Re: [Celestia-developers] Celestia 1.4.2 Roadmap.

[Chris Laurel <claurel@gm...>]

On 7/28/06, t00fri <fridger.schrempp@...> wrote:
>
>
> Pat Suwalski wrote:
> > t00fri wrote:
> >> There is definitely more. Like my conversion of our galaxy stuff to
> >> PNG format and new improved templates (the latter done together with
> >> ElChristou). I obviously can only commit the new code once the new
> >> PNG template design is finished... My PNG code exists since months
> >> and it's considerable advantages were discussed here several times.
> >> Also Chris' star code is still significantly buggy. I have a whole
> >> list of respective bug items. Moreover, I coded ElChristou's label
> >> display whose transparency increases with distance. There is much
> >> more in the pipeline  from my part, though:  all clusters from the
> >> revised NGC/IC catalogue and bipolar  planetary renderings etc.
> >
> > Ah, yes, I forgot about the PNG galaxy code.
> >
> Thinking a bit about it, you also forgot Chris' event handler code for
> Lua scripting. And given all this commit activity on the Mac OSX side,
> why did you skip Mac's entirely in your listing?

I don't think that Pat meant to give an exhaustive list. Anyhow, what
this really brings to attention is the fact that I haven't been
keeping the ChangeLog up to date. Once I get back from this weekend's
climb, I'll go through the celestia-cvs archive and add to the
ChangeLog.

--Chris

[Celestia-developers] Celestia 1.4.2 Roadmap.

[Pat Suwalski <pat@su...>]

Hello,

I was thinking that we're coming up on a good opportunity to release 
1.4.2 in the next month or so.

I was thinking the features could be:

- Chris' more feature-complete OpenGL2 render path.
- Video capture in Linux
- Revisited 3ds/ssc spacecraft models

Those three items would qualify for a minor release.

Does this seem reasonable? I assume Chris might want to polish the 
OpenGL work a little more.

--Pat

Re: [Celestia-developers] Celestia 1.4.2 Roadmap.

[Pat Suwalski <pat@su...>]

t00fri wrote:
> There is definitely more. Like my conversion of our galaxy stuff to PNG 
> format and new improved templates (the latter done together with 
> ElChristou). I obviously can only commit the new code once the new PNG 
> template design is finished... My PNG code exists since months and it's 
> considerable advantages were discussed here several times. Also Chris' 
> star code is still significantly buggy. I have a whole list of 
> respective bug items. Moreover, I coded ElChristou's label display whose 
> transparency increases with distance. There is much more in the 
> pipeline  from my part, though:  all clusters from the revised NGC/IC 
> catalogue and bipolar  planetary renderings etc.

Ah, yes, I forgot about the PNG galaxy code.

I wasn't suggesting releasing, more like a checklist to make certain 
everything we want in the next release works well.

--Pat

Re: [Celestia-developers] Celestia 1.4.2 Roadmap.

[t00fri <fridger.schrempp@de...>]

Pat Suwalski wrote:
> t00fri wrote:
>> There is definitely more. Like my conversion of our galaxy stuff to 
>> PNG format and new improved templates (the latter done together with 
>> ElChristou). I obviously can only commit the new code once the new 
>> PNG template design is finished... My PNG code exists since months 
>> and it's considerable advantages were discussed here several times. 
>> Also Chris' star code is still significantly buggy. I have a whole 
>> list of respective bug items. Moreover, I coded ElChristou's label 
>> display whose transparency increases with distance. There is much 
>> more in the pipeline  from my part, though:  all clusters from the 
>> revised NGC/IC catalogue and bipolar  planetary renderings etc.
>
> Ah, yes, I forgot about the PNG galaxy code.
>
Thinking a bit about it, you also forgot Chris' event handler code for 
Lua scripting. And given all this commit activity on the Mac OSX side, 
why did you skip Mac's entirely in your listing?

Bye Fridger

Re: [Celestia-developers] Celestia 1.4.2 Roadmap.

[Chris Laurel <claurel@gm...>]

On 7/28/06, t00fri <fridger.schrempp@...> wrote:
>
>
> Pat Suwalski wrote:
> > t00fri wrote:
> >> There is definitely more. Like my conversion of our galaxy stuff to
> >> PNG format and new improved templates (the latter done together with
> >> ElChristou). I obviously can only commit the new code once the new
> >> PNG template design is finished... My PNG code exists since months
> >> and it's considerable advantages were discussed here several times.
> >> Also Chris' star code is still significantly buggy. I have a whole
> >> list of respective bug items. Moreover, I coded ElChristou's label
> >> display whose transparency increases with distance. There is much
> >> more in the pipeline  from my part, though:  all clusters from the
> >> revised NGC/IC catalogue and bipolar  planetary renderings etc.
> >
> > Ah, yes, I forgot about the PNG galaxy code.
> >
> Thinking a bit about it, you also forgot Chris' event handler code for
> Lua scripting. And given all this commit activity on the Mac OSX side,
> why did you skip Mac's entirely in your listing?

