Stellarium issues

[chrisp9au]

I keep installing Stellarium, trying things out for a while, then uninstalling it because it just won't do simple things!

The latest frustration was trying to find Comet 217P, which is apparantly close by M42 at the moment; Stellarium showed nothing. :(

After a couple of PMs to Barrykgerdes, the issue is now resolved, and the process of editing the Ssytem.ini file is pretty simple. But Barry advises that you have to be spot on with the data entry as it's easy to crash the program if you get it wrong. Fortunately, and thanks to Erick, the Comet 217P element data lines were available from a recent IIS thread for insertion into the Ssystem.ini file, so it was just a cut and paste job.

But I cannot get over the antiquated way this process had to be done, to provide what is a basic planetarium feature, displaying comets!

Stellarium is a good looking piece of software, the display is very very good, now that the display driver issues appear to have been resolved. But the process of editing and updating configuration and .ini files is like stepping back into the 1980's and the old DOS command line.
Come to think of it, Linux requires exactly the same sort of process! I keep dumping Linux as well! :)
A 21st century operating system shouldn't require the average user to understand and use a 'Terminal' to enter command line processes.

I cannot understand why a good program like Stellarium doesn't provide an easy update process for Minor Planet and Comet data, a file that is downloaded into the correct folder, requiring a simple restart of the program to take effect. If I want more comets displayed, I must enter the data for each individual comet, and for an old bloke with digital dyslexia, that is a real issue! :P

But then, maybe I'm just a grumpy lazy old s*d who wants everything to be simple and straight forward, even the free software!

There's a sign at my back door that says "A grumpy old f*rt and a lovely old tart live here", and it's spot on! :D

Cheers :thumbsup:
Chris

[Barrykgerdes]

Hi Chris

Stellarium is a hard program to come to grips with at the moment because it is going through some massive changes to make it more suitable for facilities like entry of these extra features to make configuration a lot easier.

At the moment adding comets and changing many of the configuration items can only be done by hand but we are slowly adding entry facilities to the screen menus.

Because Stellarium is real time and updates at a frame rate like TV it is extremely CPU intensive. This makes a lovely display for planetariums but does limit the number of moveable objects like comets that can be accommodated in the main program loop particularly in 3D without greatly slowing down the display.

Quite a few of the extras that are so often asked for will be available in the form of plugins that can be loaded at start up by ticking a box on the menu screen in the next release. Others will be provided when they can be encoded like selection of star databases, integrated sky displays from the DSS and displays of comets that can be added separately with a semi automatic entry of downloadable data in 2 line element form. This is already done in the display of earth satellites(plug in) which automatically updates every 72 hrs if you are connected to the internet and information added to the confi.ini file

The plugin being worked on at the moment is one that allows connecting/disconnecting to a telescope for control. At the moment We only have drivers for Meade protocol and NextStar protocol telescopes but there is a remote telescope control driver now under development for the Paramount. I have been testing the Meade protocol driver and it is easy to set up now from the Telescope Control menu, part of the Telescopecontrol plugin.

Most of the development of Stellarium is done in Linux where Command line operation is the order of the day but it is all done by volunteers who have to earn their living as well and it is supplied under the GPL licence which means it will always be free. This also means that proprietory databases cannot be used so we often need to tediously make our own from data that is available. (like the star data bases).

Barry

[chrisp9au]

Thanks Barry, I look forward to the implementation of these extras.

Cheers :thumbsup:
Chris

[Barrykgerdes]

For all you Stellarium users:

I have uploaded the latest changes to give a snapshot of the current development in Stellarium. There is still no date for a release of the next version as there are a couple of minor problems still to be addressed however this patch should be a good look at what is in store.

www.iceinspace.com.au/uploads/4747.zip (http://www.iceinspace.com.au/uploads/4747.zip) will find it as before.

Please read the readme-first.txt for installation instructions.

Of special interest is the inclusion of updated plugins and an integrated telescope control program but there have been some changes to the Opengl display that should get round some of the ATI problems. More work has also been done on the script engine.

Please let me know of any problems via this thread so that they can be passed on to the developers.

Barry

[mithrandir]

There isn't a readme-first.txt in the zip.

