Best Version of Celestia to Use?

[Dollan]

Hi folks...

I was playing around and running across all sorts of problems with Celestia today, primarily when it comes to having large models displayed with large planetary textures (on my system, this always causes a crash), and I began t wonder....

Is there any advantage at this point in using the current pre-release version over the last official release (which is 1.4.1, I think)? I realize that there are developmental inroads being made in the current pre-version, but for someone like me who is primarily interested in fictional planetary systems with 4k or larger textures, binary and multiple systems, and the occasional well-crafted model, am I better off using the pre-version, or would it be better to continue to use the official release version, and then upgrade to the next official version, whenever that may be?

...John...

[rthorvald]

Get the latest beta.
It is like getting new glasses. The atmosphere rendering alone is worth it, there is no comparison at all.

- rthorvald

[Hungry4info]

The atmosphere rendering alone is worth it

This is the only reason I use 1.5.0pre. Even though the star rendering sucks, the atmospheric rendering is pretty good, so I guess it compensates.

[BobHegwood]

You can also become part of the development process...

If your stars aren't displayed properly, then you can offer screen
shots, explanations, etc. so that Chris and the other developers can
have a go at it. And, just FYI, the stars are displayed
brilliantly on my machine. You have changed the settings, and
tried to view the different styles? The faintest visible magnitude?

Thanks, Bob

[Reiko]

I'm still using 1.4.1 for the most part. I have millions of extras installed for it.

[Hungry4info]

You can also become part of the development process...

That is certainly a tempting proposal.

If your stars aren't displayed properly, then you can offer screen
shots, explanations, etc. so that Chris and the other developers can
have a go at it.

Been there, and have done that. It seems to be that mostly monotone white circles with faint glows around them look about like what the human eye sees/would see. One even suggested rendering limb darkening. Here's a thread in which I ask about it, and posted pictures.

http://celestiaproject.net/forum/viewtopic.php ... highlight=

You have changed the settings, and tried to view the different styles? The faintest visible magnitude?

Yes, and I keep the faintest visible magnitude at ~6 these days.

There are more stars in Celestia than anything else, I believe they should be designed to look realistic.

[BobHegwood]

Sorry,

Must have been another thing I missed while I was away. Looks as
if Chris and Dr. Schrempp are at least aware of your opinions though.

For what it's worth, I agree with you. I also like very much the halos
around stars. BUT, I'm just some bozo, so don't I think that anything
will come from this opinion. On the other hand, you are making your
opinions known, and that's what counts.

With the Good Doctor, you have to back up your opinions with
scientific data though...

Can you prove that the star's halo's are there? <smirk>

Sorry, simply couldn't resist.

Good luck, Brain-Dead

[Chuft-Captain]

I'm still using 1.4.1 for the most part. I have millions of extras installed for it.

This sounds like you have your extras in a 1.4.1 specific directory. I strongly suggest you move them all into a "common" extras folder and then edit the celestia.cfg of each version to load extras from this common folder.

(I have several different versions of Celestia, all loading from the same extras folder)

A similar procedure can be applied to your bookmarks as well (although bookmarks created in 1.4 will be wrong in 1.5 versions due to re-positioning of the co-ordinates by Chris, --- I think the change was made in 1.5.0pre1)

[Reiko]

I'm still using 1.4.1 for the most part. I have millions of extras installed for it.

This sounds like you have your extras in a 1.4.1 specific directory. I strongly suggest you move them all into a "common" extras folder and then edit the celestia.cfg of each version to load extras from this common folder.

(I have several different versions of Celestia, all loading from the same extras folder)

A similar procedure can be applied to your bookmarks as well (although bookmarks created in 1.4 will be wrong in 1.5 versions due to re-positioning of the co-ordinates by Chris, --- I think the change was made in 1.5.0pre1)

Well I do have the 1.5.0 pre4 installed too. Some of the scripts make it crash, such as the warp drive script. Though I have not tested all of the installed extras, I was concerned some of them would crash with the new version too.

[Chuft-Captain]

Well I do have the 1.5.0 pre4 installed too. Some of the scripts make it crash, such as the warp drive script. Though I have not tested all of the installed extras, I was concerned some of them would crash with the new version too.

Do you find that you have to have duplicates of the 1.4.1 addons in the 1.5.0pre4 extras directory??

[selden]

Reiko,

Old scripts should not be able to cause Celestia v1.5.0 to crash, although they might not do what you expect. It would be greatly appreciated if you could post to the Bugs forum what script crashes Celestia and exactly what it does wrong.

