Project Orbiter Galaxy

[dgatsoulis]

Excellent!:thumbup:

Nice job Jedidia! Can't wait to get home and check it out!

 

[cinder1992]

//the following code is from MilkyWay.cfg
//Seed for the star generator
42

ROFL :rofl:

You did that on purpose, didn't you.

 

[jedidia]

Not bad. The only issue i noticed besides graphics is that the solar systems often repeat themselves.

they do? you noticed more by briefly looking at it then than I noticed all the time. On the other hand, I wasn't really paying attention to that... You think a better random number generator than srand would help?

or are you meaning that some systems (especially around red dwarfs) look very similiar? that's because there isn't a very dense accretion disc around these stars, so they only produce a number of rather boring rocks. I guess I could boost the density coeficient of the disc a bit for low-mass stars, but I don't know how realistic that would be. Then again, do we have any theories about how the planets around a low-mass star should look like?

and yeah, the graphics... I haven't put in anti-aliasing yet.

After looking at it, i'm still wondering why did you need the stellar evolution tables.
I haven't noticed time controls.

No time controls there. But I can only generate planetary systems for main sequence stars. So I needed to know what the star looked like originally, and I needed to know what became of it.

By the way, now I could use your texture library :tiphat:

You did that on purpose, didn't you.

No, that's just one of these incredibly improbable coincidences... :shifty:

since you already found the config file, feel free to play around with the atributes. Tell me if you find settings that feel more realistic.

 

[Izack]

I would appreciate alternative keys to zoom in and out. Not everyone has a mouse wheel, even in this modern day and age. :shifty:

Also, none of the additional data or GUI appear (which prevents me from using any mode other than Starmap) for me, and clicking on stars doesn't center the camera, though that's probably just a Vista thing. :dry:

Based on the documentation, it looks like a fantastic program with a lot of work put in to it. :thumbup:

 

[jedidia]

err... I could only test it in Win2k and WinXP. Can anyone run it on Vista (and while we're at it, in Win7) and see if they have similiar problems like Izack?
one question just came to my mind. Can you rotate the camera, and does the quick system overview pop up when you move the mouse over a star in your current cube? if not, it sounds like your mouse events don't get passed on to the aplication (respectivly to the irrlicht event handler).

Also, none of the additional data or GUI appear (which prevents me from using any mode other than Starmap)

Well, you can still go acess the galaxy overview by pressing Ctrl + M, allthough clearly the program doesn't make much sense when you can't select a star...

I would appreciate alternative keys to zoom in and out.

Ok. Added to the features request list.

 

[cinder1992]

You did that on purpose, didn't you.

No, that's just one of these incredibly improbable coincidences... :shifty:

oh god, it's following me.

 

[castorp]

Vaporware no more! :woohoo:

http://www.orbiter-forum.com/showthread.php?p=179885#post179885

very nice!
congratulations!!

 

[Izack]

one question just came to my mind. Can you rotate the camera, and does the quick system overview pop up when you move the mouse over a star in your current cube? if not, it sounds like your mouse events don't get passed on to the aplication (respectivly to the irrlicht event handler).

I can rotate the camera and move about with WASD, and the first time I opened the application I saw Sol's overview for a fraction of a second, but since then nothing. :shrug:

A further problem in Galaxy Map mode is that the crosshair isn't lined up with the mouse.
Why am I always the one who has weird problems? :lol:

 

[jedidia]

It sounds very much like the cursor position of your mouse isn't passed on correctly. Hence the clicks have no effects (since the program doesn't recognise that there's anything there), the GUI doesn't pop up, the crosshair isn't aligned, but the camera rotation still works. However, I don't have the slightes Idea what could cause the problem. I need someone to try it on another machine with Vista (I don't have one in the vicinity, I'm afraid), to see if Vista could be the cause.
If so, I'll have a rather hard time fixing it, but maybe the guys in the irrlicht forum could help me along.

 

[Izack]

I wish I could help there, but my other machine is 15 years old.
:tumbleweed:

 

[jedidia]

After looking at things a bit more, I added something more to the todo-list. Artlav is right, the systems around low-mass stars are rather repetitive. They're not the same per se, but they certainly are way too similiar...

I started with the export function today, let's see how long it takes until I can load one of these systems into Orbiter. I'll have to do some research about what gases influence atmosphere colors in what way.

On another note, Face offered to set up the connection between the generator and an MFD, which would probably have taken me a loooong time to get right by myself, being the noob that I am. :10sign:

 

[Linguofreak]

It sounds very much like the cursor position of your mouse isn't passed on correctly. Hence the clicks have no effects (since the program doesn't recognise that there's anything there), the GUI doesn't pop up, the crosshair isn't aligned, but the camera rotation still works. However, I don't have the slightes Idea what could cause the problem. I need someone to try it on another machine with Vista (I don't have one in the vicinity, I'm afraid), to see if Vista could be the cause.
If so, I'll have a rather hard time fixing it, but maybe the guys in the irrlicht forum could help me along.

I don't have Vista, but I can confirm the exact same bug on Wine (set to emulate XP)...

 

[jedidia]

darn. I'll try to build it with the newest Irrlicht SDK and see if that brings improvement, if not I'll have to ask for precedents at the irrlicht forum. Hang in there...