[dpastern]

Barry - just to fix a few misconceptions - the GPL doesn't mean the software must be free (as in cost). You can charge for GPL'd software. What it does mean is that if you take GPL'd code and modify it and redistribute it, you must provide the src code for the modified software. I suspect that the LGPL would allow the usage of 3rd party proprietary databases as well.



Chris, I sort of understand your frustration with editing text files, but it's *not* that bad. Let's consider a few things:

a) Linux and UNIX are incredibly versatile. Windows has nothing like sed/gawk/wc/cut/sort for text streaming and editing. Either from the DOS command line or from a GUI.

b) not everything is easier from the GUI. As an example, try releasing the IP address from your network adaptor. From the GUI, it's a bunch of screens and clicks. From DOS, it's start > run type in cmd and hit enter, and then type ipconfig /release. It's far quicker and easier imho. Sometimes, a terminal is just both easier, and more powerful (and useful).

c) DOS is a pile of **** imho. Don't blame other command lines just because DOS is so bad ;-)

Dave

edit: without meaning to sound elitist, all of this "we must have options in the GUI" development in Linux is killing it imho. Linux has went downhill in the past 5 years imho, and it's mostly cos of these newbies who don't want to learn anything, and the community is catering to their needs instead of telling them that they need to be prepared to actually learn things. I have an intense dislike of Ubuntu and Gnome's dumbing down for the masses.

[Barrykgerdes]

Hi
I fixed the missing readme-first.txt. I removed it to edit it and forgot to put it back.

Dave, the GPL licence covers many things. I did not want to go into the full story. I only wanted to point out to people wanting to add all sorts of other data bases that are not necessarily authorised for use in Stellarium and the point that the authors write the code in their spare time and need to earn a living as well.

Barry

[mithrandir]

I could agree with you Dave, except Stellarium's config files - especially 0.10.x versions - are not well documented, and a simple typo crashes the program with no clue as to what is wrong.

I've tried adding comets and asteroids using examples in ssystem.ini and they don't show up. There are two different sets of parameters to choose from depending on the eccentricity and nothing to say which options are needed for the e<1 or e>=1 verisons.

[dpastern]

Andrew - But that's not the edit the text file fault, that's poor documentation from the developers. Let's not confuse things! Well written documentation makes life easy - whether it's in relation to a command line, or a GUI based application.

Barry - I realise that most open source developers do so in their free time, and without any charge. They also generally provide higher quality software than their proprietary cousins. I'm a great believer in the FSF and GPL (more so than open source and other so called licences such as MIT, apache and BSD, none of which I really like).

Dave

[Barrykgerdes]

Yes
The Stellarium User manual is in the process of being re-written and will be ready for release when the release version 1.0.0 is ready for release. It will explain the structure of the files.

In the mean time configuration files that need to be edited will have to be edited by hand. However the main configuration file is now controlled from the program menus so there should be no need for hand editing by the average user.

The other file containing adjustable parameters is the ssystem.ini. This file contains orbital parameters for solar system objects and is critical to edit because of tight syntax rules but not impossible. When editing this file to add comets or asteroids it is important to use the form of the one comet [mcnaught] that is included and the entries for Ceres, Pallas, Juno, Vesta and Eris.

Eventually it is hoped to be able to download and install comets etc. automatically but there are other things to provide first.

Barry

[Barrykgerdes]

Hi

Some further issues have appeared in the 4747.zip patch, Thanks Andrew.

Please remember this patch is not necessarily devoid of bugs but please let me know what you find on this thread so that it can be passed on to the developers.

As I said before, the program is developed mainly on Linux but some is done on Mac and some on Windows. Platform dependancy problems crop up quite often and need to be fixed before official releases.

1.) The star catalogues have not been changed for quite some time so if you have already downloaded the large ones they can still be used. Place all the catalogues in the stars\default folder. Just make sure that the stars.ini folder calls all the files and by their correct name. Please note here that there is a problem with loading catalogues 7 and 8 in Windows XP. You can have either 7 or 8 but not both (unless you drop 6). This problem is not present in Vista.

2.)There is an odd effect with the zoom controls that I think only occurs with Windows. When you try to zoom in for the first time nothing happens till the screen is clicked on an object. This problem has only recently shown up and will be fixed as soon as possible. Subsequent zooms seem to work though.

