Missing favorites on restart & (my first trip)

[Kelteel]

I had added about 20 items to my bookmarks in a couple of folders in a previous session and then exited the program. I checked my Celestia folder to make sure they were save. I found my "favorites.cel" file with a size of 14KB and I made a copy of it for security sake.

I started up the program several hours later and went to my bookmarks only to find there were none. The "favorites.cel" was still in my folder but it seem like it wasn't being recognized and I expected it to load when the program started. What is the use of favorites or bookmarks if they are not accessible. I did a search but did not find anything similar.

I am wondering if this is a bug or do we have to manually load the favorites file. I am also wondering if there is a way to automatically load the file by adding it to the "celestia.cfg" file to force load it?? I already have a backup copy of that file from before I first ran the program.

I am running Celestia v1.4.1.0 and have been playing with it for a couple of days. I find it to be a very good program with some excellent educational uses for persons new to astronomy and celestial mechanics. I am surprised I had not heard of it before as I think most people interested in astronomy and especially exploring our Solar System would find it a useful tool. My problem is I have no idea as to how I found it in the first place but I am glad I did.

Very good job to all who have created this wonderful piece of software. I thoroughly enjoyed my first trip around our solar system via following Halley's Comet on it's 76 year journey. I took an accelerated trip and then hopped a ride on comet Borrelly at the same speed and my head is still spinning. Comet Ikeya-Zhang was a more sedate ride.

I have been looking at the stars since the late 1950s and Celestia is an enjoyable new way to look not only at the stars but much more and from a different perspective.

Mizar (UMa A) and it's companion (UMa B) make a nice visual site and they are only light minutes apart. I was wondering if there was any plan to allow the user to smash two stars together or watch the merger of the Milky Way and the Andromeda galaxies complete with pulsars, quasars and black holes. You could also throw in the complete life of a star at an accelerated pace to it's death in a supernova. Type I or II will do.

I hope the program keeps evolving to reach those abilities.



Kel
*****

Intel(R) Pentium(R) 4 CPU 3.80GHz (dual processor) w/ 2GB of Ram
NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GTS 640MB GDDR3 PCI Express
NVIDIA Driver v6.14.11.6218
OpenGL v5.1.2600.2180
Creative X-Fi Fatal1ty Professional Series Driver v5.12.8.1201
Microsoft_XP Home Edition Version: 5.1
(Build 2600.xpsp_sp2_gdr.050301-1519 : Service Pack 2

[selden]

Kel,

I've never had as many bookmarks as you seem to have accumulated, but it has always worked for me.

favorites.cel a plain text file.
You might consider editing it manually to see if you can locate an "obvious" error in the text.

You also might try turning on Celestia's log display to see if it includes any complaints. Type a tilde (~) to turn it on and off. Use the arrow keys to navigate in it.

Another issue to consider if you want to have a lot of bookmarks, is that they may not be compatible with the next version of Celestia, v1.5.0. An alternative might be to write a simple .CEL script which uses GOTO commands. (Despite its filetype, the favorites file is not a script.)

Unfortunately, Celestia's bookmarks use "universal coordinates" to record the viewpoint's position. Both the origin of Celestia's coordinate system and the internal time scale used by Celestia are changing in v1.5.0, which will invalidate the bookmarks written by previous versions of Celestia. Chris Laurel, Celestia's primary author, was hoping to be able to detect the older format and translate the times and positions, but that seems to have turned out to be more difficult than he had expected, so it isn't clear if that translation will actually be available.

In older versions of Celestia, the Sun is at a fixed location. Starting with v1.5.0, it orbits around the Solar System Barycenter. Also, Celestia's internal time is changing to be TDB, which differs from UTC by about a minute. While these changes make it possible to precisely display NASA and ERL spacecraft trajectories (Celestia is being used by several groups in both of those organizations) they cause the bodies in the solar system to have different coordinates from what they had in previous versions of Celestia.

[selden]

Kel,

You also wrote

Mizar (UMa A) and it's companion (UMa B) make a nice visual site and they are only light minutes apart. I was wondering if there was any plan to allow the user to smash two stars together

Much of this should be doable now, but not all.

In principle one can define an xyz trajectory for Stars, so it should be possible to display the stars' in-spiraling trajectories. Animating their changes in appearance would be more difficult, but doable if you're willing to simullate them with "Emissive true" planets.

or watch the erger of the Milky Way and the Andromeda galaxies complete with pulsars, quasars and black holes.

At the moment, Celestia is unable to reliably draw stars that are more than about 16K LightYears from the Sun. This makes it difficult to portray objects in distant galaxies. You can define them, but Celestia won't draw them very well.

You could also throw in the complete life of a star at an accelerated pace to it's death in a supernova. Type I or II will do.

Celestia does not currently provide a way to vary the luminosities of stars.

There have been other requests for similar capabilities. Some of the necessary enhancements would be difficult enough that they're unlikely to happen in the near future.