I don't think that Pat meant to give an exhaustive list. Anyhow, what
this really brings to attention is the fact that I haven't been
keeping the ChangeLog up to date. Once I get back from this weekend's
climb, I'll go through the celestia-cvs archive and add to the
ChangeLog.

--Chris

Re: [Celestia-developers] Celestia 1.4.2 Roadmap.

[t00fri <fridger.schrempp@de...>]

In view of some "boundary condition" I know of, my proposal would be 
quite different:

I rather would take beginning of October as a /serious/ time-line ( hi 
Chris ;-) ) and try until then to get Celestia into a really good shape, 
including thorough bug fixes, accuracy improvements and implementation 
of some long overdue features! That version I would call 1.5.0 ...

Over the summer some of us might be only partly available for doing much 
further coding work.

Bye Fridger

Pat Suwalski wrote:
> t00fri wrote:
>> There is definitely more. Like my conversion of our galaxy stuff to 
>> PNG format and new improved templates (the latter done together with 
>> ElChristou). I obviously can only commit the new code once the new 
>> PNG template design is finished... My PNG code exists since months 
>> and it's considerable advantages were discussed here several times. 
>> Also Chris' star code is still significantly buggy. I have a whole 
>> list of respective bug items. Moreover, I coded ElChristou's label 
>> display whose transparency increases with distance. There is much 
>> more in the pipeline  from my part, though:  all clusters from the 
>> revised NGC/IC catalogue and bipolar  planetary renderings etc.
>
> Ah, yes, I forgot about the PNG galaxy code.
>
> I wasn't suggesting releasing, more like a checklist to make certain 
> everything we want in the next release works well.
>
> --Pat

Re: [Celestia-developers] Celestia 1.4.2 Roadmap.

[Chris Laurel <claurel@gm...>]

We are due for a new release, and there's been a good amount of
development recently. First of all, here's a summary of what I'm
working on the moment:

Bugs:
- Over-aggressive star culling bug, reported in the forum a few weeks
ago. Possibly a bug in the octree code.
- Miscellaneous problems in the new star rendering code, mostly having
to do with the transition from subpixel to > 1 pixel size as they get
closer to the camera
- More problems in the new OpenGL 2.0 model rendering code - the
texture is disappearing on Selden's Philmont model.
- The 'seam' in cloud mapping; I've got a fix for this, but I need to
do some more work so that it can work with large planet textures.

Improved rendering:
- Experimenting with photometric functions (or BRDFs: bi-directional
reflectance distribution functions) other than Lambert. I've got a
working implementation of the Oren-Nayar model of rough surfaces and
the Lommel-Seeliger function (actually lunar-Lambert, since I've
included a variable Lambertian term.) Hapke's model requires
considerably more calculation, so I don't think I'll bother with it.
I'll write more about all of this later.

- Better atmosphere rendering. This is going to look a *lot* better,
but I'm just getting started on it.

- I've worked out a faster and more robust approach to depth sorting.
Also, in this new approach, orbits would be treated like other objects
and be properly depth sorted (possibly being split into two or more
depth buffer regions.) No code written yet; this is still in the
design stage.

All the recent development you mentioned together with my work in
progress seem like enough for Celestia 1.5. Also, let's not forget
Christophe's i18n changes for Windows and the celx event handling. We
shouldn't wait on all my graphics work to be done before we make
another prerelease. I'd feel good about releasing something once the
star rendering bugs are fixed. The question is, what should we call
it? 1.4.2? 1.5.0 prerelease 1? I know how we've done version numbering
in the past with Celestia, but what's the usual convention?

--Chris

On 7/27/06, Pat Suwalski <pat@...> wrote:
> Hello,
>
> I was thinking that we're coming up on a good opportunity to release
> 1.4.2 in the next month or so.
>
> I was thinking the features could be:
>
> - Chris' more feature-complete OpenGL2 render path.
> - Video capture in Linux
> - Revisited 3ds/ssc spacecraft models
>
> Those three items would qualify for a minor release.
>
> Does this seem reasonable? I assume Chris might want to polish the
> OpenGL work a little more.
>
> --Pat
>
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Re: [Celestia-developers] Celestia 1.4.2 Roadmap.

[Da Woon Jung <dirkpitt2050@gm...>]

On 7/28/06, Pat Suwalski wrote:
>
> I was thinking that we're coming up on a good opportunity to release
> 1.4.2 in the next month or so.
>
> I was thinking the features could be:
>
> - Chris' more feature-complete OpenGL2 render path.
> - Video capture in Linux
> - Revisited 3ds/ssc spacecraft models
>
> Those three items would qualify for a minor release.
>
> Does this seem reasonable? I assume Chris might want to polish the
> OpenGL work a little more.

Sounds good. New features in the OS X release would be:
- FSAA
- menubar toggling while in full screen mode,
- Japanese localization by Sui Ota

I'll add these to the Changelog when I get the chance.

Cheers,
DW

p.s. Presumably the new star rendering and non-power-of-two textures
are also in 1.4.2?