Stellarium

[programmer]

Solar System simulator is fun to play with too

http://space.jpl.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/ws...ov=50&showsc=1


Home URL:
http://space.jpl.nasa.gov/

[circumpolar (Matt)]

Originally Posted by Barrykgerdes

Enter the solar system object in the find window, go to it and press Ctrl G. This should take you there. If you now add some sort of a barren landscape the effect is very good.

Incidently there are some data files included now that give you a choice of positions on Venus, Mars and the moon, refered to as cities where you can set your "spaceship" for viewing.

Barry

Barry

The view from Saturn is cool, rings and all.

[Barrykgerdes]

Well I'm back again.

Stellarium 0.9.1 has been released. It is mainly a bug fix issue but there are some new features like telescope FOV circles. This release also has the sound activated. It fixes a lot of bugs that were present in 0.9.0 but there are some that won't be fixed till release 1.0.0.

It can be down loaded as before from www.stellarium.org

Barry

[bird (Anthony Wesley)]

I run stellarium on the linux PC's down in my observatory, it's a great program!

cheers, Bird

[erick (Eric)]

Downloaded it immediately! Now to load on work PC and on my lappie! Love using it while observing (while the lappie's batteries last!)


ps. the odd "feature" or two drive me crazy, but the benefits outweigh those.

[jay019]

this app sounds good, may have to give the ubuntu package a try.

[dennisjames1]

Yeah i like it too, but a little buggy in vista and no sound

[Barrykgerdes]

Originally Posted by dennisjames1

Yeah i like it too, but a little buggy in vista and no sound

Hi Dennis

Please let the Stellarium team know what bugs you find, particularly with Vista. You can log onto their site, register and add you findings.

The sound is activated via a script. Do you have a suitable script with sound in it.

Barry

[dennisjames1]

Hi Barry

I get a jerky motion when i pan around with Stellarium, i am not certain, i didn' t think i noticed that before, maybe it's a graphics driver issue, i did a driver upgrade so maybe do a roll back and see, though i did see another vista user with core 2 processor report a jerky motion.

I have a Quad Core and Vista

And how do i get sound ? java script ?

Cheers

Dennis

[dennisjames1]

Well tried the graphics driver roll back no difference

[Barrykgerdes]

Originally Posted by dennisjames1

Hi Barry

I get a jerky motion when i pan around with Stellarium, i am not certain, i didn' t think i noticed that before, maybe it's a graphics driver issue, i did a driver upgrade so maybe do a roll back and see, though i did see another vista user with core 2 processor report a jerky motion.

I have a Quad Core and Vista

And how do i get sound ? java script ?

Cheers

Dennis

Hi Dennis
To get sound you need a script to run.

Here is a script "audio.sts"
image action load filename "audio1.png" name im01 alpha 1 scale 0.38 xpos -0.6 ypos -0.6
audio action play filename audio.wav output_rate 44000 volume 1
wait duration 3
audio action play filename audio.wav output_rate 44000 volume 1
wait duration 5
image action load filename "audio2.png" name im01 alpha 1 scale 0.38 xpos -0.6 ypos -0.6
audio action play filename audio.ogg output_rate 44000 volume 1
wait duration 10

Use a text editor to put the above script into the file audio.sts and place the file in the scripts folder.
Make sure SDL_mixer.dll and SDL.DLL are in your stellarium folder

Run Stellarium, press "m", scroll through to scripts, select the audio.sts script with the arrow keys them press "m"

You can use *.wav files and *.mid files, *.ogg files and probably others that I have not tried, adjust the "wait duratiion" for the length to run the sound in seconds.

As for the jerkiness what is the top RH reading for fps. If the reading is above 15fps your openGL driver is working. If it is below 4fps it is not working. You may need a driver. Vista is notorious for nil OEM drivers for openGL.

Barry

[Omaroo (Chris Malikoff)]

Dennis - if you run an ATI video card, go to the ATI website and download the Catalyst application. It manages the capabilities of Radeon cards and enables OpenGL under Vista for you. I needed to have it for Starry Night Download Edition - which, like Stellarium requires an operational OpenGL driver.

