lot for your work, very nice and appreciated.
Bye

Andrea

[ANDREA]

Just tried, and I confirm that the atmosphere error appears in 1.4.1 with all settings from "Basic" to "OpenGL2", while with 1.5.0pre3 and OpenGL2 this is the result:



Nice!
Bye

Andrea

[cartrite]

Andrea wrote:

2- will it be possible to have the start and end portions of Valles Marineris, i.e. from the Eos Chasma to the Noctis Labyrinthus, in order to show it in its full beauty? Wink
Have you got any intention to do it in the future?

I have models that cover the whole canyon but I only have the texture from the ASU Themis Vallesmarineris. On Monday the first pds data release from the HiRise camera is due and I'm going to start to work on a mosaic from Themis data and Hirise data with ISIS3. They have a lot of images released already but the full resolution images are in jp2 format and I'm having trouble even opening them with image editors I currently have.

I was also thinking of writing code that builds the models straight from the meg128 files. In the past I used a blender python script and a complicated set of steps to create the models and they were not entirely accurate ( height values that is ). I spent most of my time trying to match the pixels from the texture and that should be right on the money.

Anyhow I will be working on this in the upcoming months so.......

I thought you were using something different because when I tried your cel script I was many AU's away. Even when I disabled the solarsystem barycenter.

Glad you like it. Since I installed this new card, I finally got to see these models in action. Before I was creating these things kinda BLIND to how they could perform. When I seen how they run with the new card my eyes were opened. I thought many with the right hardware would also enjoy them.

Another thing, I think the way Celestia treats meshes in the newer builds the textures have to be in a folder called medres. I don't think they load if they are in the hires folder. I probally should have called the folder by a different name to avoid confusion.

Cheers

cartrite

[ANDREA]

Andrea wrote:

2- will it be possible to have the start and end portions of Valles Marineris, i.e. from the Eos Chasma to the Noctis Labyrinthus, in order to show it in its full beauty? Wink
Have you got any intention to do it in the future?

I have models that cover the whole canyon but I only have the texture from the ASU Themis Vallesmarineris. Anyhow I will be working on this in the upcoming months so.......

These are very good news, indeed.

I thought you were using something different because when I tried your cel script I was many AU's away. Even when I disabled the solarsystem barycenter.

Try this one, it's from 1.5.0pre3

cel://Follow/Sol:Mars:Mars2/2003-07-22T ... lm=0&ver=2

Glad you like it. Since I installed this new card, I finally got to see these models in action. Before I was creating these things kinda BLIND to how they could perform. When I seen how they run with the new card my eyes were opened. I thought many with the right hardware would also enjoy them.
Another thing, I think the way Celestia treats meshes in the newer builds the textures have to be in a folder called medres. I don't think they load if they are in the hires folder. I probally should have called the folder by a different name to avoid confusion. Cheers. cartrite

Thank you for the information.
Bye soon

Andrea

[danielj]

I have a 7600 GT.And YOUR differncial that you have ALSO 2 GB od RAM.It??s unbellivebly that from now on,almost all addons WILL BE USELESS to people that don??t have TONS of money.I simply can??t change my video card this card and even 2008 will be uncertain.It??s really a pity...
I can??t wait!Soon,Celestia will be only be used to people that HAVE DUAL CORE CPUs.I am not surprised since almost all developers have been changing its computers to much better ones,and this process will be accelerated in the following months.Even Fridger will soon buy a 8800 GTS 320 or better...

[danielj]

Updated:
It appears that the 3d Mars don??t work in Celestia 1.5.0 pre3.
Or if I am wrong,the fact is that there have been some exaggeration,because I turned off clouds,galaxies and nebulas and in 800X600,0XAA,0XAF,I get higher than 40 fps almost in all moments.
Maybe cartrite only used 1280X1024,4xAA,8XAF and this is the reason he gets ONLY 20 fps wich a 8600 GTS.
I will post some pictures very soon...

My system:Athlon64 3000,1 GB RAM,7600 GT PCI-E



[quote="danielj"]I have a 7600 GT.And YOUR differncial that you have ALSO 2 GB od RAM.It??s unbellivebly that from now on,almost all addons WILL BE USELESS to people that don??t have TONS of money.I simply can??t change my video card this card and even 2008 will be uncertain.It??s really a pity...
I can??t wait!Soon,Celestia will be only be used to people that HAVE DUAL CORE CPUs.I am not surprised since almost all developers have been changing its computers to much better ones,and this process will be accelerated in the following months.Even Fridger will soon buy a 8800 GTS 320 or better...

[danielj]

Here are the pictures.It don??t appear to be 3D,though:
http://img78.imageshack.us/my.php?image=3dmars1cc3.jpg
http://img78.imageshack.us/my.php?image=3dmars2bh0.jpg
http://img78.imageshack.us/my.php?image ... gl2hg4.jpg
http://img78.imageshack.us/my.php?image ... gl2nk9.jpg

[Johaen]

Updated:
It appears that the 3d Mars don??t work in Celestia 1.5.0 pre3.