3.) Telescope drivers are only available for Meade protocol and Celestron Nextstar. This covers most telescopes, drivers are still needed by other systems but we need a programmer with the system to prepare the driver. The ASCOM platform does have a link for Stellarium to allow the use of ASCOM drivers but it is maintained by the ASCOM group. Note also that the installation of the telescopecontrol module is not fully automatic yet. It requires the manual entry of the servers folder in your user area.

4.) It has been reported that the entry of a new location has not been permanently added to the user_locations.txt file. I am not sure what could have caused this as I added a new location to the list and it was certainly appended to the User_locations.txt in the documents_and_settings\<yourarea>\applicationdata\stellarium\data folder although it took a few seconds to do this and the program was locked during this time.

Barry

[mithrandir]

Barry,



I didn't mention it in my PM, but the %appdata%\Stellarium\data folder did not get created automatically. That would stop the user_locations.txt file being saved.

Also, it is showing winter time (UTC-10), but windows says DST (UTC-11).

[pmrid]

May I chip in here with a Stellarium issue - I can't get it to run on my old G3 iMac running OS X 10.3.9. It's got 640MB of RAM so that ought not to be the issue. Any ideas?
Peter

[Barrykgerdes]

Hi Peter

You may certainly chip in however I don't know if there is a version for that Mac. The Mac operating system varies a bit and the universal Stellarium build does not run on all versions.

I think that there may have been special builds from some of the Mac users but I haven't got any info on them. A query on the www.stellarium.org (http://www.stellarium.org) forum may find someone that knows or has a version for that Mac.

Barry

[pmrid]

Thanks Barry. That was helpful.
Peter

[fhub]

Well, I would say that's a kind of understatement - unfortunately this patch doesn't work at all! :-(

It did already take much time to get the last official Stellarium 0.10.2 to work on my new notebook (the usual ATI driver problems), but this new version from 4747.zip refuses to run at all here, no matter what I do.There comes up an error message (something like 'VC2008++ doesn't respond')already at startup and then it exits.
My notebook is quite new (about a half year old), I'm running Windows XP SP3 and of course have updated it with the lastest ATI drivers (as mentioned Stellarium 0.10.2 works now).After this error message I've installed the latest updates for VC2005++ and VC2008++ (msvcredist sp1), but no success.One strange thing is that this 0.10.3 prerelease is working on my older desktop under Windows 2000, but not on the new notebook with Windows XP-SP3.
So before you release this beta as official Stellarium 0.10.3 I really would suggest to solve this problem, otherwise you can be sure to get hundreds of complaints about this new release ...

Regards,Franz

[supernova1965]

The latest PCUSER Mag has Stellarium 0.10.2 on the DVD save the download if you want.

[Barrykgerdes]

Sorry the patch doesn't work for you. It works for most. As I said previously it may not work on all installations. It is only meant to give a preview of what is coming. It basically turns the program into build 4875 (The readme says 5057 but that version had some other problems. I just installed a clean 0.10.2 Stellarium onto a removable disk on my computer, Pentium 4, 750 MB RAM, SiS inbuilt video. running XP SP3.

Note: This is not a beta version and will not be released as such! Neither is it official. It is only a preview of what is coming.

I down loaded www.iceinspace.com.au/uploads/4747.zip (http://www.iceinspace.com.au/uploads/4747.zip) Unzipped it into the new 0.10.2 installation. and it ran correctly using my existing config.ini file. If you want the telescope drivers to work the subfolder "servers" needs to be placed in the user area where your config.ini file is stored.

Barry

[fhub]

Hi Barry,

I've now analyzed this problem a bit deeper and with the help of the tool 'Dependency Walker' I found out, that the reason might be the use of 'libpng13.dll' in your new version 0.10.3.
In the official version 0.10.2 this DLL isn't used at all, but it uses 'freetype6.dll' instead (which is not used in your new version).
So probably this 'libpng13.dll' causes the error message and makes your new patch fail here (BTW, I've also tried it under Vista on the same notebook, but I get the same error).
Maybe this is again some compatibility issue with ATI card/driver, but I've also installed the latest driver version (just a few weeks old), but even this didn't help.

So maybe you could find out what functions you're using in your new 0.10.3 patch that require this crappy 'libpng13.dll', any maybe you can avoid using it. Otherwise many users with ATI card will have big problems again ...

