Celestia 1.4.1 review
DownloadCelestia is a free real-time space simulation that lets you experience our universe in three dimensions.
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Celestia is a free real-time space simulation that lets you experience our universe in three dimensions. Unlike most planetarium software, Celestia doesn't confine you to the surface of the Earth.
You can travel throughout the solar system, to any of over 100, stars, or even beyond the galaxy.
All travel in Celestia is seamless; the exponential zoom feature lets you explore space across a huge range of scales, from galaxy clusters down to spacecraft only a few meters across.
A 'point-and-goto' interface makes it simple to navigate through the universe to the object you want to visit.
What's New:
Windows: Added time zone selection to set time dialog
Windows: Fixed hard to read text in set time dialog (bug was only present for certain Windows shell appearance settings.)
Changed maximum number of eclipse shadows in OpenGL 2.0 path from two to three; if max is exceeded, clamp to three rather than not rendering the shadows at all.
Corrected a bad calculation in ring shadow shaders that caused ring shadows to be drawn in the wrong place.
Windows: Fixed the minimum feature size slider in the locations dialog so it updates in response to all the standard controls.
Added a correct InfoURL for the Moon
Windows: added splash screen with a progress indicator
KDE: fixed some AMD64 bugs
GTK: added splash screen with a progress indicator
GTK: Added configure options to enable or disable Cairo support for splash
Corrected a local flashing of the Milky Way brightness.
Now the distance to the galaxy center is displayed, if the observer is located inside the galaxy (Milky Way...).
Eliminated various incorrect Hubble type acronyms in deepsky.dsc that had penetrated the PERL filter.
Add the corrected PERL script deepsky.pl.
Mac: Universal binary - runs natively on Intel and PPC
Mac: OpenGL 2.0 render path should now work on many configurations (requires OS X 10.4.3 or later)
Mac: Offer option to disable vertex programs automatically when ATI Radeon 9200 renderer is detected (avoids hard crash)
Mac: Progress message and version number displayed on splash screen
Mac: Couple of French translation fixes
Mac: Changed wording of "Subtract Light Travel Delay" menu item to "Add/Subtract Light Travel Delay" to more accurately reflect its function
Mac: More sensible default values for preferences
Mac: Bug fixes to favorites, InfoURL handling
Mac: Full screen mode pauses when various panels are shown
Mac: Fixed crash when LANG or LC environment variables are set
Mac: Added bona fide English and French help menu
Mac: Cleaned up README in general
Added Phoebe textures in medres and lores directories from recent published Cyclops cylindrical maps
Updated Titan and Iapetus textures in lores directory
Windows: save and restore the last used GL render path
Removed the GeForce FX render path; GLSL path is preferred
Added lunar elevation map, using Clementine laser altimeter data, merged in the polar regions, with topographic data from Clementine 750 nm oblique and nadir images.
KDE: Reverted mouse wheel action to be compatible with the other interfaces.
KDE: New configurable splash screen (http://celestia.teyssier.org/splash_spec.html)
Updated/added Tethys textures in lores, medres and hires directories.
Added locations on Phoebe in satmoons2.ssc, as extracted from USGS/IAU official data.
Added Mesh for Phoebe texture.
Updated Iapetus texture.
Moved locations files from extras into data directory for inclusion in standard package.
Fixed bug where displayed time scale differed from actual time scale after clicking a cel URL.
Removed several files from installation on Linux and MacOS, saving ~5M compressed.
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