One of Frank Gregorio's Educational Activities apparently does show the life cycle of stars, but I'm not sure what techniques he used. It's available on the Celestia MotherLode at http://celestiamotherlode.net/catalog/educational.php

[Kelteel]

selden,

Thanks for your reply. I can't figure out why it isn't recognizing my favorites but that is not major. I will try the log display and see what happens.

When is version 1.5.0 due to be ready and what does TDB stand for as a replacement for UTC. I wonder ... hmm could it be Terran Data Base ... nah couldn't be.

I noticed that the year turns negative around 577000+ and I put a 16K Moon surface addon in my extras folder but did not notice any change.
I had already added v838 Mon_Nova and that shows up.

I noticed one thing about my favorites.cel and that is that it was missing the first character that helps define the beginning of a file. The first seven characters were ("v838" {) and I think it was missing a "} (enter enter)" before the "v838". I am going to test that and a couple of other possibilities and see if I can get a working favorites file. I can use what I learn for v1.5.0.

I also have a one page listing of the Mouse & Keyboard command printed on a heavier stock that comes in handy if anyone is interested. I might have to change it for the next version and I removed some commands that I felt were not immediately necessary for control purposes but were still available by accessing the Contol List. Will there be much in changes with Controls in v1.5.0??

Time to Sleep and I think I know the reason while my favorites did not work.


Kel
*****

[selden]

selden,
When is version 1.5.0 due to be ready

There's no way to know. It depends too much on unpredictable interruptions. However, prerelease 3 is already available. See the thread http://celestiaproject.net/forum/posting.php?m ... st&p=88140

and what does TDB stand for as a replacement for UTC. I wonder ... hmm could it be Terran Data Base ... nah couldn't be.

TDB = Barycentric Dynamical Time
It s the time measured by a clock at the solar system barycenter. It does not include leap seconds, for example. Details are available in the Celestia WikiBook. http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Celestia

I noticed that the year turns negative around 577000+

That's when Celestia's clock wraps around: it doesn't go any further into the future than that.

and I put a 16K Moon surface addon in my extras folder but did not notice any change.
I had already added v838 Mon_Nova and that shows up.

Be sure to read the Addon's readme file. You may have to change the texture's name to match what Celestia is looking for.

Will there be much in changes with Controls in v1.5.0??

A few additions, perhaps.

[Kelteel]

Hi selden,

Thanks for the replies and links. I solved the problem with my favorites. It involved not clicking on the Bookmark folder when creating marks and now works fine.

Be sure to read the Addon's readme file. You may have to change the texture's name to match what Celestia is looking for.

I have noticed that a lot of the surface type addons do not have readme files at all just .DDS .JPEG or .PNG files whether they are 2K, 4K or 16K files. One addon has the following instructions: "Copy and paste the next lines into the <earth-altmaps.ssc> file, or create a new one and copy the earth-geoi file into the medres folder. They do not mention where we are supposed to get the <earth-altmaps.ssc> file or put it when we create it or what an earth-geoi file is which I would guess goes somewhere in the textures folder. I am not sure if he means the earth-topo.jpg as I could not find a earth-geoi in his zip file.

I take it they assume that everyone on the forum or just a user of Celestria is at the same level as they are or has been working with these file types for a while. I wonder how many people have tried these addons but either gave up on them or are just not using them. I have been working with computers for to long and know just how important documentation and readme files are to people who are using a new file or program for the first time. Documentation and readme files should not be buried within other files but should be a separate part of a zip file by itself so that a user can explore the zip file and read the files so he knows what he is supposed to do.

Special thanks to the people who did the Voyager models they look spectacular. I have had a model of a Voyager in a 12 inch cube that I have enjoyed and so have many of my nieces and nephews. We took a giant step with those two craft. We learned a lot not just about our solar system but also about guiding a craft thru space and making it do an abrupt change of direction. They keep on going which shows we can build things right like the two rovers on Mars.

Star Trek the Movie was an excellent movie and I had to bite my tongue because I knew what they had discovered and my friends didn?€™t. Great concept for a movie.

Thanks for your help. I now have to check the 2.73GBs worth of addon files I have downloaded and see if I can use any of them besides Voyager and the new-sun zips.


Kel
*****

[selden]

Kel,

Unfortunately, too often the authors of Addons forget that others don't know as much as they do.

You might take a look at the Web page
http://www.lepp.cornell.edu/~seb/celestia/textures.html

It tries to describe how Celestia uses textures including how to name random image files so they can be used appropriately. Section 2.3 describes what to do with images with random names.

[Kelteel]

selden,

Thanks for the reply and especiallly the link. I now know how the program uses and implements wildcards and the definition of a couple of file types that I was not familar with.

The link should help me to play around abit in trying to get some of the addons working and the wildcard * will allow me to test using different resolutions.

I hope you had a great Labor Day weekend !



Kel
*****