Works just fine for me.

Here are the pictures.It don??t appear to be 3D,though...

Are you sure you're at the right Mars. The 3D Mars is called Mars2.


As for my experience with the model, it's really quite impressive, cartrite. On my PC I'm getting in the 20ish fps range (yes, 1280x1024, anything less makes my eyes bleed), and Celestia is using about 650 MB of RAM (whole PC currently using 1.91 GB... youch!). I likey!

[cartrite]

To see the model run Celestia and hit ENTER. Then type in mars2. Then hit ENTER again. Then hit the g key.

[danielj]

My joy has gone.
Now I found Mars 2 and it was what I expected.
But when I saw Johaen,I was really disappointed,because this model NEEDS 2 GB of RAM and a better video card and I can??t AFFORD it:
http://img504.imageshack.us/my.php?imag ... ingwj1.jpg
http://img487.imageshack.us/my.php?imag ... ng2ky7.jpg
http://img487.imageshack.us/my.php?imag ... ng3nf3.jpg

When we will have addons NOT for people with TONS OF MONEY?
Johaen is using 1280X1024.I am using ONLY 800X600.And what about cartrite?

Anyway look to a bug;I can??t use Ctrl+G,because Olympus Mons vanishes:
http://img236.imageshack.us/my.php?imag ... ingck8.jpg

And look to Olympus Mons in another angle:
http://img236.imageshack.us/my.php?imag ... ns2rg5.jpg

And it hurts.The frame rate goes from 0 fps to a maximum of 16.4 fps in a matter of seconds.
At least,it??s pretty...

[cartrite]

Johaen wrote:

As for my experience with the model, it's really quite impressive, cartrite. On my PC I'm getting in the 20ish fps range (yes, 1280x1024

Glad you like it.

I've been using these models of Mars for a couple years now and it was only in the last 2 weeks that I had the card to really see it in action. It's hard to go back to the real ( sphere ) mars now. Kind of like going back to dial up.

I'm also going to start some models of the earth using the SRTM-3 files. They have 90 meter per pixel resolution.

cartrite

[ANDREA]

Cartrite, I fear that something doesn't work here, i.e. that I'm not using the 8k Valles Marineris textures.
This is the image I obtain (1.5.0pre3, OpenGL2),



following your instructions

the textures have to be in a folder called medres. I don't think they load if they are in the hires folder. I probally should have called the folder by a different name to avoid confusion.

after removing the Valles Marineris 8k images from hires, eliminating the hires folder, eliminating the Valles Marineris 4k images from the medres folder, and installing the Valles Marineris 8k images in the medres.
I think that I cannot see the 8k images due to something missing or wrong in the cmod file, perhaps the 8k declaration?
Will you please check it?
Thanks a lot.
Bye

Andrea

[cartrite]

Andrea,
Check to see that your max texture size is 8k. The 8kfiles have the same name as the 4k ones, ie valles0, valles1, etc. If they are in the medres folder they should work. I suspect help => opengl info will say your max texture size is 4k. Also if your card does support 8k textures hit the shift ~ key to see the log on screen. It will tell you if there was an error loading or the file was not seen. I've been running the cvs version so I'll download the 1.5.3pre to see if that is what is causing the problem.

Danielj
If your short on ram you could rename the mons files so they won't load ( i used to put an x in front of the name so the files would not load ) or try scaling the 4k textures down to 2k or even 1k. Before I got this newer card I used to do that for either olympus mons or vallesmarineris. So the mons model used 1k textures and the valles model used 2k textures.

cartrite

[ANDREA]

Andrea,
Check to see that your max texture size is 8k. The 8kfiles have the same name as the 4k ones, ie valles0, valles1, etc. If they are in the medres folder they should work. I suspect help => opengl info will say your max texture size is 4k. Also if your card does support 8k textures hit the shift ~ key to see the log on screen. It will tell you if there was an error loading or the file was not seen. I've been running the cvs version so I'll download the 1.5.3pre to see if that is what is causing the problem.
cartrite

You are right, my card, even if a 7900 GTX with 512 MB, doesn't load textures bigger than 4k (and I knew this!Bah! ).
Well, I'm just waiting for my new 8800 GTX card, arriving next week, and then I'll check it again and info on results.
Sorry for wrong bug signalation, and thank you for solving my doubts.
Bye

Andrea

[cartrite]

Andrea,
I still remember way back when. When I was all confused that my fx5500 card could only use 4k textures. The 8800 is supposed to be a good card. You'll get good results from that card.

The 4k textures are not that bad though. Together they make an 8k texture for the vallesmarineris. I think that is = to level6 of a vt. The 8k textures make up a 16k texture though. I like flying around at 60 to 30 km and the 8k's sharpen the scene at that altitude.

cartrite