Re: [Celestia-developers] Revised starnames.dat

[Fridger S. <t0...@ma...>]

Chris Laurel wrote:
> 
> On Wed, 4 Jun 2003, Fridger Schrempp wrote:
> 
> > Grant:
> >
> > Your recent argumentation convinced me instantanously to 'purify' my
> > Pluto-Charon textures even further and strip out those faint 'surface markings'
> > borrowed from Triton...I was just seduced momentarily to include this
> > inappropriate stuff in view of the overboarding 'creativity' in the Forum...
> >
> > > But all we know of reality is summarized in Fridger's texture (me, I'd
> > > strip out the various faint surface markings and leave it a real blur,
> > > admittedly). So that's why I suggested it be used as the default texture - > not because it's beautiful (it's not), not because it's detailed (of course > it's not) and certainly not because its Fridger's (to a large extent, as
> > > I'm sure he would agree, it's not), but because it's just precisely as
> > > accurate as we can get right now.
> >
> > So I committed an upgrade that includes 1k textures in medres and 512b textures
> > in lores. I decided to use .PNG format for Pluto (instead of .JPG)  such that
> > people may blow it up without quality loss  and use it for further work with
> > larger textures...
> >
> > I have also deactivated the respective bumpmaps in solarsys.ssc...
> 
> It seems that the Pluto textures were checked as ascii files instead of
> binary--I can't load them in either Celestia or an image viewer.
> 

This I do not understand at all. I have downloaded my 4 committed textures in
medres and in lores respectively, /directly/ from Sourgeforge/CVS and made sure
that they all display perfectly in my browser. I have also controlled the image
specification which is also OK. Finally, I am using the same textures (checked
with 'diff' of course!) in my Celestia installation without the slightest
problems...

I guess we should clear this issue up before I upload the modifications you
suggest below...

> All the textures in lowres have a maximum size of 256x128 . . . 

There are still a number of textures with names like  

moonbump1k.jpg
plutobump1k.jpg
marsbump1k.jpg

where naive people like me /immediately/ concluded that these files are 1k;-). 
So I felt 'safe' with 512x256... Incidentally, plutobump1k.jpg and
marsbump1k.jpg are /bigger/ than 256x128, namely 256x256.


> could you
> shrink it from 512x256 to 256x128?  

Sure, as soon as we have cleared your problem above.

> Also, I'm not sure if it's necessary
> to use PNG instead of JPG.  If someone wants to work on the Pluto texture,
> they should download a high quality version from the Texture Foundry.  For
> the standard Celestia package priority should be given to making the
> download small, and that generally means favoring JPG over PNG textures.
> 
Well, of course, I had some reason for submitting pluto.png. I made various
experiments and found that rescaling a 1k pluto.jpg up produces very bad
artifacts. Since I thought it would be good to blend the 2k 'interpreted'
pluto/charon textures by Presepe, Don or others in the future with the
/identical/ LimitOfKnowledge textures, I chose a format that may indeed be
blown up. Incidentally, it would be good to control whether the orientation of
the dark markings are correct on the 'interpreted/ textures...

But making a pluto.jpg is certainly fine with me...  

Bye Fridger