---------- Post added at 03:26 PM ---------- Previous post was at 10:32 AM ----------

looks like I just fixed the problem with the repeating systems. Stargen wasn't the problem after all, instead one lousy wrong named variable caused them. Since that was one of the last additions before the release, it's no wonder I didn't notice the problem earlier.

No success yet with updating to the new irrlicht engine, there are some incompatibilities. Awaiting help from above (i.e. from the irrlicht forum).

 

[jedidia]

Nope, no problems. It crashes when at the center of the galaxy.

err... I take that as "I don't have the problems described above, but it crashes at the center of the galaxy". Can you reproduce the crash reliably? if so, please post the procedure.

 

[jedidia]

lag is completely normal if you don't switch off the surroundings (in the starmap, uncheck the surroundings checkbox, or press Ctrl-C). In the core it's almost 27000 stars on screen if you don't deactivate displaying of the surrounding cubes, and that will force ANY current day graphics card to its knees!

Crash shouldn't happen, and has never happened on my machine, so fixing it is rather tricky. If you can establish the exact conditions under which a crash occurs I might be able to help.

Thanks for telling me that the mouse works correctly under Win7, btw. Now I'd need a confirmation from another Vista machine.

---------- Post added 06-19-10 at 02:24 PM ---------- Previous post was 06-18-10 at 10:25 PM ----------

New version up, this time built with the newest version of irrlicht:

http://xcc.rpgee.com/orbitermods/jed...iterGalaxy.rar

Izack and Linguofreak, please get it and see if this fixes the mouse problem (if not, I'm so screwed...).

Everyone else seriously interested in the project should get it too, since this also fixes the problem with the repetative systems (so if you want to give any serious critique on the system generator, you should use THIS version, not the previous!) additionaly, you can now control the zoom in the Starmap by the Q and E keys.

Edit: Hooray for Xyon who offered to host the file!

 

[jedidia]

At 0|0|0 on the new version it works. ??

glad to hear that, especially since I didn't do anything to fix it! :lol:

Some sort of error in the OpenGL detection code?
I have not updated my system since yesterday, the only thing I have done on it is play AdAstra.

No idea, communication to openGL is handeled by irrlicht, and I don't even want to know what the two of them are talking... As long as it works, I won't touch it.

 

[Linguofreak]

Izack and Linguofreak, please get it and see if this fixes the mouse problem (if not, I'm so screwed...).

Oops. Just posted a report (mouse works!) and other commentary on the other (wrong?) thread.

 

[jedidia]

I try to keep the reports in the developement thread, but never mind. I'll just take your post from over there.

In any case: Mouse works now.

:woohoo:

that's good to hear. Now for the other bugs...

There are problems both with the window being too big for my screen, and not resizeable, and stuff in the program running off the edge of the window and thus not being visible

just to make sure I get that right: You have stuff being outside the rendering window, not outside your screen, right? That's two tons of strange, to say the least. I was very carefull to make all of the GUI displays dynamic (including the system display... it should automatically fit itself into the window, no matter what resolution). Is it possible that Wine, because of your limited screen resolution, opens the whole thing in a window that's actually too small for it?

as for the window size, you can't resize the window at runtime, but you CAN adjust your resolution in \Data\Ogalaxy.cfg (allthough I would not recommend going below 1024x768). I forgott to mention that in the manual...
I hope that the rendering outside the window will stop when you set a resolution that fits your screen size.

I've come across several factual errors with the single/multiple status and spectral types of stars (Alpha Centauri A, the brightest component of the system seems to be missing, or at least so close to B that I can only see and choose B.

oops, yes, that's the previously mentioned anihilation of binary systems. Looks like I deleted the primary instead of the secondary, will be fixed!

Also, Barnard's Star and Van Maanen's star are *very* misclassified. Barnard's is an M-something-V and Van Maanen's is a white dwarf).

This is due to unavoidable errors in the HYG-database. Thanks for pointing them out. If you find other misclassified stars, just tell me, I'll adjust them in the catalogue.

I also found a few generated stars that are *way* to close to Earth for how bright they are (one brighter and closer than Tau Ceti. If it existed, it would be visible to the naked eye, and a staple of sci-fi novels).

I thought so. I suspected that the saftey I put in wasn't enough, but never really found the time to check for it seriously. I'll put in a function that checks for apparent magnitude at Sol and then decides wheather they would be visible or not.

Thanks a lot for the input! I hope you can solve that window problem by adjusting the resolution. If not, it's probably got to do with Wine (unless I hear the same from windows machines).

 

[jedidia]

Resolution is 1440 x 900.

If that's your screen resolution, then the window will fill your screen exactly (since the default resolution is 1440 x 900). I suggest lowering the window resolution in Ogalaxy.cfg, can be found in the data folder.

And thanks for testing it in different configurations! XP virtual machine, that means it's actually running on a mac, right? I'm afraid I have no way of fixing bugs that only occur there. But I'll have to wait for Izack to tell me if the mouse bug is gone on Vista too, otherwise I'll have to come up with something to solve that problem...

 

[Izack]

I've downloaded the new version, and it works almost flawlessly! Thanks, Jedidia!

Still no GUI on mouseover though. Also, CTRL+M no longer changes the view to the galaxy-map. Otherwise, stars now have names and system diagrams, and the camera controls work perfectly.