Regards,
Franz

[Barrykgerdes]

Hi Franz

libpng13.dll has always been a part of the Stellarium program but it may be the reason for some ATI problems. freetype6.dll is part of the language translation and which in future versions will be replaced by a Qt routine.

There have been some major changes to the code in Stellarium since build 4875 but a complete stable version is not yet complete

I would suggest you deal direct with www.Stellarium.org (http://www.Stellarium.org) and place a bug report with all the details.

Barry

[fhub]

Maybe, but I think it hasn't really been used - at least I could find no reference to it in the official libstellmain.dll of 0.10.2 (only in your new one).

Well, of course I've already tried that, but my internet connection is by a quite old laptop (with Win98+IE5.5) and unfortunately I can't register any sourceforge account at all.

Ok, so I'll wait until the next official release and hope that the problem will be solved until then ...

Franz

[Barrykgerdes]

Hi Franz

Libpng13.dll is to display *.png images it is necessary. The Stellarium.exe and the libstellmain.dll are the only differences operationally between the 0.10.2 and the patch I use. They were compiled on the later source code however so there are many other differences.

Barry

[Kvl]

Help Please, (Hope that this is the right spot!)

I am using a HEQ5 pro mount, the Shoestring EQDIR box plus RS233 to USB adaptor connected to my computer which is running XP, ASCOM 5.oa plus 5.5.1 update plus the EQMOD ASCOM driver V1.18i plus Stellarium v10.2 plus stellariumscope 20090824 phew!

Everything appears fine but...

The telescope slews OK with the N, S, E and W buttons on the telescope control panel.

Stellarium (and Starrynight) only tracks the telescope when using the N and S buttons.

The GOTO function in Stellarium works OK.

Karl.

[Barrykgerdes]

Hi Karl

Stellarium has not got a driver for the HEQ5 mount yet. The driver you have is part of the ASCOM suite. Stellariumscope is 3rd party software.

Barry

[Kvl]

Hi Barry,
Thanks for the reply.
Does Stellarium need a driver for the HEQ5 mount?
I assumed (always dangerous) that I could replace the SynScan hand controller with my laptop/notepad computer.
The plan was to use ASCOM for the telescope contol, Stellarium for the pretty picture/GUI to see what it thinks that the telescope is doing and Stellariumscope as the interface between the two.
As I said in my earlier post, all appears fine except for manual E/W slewing controlled by the ASCOM interface which is annoying but I can live without.
The automatic tracking appears fine (inside the house!). I am just waiting for a clear night to do a field test.
Reading the various threads in this and other forums shows that others are going down the same track with mixed results depending on the various software versions.
Are Stellarium developing their own control suite for the HEQ5 right now?
Can I add the display of transit times to the Stellarium wish list as this is a very useful feature for me?
Can I add another request for Stellarium, the logging of the telescope position to disk via a configurable interface or would this be better done via ASCOM or should I have a crack at it myself?

Karl.

PS Looks like ASCOM already have a logging feature

[Barrykgerdes]

Hi Karl

Stellarium only has two telescope drivers directly available. One for the Celestron Nextstar and one for Meade Autostar/LX200 which also suits the Losmandy Gemini system. There is a third in the source code that will control a specic remote telescope (I think it is the Mt Wilson telescope)but it has not been compiled for Windows.

Someone did write an interface for the ASCOM system but it is not part of the stellarium project. This will allow any of the ASCOM drivers to be used with Stellarium. Particularly the Stellariumscope which I believe has handbox simulation as well. However Stellarium only reads the scope position and displays it in stellarium or extracts the current selected position and sends these coords to the telescope along with a slew to command.

At the moment the standard telescope control has been integrated into the latest svn source code but unless someone decides to write some code for other telescopes and functions it will not be done in the immediate future. There are basic instructions for this in the wiki.

Please put in a request for the other items you would like. I think there are already some requests for these items. The main problem is that the programmers are working in other areas in an endeavour to get the program to the release of version 1.0.0 as soon as possible. This has been delayed due to the immense task of re-writing the existing source code to suit the Qt system so that future additions can be more easily added.

Barry

[Kvl]

Hi Barry,

Thanks for your help.

Regards
Karl