What would be needed to go to a full 1.5.0 release?

[BlindedByTheLight]

perhaps it's best to let declarations such as those (designed by nature to passive-aggressively elicit a response) go unresponded to -- i know i'm violating my own suggestion but perhaps others will do better and let this post be the last on the subject...

(i.e. if you agree, i'm suggesting to agree with silence...if not, well, speak up...it's kinda a free country)

[ElChristou]

Same thing here, apart the copyright topic, all is fine, Chris is back so roll baby roll? Nothing else to say, let's forget all the previous till next time?

[BobHegwood]

This is a bullsh*t, no response, community, i'am leaving

Bye

Bye Bye...

[Cham]

Here's an update to my list of about 23 bugs and limitations in Celestia 1.5.0 (some of the previous issues have been solved by Chris and Fridger, recently).

List of bugs and problems, or things to be adjusted, in random order :

1- The markers are still shown on the foreground. There is no depth sorting of the markers, which is very confusing if there's an object on the foreground (planet, moon, spacecraft, etc...)

2- "Dust" ring CMODs (points models) don't receive any shadow from their parent planet.

3- Sprites aren't working on the Mac (crashing bug which may freeze the whole computer !).

4- Cloud shadows aren't working on the Mac (removed feature ?).

5- The demo "D" keyboard shortcut and its menu item should be removed. The demo script file should be placed in the scripts folder. I suggest to assign "N" to the nebulae rendering (instead of "^", which doesn't work on my keyboard), and use "D" for the spacecraft instead.

6- The asteroids and comets labels need some alpha effect, varying with distance and object size, as for the stars and galaxies.

7- The atmosphere code isn't working with multiple sources of light (vivid red atmosphere).

8- Black "holes" and "stripes" on the sky, while the observer is very close to a planet surface (with an atmosphere).

9- Stars rendering is extremelly dull and unrealistic without an atmosphere to smooth out the edge. And there's a single texture for all classes, which makes all stars too similar and boring.

10- I'm still experiencing many moving "holes" on background orbital paths, on a Mac, if there's a model on the foreground (asteroid or spacecraft).

11- While not a bug, resolution of the comet tail should be dependant on curvature, as it is now for the elliptical orbits.

12- The "spacecraft" labels aren't depth sorted if the object is close to a planet/moon. They should be hidden behind their parent planet or moon.

13- The star radius given in the case of cool stars (red dwarfs and red giants) is inaccurate and unreliable. In many cases, Celestia gives very wrong values (example : according to Celestia, Proxima Cen is much smaller than Jupiter).

14- There's a bug which crashes Celestia when many close stars are each having a planetary object. Having 17 stars (or more) orbiting the same barycenter, each one with a planetary object, crashes Celestia. (limitation in the code)

15- Adding an URL to a star doesn't work (hard coded SIMBAD link), like it is for the planets and other objects. Adding an URL to a star STC definition should overide the default URL.

16- Too much stars in Celestia's database have an "?" as spectral class assignement. This may not be considered as a "bug" however, since it's related to the Hipparcos table and its limitations.

17- Apparently, CELX scripts are only reading the first letter of the star spectral class, which makes the scripted selection limited (needs to be confirmed).

18- We urgently need an "Clickable false" option at the SSC level, to make objects unclickable, while still visible.

19- There may be some memory leaks about textures and models loading, which may crash Celestia after a long use (many textures and models loaded into memory, without some cleaning after a while).

20- There's a "time interaction" bug with the favorite URL links and the current time state of Celestia. Using some saved link with time paused may give a scene with time stopped, while time is supposed to be paused only (as indicated in red, in the upper-right corner, before saving the URL), and using some saved link with time unpaused may give a scene with time still running, even if time was paused before using the URL.

21- The star glare is now a bit too large and is changing abruptly at exactly 1 LY from the star. This bug is systematic. Apparently, Chris wasn't able to reproduce the issue on his computers.

22- The startup sequence needs some adjustments. I can clearly see a large portion of the sun immediately after Celestia started, as a brief and agressive "white-yellowish flash", despite some recent code changes by Chris.

23- There's a problem with the zoom, at extremelly large zoom factors (or small angles) : Activating the nebulae will bring some object to the front, while it shouldn't be visible at all since that object is supposed to be in the back of the observer (some graticules defined as a nebula, or the Hubble model, for example).

