Re: [Celestia-developers] Re: Small locations files

[<cl...@sh...>]

> Chris,
>
> it would be great, if (at last) you could comment, whether you want my
> locations file with the 240 capitals and 'Importance weights' as
> calculated
> from the population data, included in the default 1.3.1 distribution.
> Christmas
> is close ahead and my time schedule is as usual tight...After all this
> work on
> the /capitals/, it is now time to know whether I should throw that file
> into
> "the paper basket" or not.

I would very much like to include your world capitals location file in the
1.3.1 distribution.  In fact, if you think it's ready now, I'll go ahead
and build the 1.3.1 package this weekend.

I did make one more code change last night in response to a bug report
from Frank and Jack.  I modified universe.cpp to disable picking for
objects that don't exist at the current simulation time (time < beginning
or time > ending.)

> I also recommend having a look into my new forum thread:
> users/"Informative
> Games With City Populations". There, I have plotted the distribution of
> the
> number of cities (i.e. labels) versus the decadic logarithm of the
> respective
> populations! This study  with an impressive sample of 41245 cities/towns
> allows
> to /optimize/ the calculation of Importance weights from the known city
> population, such as to minimize their overlap. This task is in progress.
>
> While thinking about all that, I feel it would be most interesting to
> associate
> /varying colors/ with the city labels, such as to distinguish the
> respective
> populations! Labels of varying color, according to Importance/size, would
> in
> general be a new informative degree of freedom! It would be fun
> experimenting
> with a suitable color set that looks both pleasing and has a
> 'selfexplaining'
> touch: e.g. a range of shades of one well visible color: bright ....dark?
>
> By the way, I find this 'aggressive' green default label color rather
> horrible;-).

A good suggestion . . . but can it wait until 1.3.2? :)

> Last not least, there still seems to be a residual of the former bug that
> you
> fixed some time ago: when I zoom into very close distance as is typical
> for
> those 32k+ tile textures, then at some well-defined 'threshold',
> everything
> (Nightlights + labels) /vanishes/ and only a black screen remains...Its
> sort of
> disturbing;-). I suppose the numerical accuracy issue is hitting again
> here.

I'll investigate . . .  at about what distance do you see everything
disappear?

--Chris