[bh]

Call me old fashioned.... or whatever you want really... I'm still using 1.4.1

[BobHegwood]

Call me old fashioned.... or whatever you want really... I'm still using 1.4.1

You're "Old-Fashioned."



If you want consistent performance and reliability, you can't go
wrong in doing that, Bob. I just like to play with the new features
and then "help" with my suggestions. <shrug>

It's also fun to see what the new stuff does, and to experiment with
the new functions.

Take care, Brain-Dead

[Fenerit]

Then we have two Bob: the "old-fashioned" one and the "brain dead geezer". Well, well... So we can't wrong.

[BobHegwood]

Been there, and have done that. It seems to be that mostly monotone white circles with faint glows around them look about like what the human eye sees/would see. One even suggested rendering limb darkening. Here's a thread in which I ask about it, and posted pictures.

Looks like Chris may have HEARD you...

See: http://www.shatters.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=11750

for more information.

[Reiko]

Well I do have the 1.5.0 pre4 installed too. Some of the scripts make it crash, such as the warp drive script. Though I have not tested all of the installed extras, I was concerned some of them would crash with the new version too.

Do you find that you have to have duplicates of the 1.4.1 addons in the 1.5.0pre4 extras directory??

That is what I was doing at first but now I do the common directory like you suggested. Seems to be running fine right now.
Don't know what the deal is with the warp drive script crashing. It seems to be completely random because I ran it several times today and it didn't crash once.

[Chuft-Captain]

Don't know what the deal is with the warp drive script crashing. It seems to be completely random because I ran it several times today and it didn't crash once.

The crashing is related I think to the way that keyboard callbacks are handled. I think there must be some difference in the way these are handled between 1.4.x and 1.5.x.
(It's also a pretty rough script which could probably be done much better.)

This is one crash which I get after pressing the A key many times, then pressing the Z key once:

---------------------------
Fatal Error
---------------------------
[string "C:\_Celestia\extras\addons\WarpDrive\warpdr..."]:94: attempt to call global 'makeItSo' (a nil value)
---------------------------
OK
---------------------------

I also noticed that every 7th press of the A key (or perhaps any key) has no effect --- so something's not quite right with the callback loop perhaps. (This does not appear to be a problem in 1.4.x as far as I remember.)

I'm not sure what the solution is at the moment, and no time to look into it, but perhaps someone with better scripting skills than I, would be kind enough to debug it ... (if you post details of the errors you're getting)

(If you get an error message in a popup box hit ctrl-C to which will capture the message into your paste buffer. You can then paste it into a post as I did above using ctrl-V.)

Don't forget to try and describe the circumstances of the crash as well.

[John Van Vliet]

that is 3 "old-fashioned" ones for i am using 1.4.1 and a cvs build from April 1 2007 ,yes April first . maybe i will update my cvs folder

[chris]

Don't know what the deal is with the warp drive script crashing. It seems to be completely random because I ran it several times today and it didn't crash once.

The crashing is related I think to the way that keyboard callbacks are handled. I think there must be some difference in the way these are handled between 1.4.x and 1.5.x.
(It's also a pretty rough script which could probably be done much better.)

This is one crash which I get after pressing the A key many times, then pressing the Z key once:

---------------------------
Fatal Error
---------------------------
[string "C:\_Celestia\extras\addons\WarpDrive\warpdr..."]:94: attempt to call global 'makeItSo' (a nil value)
---------------------------
OK
---------------------------

I also noticed that every 7th press of the A key (or perhaps any key) has no effect --- so something's not quite right with the callback loop perhaps. (This does not appear to be a problem in 1.4.x as far as I remember.)

I'm not sure what the solution is at the moment, and no time to look into it, but perhaps someone with better scripting skills than I, would be kind enough to debug it ... (if you post details of the errors you're getting)

(If you get an error message in a popup box hit ctrl-C to which will capture the message into your paste buffer. You can then paste it into a post as I did above using ctrl-V.)

Don't forget to try and describe the circumstances of the crash as well.

I think I may have a fix for this bug, though I don't completely understand what's going on yet. In the function LuaState::charEntered() in celx.cpp, I had to surround a couple lines with an #ifdef for the Lua version:

Code: Select all

//#if LUA_VER < 0x050100
// cleanup stack - is this necessary?
lua_settop(costate, stack_top);
//#endif


With this change, scripts which used keyboard callbacks work consistently once again.

--Chris

[Reiko]

How do I add that to the script?