[selden]

Cham,

I have to admit that I don't consider your item #1 (markers always visible) to be a bug. I've made use of it often to track the location of an object that otherwise would have been hidden -- like when I've wanted to center the Sun behind a much larger (in angular size) forground body.

The other items seem reasonable, although I don't see the ones that are specific to Macs.

[Hungry4info]

I agree with Selden reguarding #1.
Also, perhaps another bug, when looking at planets with a mie atmosphere from far away and under high zoon, their atmospheres fluctuate wildly. I gave 55 Cnc b a mie atmosphere a while ago and it also fluctuates, but so much that if far away WITHOUT zoom, it still looks bad.

[Cham]

Also, perhaps another bug, when looking at planets with a mie atmosphere from far away and under high zoon, their atmospheres fluctuate wildly. I gave 55 Cnc b a mie atmosphere a while ago and it also fluctuates, but so much that if far away WITHOUT zoom, it still looks bad.

Yes, there's another bug related to the atmospherre code : a kind of interference like or "moire" pattern, that can be seen in the atmosphere thickness. It's all related to the atmosphere code and can be grouped in my item #7.

[dirkpitt]

3- Sprites aren't working on the Mac (crashing bug which may freeze the whole computer !).

4- Cloud shadows aren't working on the Mac (removed feature ?).

10- I'm still experiencing many moving "holes" on background orbital paths, on a Mac, if there's a model on the foreground (asteroid or spacecraft).

I was able to reproduce another hard crash related to point sprites, but this time with Celestia's stock stars. There seems to be either a memory smasher, or maybe the ATI Mac driver is expecting something to be set that isn't, that causes a freeze and I have to reboot. Just going to Venus and spinning around it for a while seems to be enough to cause the crash. This problem has annoyed me enough that I'm trying to devise a workaround.

Cloud shadows are (partially) broken on ALL platforms, not just the Mac.

I'm still lost trying to figure out what's causing the orbit holes...

14- There's a bug which crashes Celestia when many close stars are each having a planetary object. Having 17 stars (or more) orbiting the same barycenter, each one with a planetary object, crashes Celestia. (limitation in the code)

Please file a bug on the SourceForge tracker - this would make the bug easier for Chris to track when he's on the road.

21- The star glare is now a bit too large and is changing abruptly at exactly 1 LY from the star. This bug is systematic. Apparently, Chris wasn't able to reproduce the issue on his computers.

Chris changed the star distance logic recently - I'll update my unofficial star glare patch soon so you can test.

23- There's a problem with the zoom, at extremelly large zoom factors

Still trying to figure out what's going on here.. (the bug is driver-dependent...)

[Cham]

About the bug #14, here's the code line which is the culprit. Chris already knows about it :

Code: Select all

render.h : static const unsigned int MaxSolarSystems = 16;


[hank]

Here's an update to my list of about 23 bugs and limitations in Celestia 1.5.0 (some of the previous issues have been solved by Chris and Fridger, recently).

I added these to a Problems page at the wiki:
http://celestians.wikispaces.com/Problems

- Hank

[dirkpitt]

Chris already knows about it

But he might have forgotten about it.

[chris]

Here's an update to my list of about 23 bugs and limitations in Celestia 1.5.0 (some of the previous issues have been solved by Chris and Fridger, recently).

I added these to a Problems page at the wiki:
http://celestians.wikispaces.com/Problems

Thanks, Hank. Tracking these in the forum is painful. In any case, I've roughly categorized these bugs into new bugs, existing bugs, feature requests, and not bugs. New bugs have the highest priority, followed by existing bugs, then feature requests. From here on, I want to track these bugs elsewhere (SourceForge tracker, or Hank's wiki)--tracking 23 issues in a single forum thread will make me insane.

--Chris

New bugs:
3- Sprites aren't working on the Mac (crashing bug which may freeze the whole computer !).
Works fine on Macs with NVIDIA GeForce 8 series cards (e.g. new MacBook Pros). Could be an ATI driver problem

4- Cloud shadows aren't working on the Mac (removed feature ?).
Cloud shadows should be working, but the effect is more subtle than before,
because the raycasting calculation is no longer done. I've come to the
conclusion that the best way to make the more accurate cloud shadows work is
by reprojecting the clouds to cube maps, but that will have to wait until
after 1.5.0.

7- The atmosphere code isn't working with multiple sources of light (vivid red atmosphere).
For 1.5.0, my plan is to just consider the brightest light source. After that, I'll work on scattering atmospheres that actuall handle multiple light sources.

