Comments on: Celestia: A free real time space simulation

Celestia: A free real time space simulation

grahamwell — Tue, 04 Feb 2003 10:23:46 -0800

Celestia is the most beautiful toy. It's a free (open source) simulator of the universe, including breathtaking models of known planets. Watch Jupiter rise over Io or follow the course of a solar eclipse. [more inside]

By: grahamwell

grahamwell — Tue, 04 Feb 2003 10:34:37 -0800

The main download is about 11 Mb for Windows (link above). There's an active development community here. An enlarged star database is here (warning: this will slow loading time). Other add-ons, including some beautiful imaginary solar systems are here. If you have 15Gb of free space, Marc Griffith is working on an add-on which will turn Celestia into an 'Elite' type game, more details at Mostly Harmless which includes a fractal planet generator to populate the entire galaxy.

By: chrid

chrid — Tue, 04 Feb 2003 11:02:31 -0800

Great links grahamwell, I just downloaded Celestia the other day and was really really impressed, but I never looked further so never knew about the add-ons. Fantastic for folks who love space!

By: grahamwell

grahamwell — Tue, 04 Feb 2003 11:15:15 -0800

This link is good too. I recommend the imaginary system right at the bottom (18sc0.zip) - he's right, it's a triumph of the imagination. If you want to see the "rest of the universe" - the galaxies and clusters in the local group, use the data file here.

By: edh

edh — Tue, 04 Feb 2003 11:17:34 -0800

NASA have a great simulator of the solar system too.....

By: vacapinta

vacapinta — Tue, 04 Feb 2003 11:24:15 -0800

I've been recently playing around with Terragen, a fractal landscape generator which is quite easy to use for a beginner like myself. It has a wide following as well. And, although its is mostly used to generate static pictures, the community has started using it to generate planets and fly-overs. Perhaps the two can converge?

By: WolfDaddy

WolfDaddy — Tue, 04 Feb 2003 11:43:10 -0800

[all links = this is doubleplusgood] Thanks everyone!

By: bondcliff

bondcliff — Tue, 04 Feb 2003 11:45:48 -0800

Way back in the time of Windows 3.1 (you kids may not remember...) I had a program called VistaPro that would use USGS DEM files to render 3D landscapes. Great program. That Terragen reminded me of it but I liked Vistapro because it would render actual places.

By: WolfDaddy

WolfDaddy — Tue, 04 Feb 2003 11:54:53 -0800

bondcliff, VistaPro is still out there, though I haven't used it for awhile. The publisher claims it is XP compatible. I think I'll fire it up tonight and see how screaming fast it is these days, it used to take forEVER on my Pentium 60, especially when drawing trees. :-) Also, VistaPro is apparently Arthur C. Clarke Approved.

By: bondcliff

bondcliff — Tue, 04 Feb 2003 11:58:39 -0800

Thanks, wolfdaddy. I just did a google search and found the same site. They never really did much with it. Such a shame, it had some great potential. I remember trying to render animations on my P-90. I'd leave it running all night and hope I had a movie by morning. I'd imagine they could make it real time these days.

By: gravelshoes

gravelshoes — Tue, 04 Feb 2003 12:12:08 -0800

curse my dialup! thanks in anticipation

By: majick

majick — Tue, 04 Feb 2003 13:08:36 -0800

If, like me, you find that the latest version of Celestia does nothing but fall down and writhe on the floor as soon as it's started (due to a bug introduced in 1.2.5), you may want one of the previous versions from the archives. 1.2.4 apparently works where 1.2.5 doesn't -- something about OpenGL driver compatibility in the 3ds model loading code, for the curious.

By: Blubble

Blubble — Tue, 04 Feb 2003 14:08:33 -0800

Version 1.2.5 crashes almost immediately on my normally very stable work PC running Win2K SP3. I guess I'll try 1.2.4.

By: WolfDaddy

WolfDaddy — Tue, 04 Feb 2003 14:31:18 -0800

Blubble, you may need to upgrade your video drivers. I couldn't run 1.2.5 because I was using the "Microsoft Certified" XP driver for my card ... which--fancy that!--didn't have OpenGL support. The manufacturer-supplied driver did the trick, though 1.2.4 still runs noticeably faster on my rig.

By: shadow45

shadow45 — Tue, 04 Feb 2003 15:05:49 -0800

wow, great post. [golf clap] seriously... i was using worldmap3d before, and uh.. quite frankly it blows ass in comparison.

By: gravelshoes

gravelshoes — Tue, 04 Feb 2003 15:06:59 -0800

nice! here's another pretty toy (download GSPlanet) from the shatters.net forum

By: tss

tss — Tue, 04 Feb 2003 16:23:41 -0800

I've heard very good things about Partiview, but my friend at the American Museum of Natural History says that the MacOS X version will be a long time coming. Oh well.

By: LoopSouth

LoopSouth — Tue, 04 Feb 2003 16:31:56 -0800

I remember playing MS Space simulator years ago... but all I used it for was for the ability to view the planets from odd perspectives... You could crank the speed of time to over a million years a second too... It was alot like Celestia, but you could fly around in spaceships, basically...

By: mcwetboy

mcwetboy — Tue, 04 Feb 2003 16:54:44 -0800

Very ... slow ... download ...

By: botono9

botono9 — Tue, 04 Feb 2003 21:10:03 -0800

Thank you... thank you... thank you...

By: raygirvan

raygirvan — Wed, 05 Feb 2003 08:46:16 -0800

MojoWorld, a commercial planet generator product, is also worth a glance.

By: RJ Reynolds

RJ Reynolds — Wed, 05 Feb 2003 10:09:56 -0800

Sounds gorgeous. I'm glad Anne is finally getting her due credit.