[dennisjames1]

Hello again, well i spent the day doing some trial and error, put xp back on and then tried Stellarium and i had the same jerky motion, exactly like Vista, so now i am thinking either the graphics card which is Nvidia 8600 gts, one of the newer ones and the frame rate is ok, openGL working, or more likely the Intel Quad core processor. Ive seen some issues with the odd software and multi core processors.

Maybe with the release of version 1.0 it will be gone, there are lots of multicore processors coming on the market, particularly Windows based PC'S.

After all that no big deal its still a great programme,my friend who is a big Starry Night fan recons Stellarium is better and so do i.

Thanks all for your help, clear Skies !

[koputai (Jason)]

Does anyone know how to turn off the nebula and cluster photos in Stellarium, and go back to plain star fields like the rest of the sky? I find the integrated images rather unrealistic, and difficult to equate to what I see in the scope.

Cheers,
Jason.

[Barrykgerdes]

Hi Jason

The easiest way to turn the nebular textures off is to edit the [astro] section in the config.ini file and mark:

flag_bright_nebulae = false
flag_nebula_ngc = false

The nebula button will turn the other nebula circles on or off. Also adjusting the nebula names magnitude will reduce othe clutter on the screen.

If you find the nebula too bright you can also change their brightness with a graphics program. The brightness of the milky way can also be reduced in the config.ini file

Experiment with the settings in the config.ini file to set the display to your liking

Barry

[koputai (Jason)]

Hi Barry,

Originally Posted by Barrykgerdes

The easiest way to turn the nebular textures off is to edit the [astro] section in the config.ini file and mark:

flag_bright_nebulae = false
flag_nebula_ngc = false

That is the way they are by default, and changing them to true has no effect either.
I also tried changing:
flag_nebula_display_no_texture =false (default) to true, also with no effect.
And:
flag_nebula =true (default) to false, again with no effect.

The only thing that gets rid of the textures is to change the filename of each texture so the program can't find them. This would have to be done individually for each and every texture, which makes it tedious if you want to turn them on and off!
How about a check box in the configuration window to turn textures on and off in an upcoming version?
I absolutely love the program btw, use it all the time.

Cheers,
Jason.

[Barrykgerdes]

Hi Jason

That is strange. It works correctly for me. have you edited the correct copy of the config.ini file. Its location depends on your operating system but for Windows XP it is in the Documents and settings\your user name\stellarium. If you only change the Default_config.ini in the stellarium data folder it won't change the operational config.ini unless you erase the existing copy.

Get back to me with your results and we will try to find the cause.

In respect of the star clusters. If you load a minimum of catalogues up to 6 the program displays the clusters better without the textures. In this case to preserve the other data I have created a simple blank nebula 128x128 bytes black, blank.jpg. I then substitute this for the original texture. This gives a very good representation of textures like M44 and N4755 etc.

Barry

[koputai (Jason)]

Originally Posted by Barrykgerdes

That is strange. It works correctly for me. have you edited the correct copy of the config.ini file. Its location depends on your operating system but for Windows XP it is in the Documents and settings\your user name\stellarium. If you only change the Default_config.ini in the stellarium data folder it won't change the operational config.ini unless you erase the existing copy.
Get back to me with your results and we will try to find the cause.

Just to make sure, I deleted everything to do with Stellarium from my system, including from the Documents and Settings folder.
I did a clean install of 0.9.1 (previously had installed 0.9.1 over 0.9.0, over 0.8.2!).
I still can't change anything to do with textures. On/off, scaling etc. I am editing the correct config.ini (Documents and Settings/Jason/Application Data/Stellarium in XP Pro), as other changes I make, like flagging names, changing the grid, all work ok.

Cheers,
Jason.

[Barrykgerdes]

Hi Jason

Lets try something else. Which were the textures that you could not turn off. I will try to duplicate the conditions. My nebula_textures.fab file is more comprehensive than the distribution copy and I have modified the ngc2000.dat and the ngc2000names.dat files as well to allow search and display of IC's and and other non NGC objects. I also compiled my own source code so there may be some differences. I will install the distribution copy and see what happens.

Barry

[koputai (Jason)]

Originally Posted by Barrykgerdes

Which were the textures that you could not turn off.

As am example:
M1, M41, Pleiades, Orion Neb - No change
California Neb, Horseshoe Neb - Change

Cheers,
Jason.