8- Black "holes" and "stripes" on the sky, while the observer is very close to a planet surface (with an atmosphere).
Old or new atmospheres?

10- I'm still experiencing many moving "holes" on background orbital paths, on a Mac, if there's a model on the foreground (asteroid or spacecraft).
Graphics card specific - so far, only seen on ATI hardware

21- The star glare is now a bit too large and is changing abruptly at exactly 1 LY from the star. This bug is systematic. Apparently, Chris wasn't able to reproduce the issue on his computers.
Driver specific, probably related to point sprite support

Old bugs:
1- The markers are still shown on the foreground. There is no depth sorting of the markers, which is very confusing if there's an object on the foreground (planet, moon, spacecraft, etc...)

2- "Dust" ring CMODs (points models) don't receive any shadow from their parent planet.

12- The "spacecraft" labels aren't depth sorted if the object is close to a planet/moon. They should be hidden behind their parent planet or moon.

13- The star radius given in the case of cool stars (red dwarfs and red giants) is inaccurate and unreliable. In many cases, Celestia gives very wrong values (example : according to Celestia, Proxima Cen is much smaller than Jupiter).

14- There's a bug which crashes Celestia when many close stars are each having a planetary object. Having 17 stars (or more) orbiting the same barycenter, each one with a planetary object, crashes Celestia. (limitation in the code)

19- There may be some memory leaks about textures and models loading, which may crash Celestia after a long use (many textures and models loaded into memory, without some cleaning after a while).

20- There's a "time interaction" bug with the favorite URL links and the current time state of Celestia. Using some saved link with time paused may give a scene with time stopped, while time is supposed to be paused only (as indicated in red, in the upper-right corner, before saving the URL), and using some saved link with time unpaused may give a scene with time still running, even if time was paused before using the URL.

22- The startup sequence needs some adjustments. I can clearly see a large portion of the sun immediately after Celestia started, as a brief and agressive "white-yellowish flash", despite some recent code changes by Chris.

23- There's a problem with the zoom, at extremelly large zoom factors (or small angles) : Activating the nebulae will bring some object to the front, while it shouldn't be visible at all since that object is supposed to be in the back of the observer (some graticules defined as a nebula, or the Hubble model, for example).


Features:
5- The demo "D" keyboard shortcut and its menu item should be removed. The demo script file should be placed in the scripts folder. I suggest to assign "N" to the nebulae rendering (instead of "^", which doesn't work on my keyboard), and use "D" for the spacecraft instead.

6- The asteroids and comets labels need some alpha effect, varying with distance and object size, as for the stars and galaxies.

9- Stars rendering is extremelly dull and unrealistic without an atmosphere to smooth out the edge. And there's a single texture for all classes, which makes all stars too similar and boring.

11- While not a bug, resolution of the comet tail should be dependant on curvature, as it is now for the elliptical orbits.

15- Adding an URL to a star doesn't work (hard coded SIMBAD link), like it is for the planets and other objects. Adding an URL to a star STC definition should overide the default URL.

16- Too much stars in Celestia's database have an "?" as spectral class assignement. This may not be considered as a "bug" however, since it's related to the Hipparcos table and its limitations.

18- We urgently need an "Clickable false" option at the SSC level, to make objects unclickable, while still visible.


By design:
17- Apparently, CELX scripts are only reading the first letter of the star spectral class, which makes the scripted selection limited (needs to be confirmed).
This is only the case for neutron stars, assigned the artificial class 'Q'

[hank]

[Thanks, Hank. Tracking these in the forum is painful. In any case, I've roughly categorized these bugs into new bugs, existing bugs, feature requests, and not bugs. New bugs have the highest priority, followed by existing bugs, then feature requests. From here on, I want to track these bugs elsewhere (SourceForge tracker, or Hank's wiki)--tracking 23 issues in a single forum thread will make me insane.

I'll update the wiki page with this info. But please don't think of it as my wiki. It's intended to be used by everyone. Future problems should be reported on the wiki page directly and/or in the SourceForge tracker.

- Hank

[BobHegwood]

Let's not forget Specularity, specularity, specularity... <grin>

[Cham]

Let's not forget Specularity, specularity, specularity... <grin>

Bob,

what's the problem with specularity ? Currently, I think it's fine. Are you refering to the ISS problem ?