Celestia/Development Road Map

Here's a development roadmap for Celestia (as of 6/22/07), with tasks roughly prioritized highest first.

Celestia 1.5.0pre3

• Don't require LuaHook for scripted orbits and rotations
• Fix cloud shadows
• ASAP

Celestia v1.5.0pre3 for Windows was made available on May 24, 2007. A list of the accumulated changes and the location for downloading the Windows installer are at http://www.shatters.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=11082&

Celestia 1.5.0pre4

• Changes to standard data files:
  • new Eros model
  • new ISS and Mir models
  • new Itokawa model
• Fix stars
• Allow star orbits to be toggled separately from planet orbits
• Eliminate OrbitBarycenter
• Adjust near clip plane for FOV (to preserve depth buffer precision)
• Don't show labels for star system barycenters
• Fix SSC texture override for meshes

Celestia v1.5.0pre4 for Windows was made available on October 29, 2007. Not all of the hoped-for improvements were included, but many bugs were fixed. A list of the accumulated changes and the location for downloading the Windows installer are at http://shatters.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=11605&

Celestia 1.5.0pre5

Celestia v1.5.0pre5 for Windows was made available on December 18, 2007. Not all of the hoped-for improvements were included, but many bugs were fixed. A list of the accumulated changes and the location for downloading the Windows installer are at http://www.shatters.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=11807

Celestia 1.5.0pre6

Celestia v1.5.0pre6 for Windows was made available on January 21, 2008. Not all of the hoped-for improvements were included, but many bugs were fixed. A list of the accumulated changes and the location for downloading the Windows installer are at http://www.shatters.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=11932

Celestia 1.5.0 final

Celestia v1.5.0 for Windows and MacOS X, as well as a tarball of its source code, was made available on January 26, 2008. It can be downloaded from SourceForge.

Not all of the hoped-for improvements listed below were included, but many bugs were fixed. A list of the accumulated changes is available at http://www.shatters.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=11953

• Changes to standard data files:
  • Switch to new rotation model forms
• Atmospheres
  • Make dense atmospheres work better
  • Fix artifacts from linear interpolation across triangles
  • Fix too dark sky at zenith
  • Automatic conversion of new style atmosphere parameters to old ones
• Default body frame is based on parent, not center of orbit frame; is this right?
• Fix depth sorting of labels

Celestia 1.5.1

Change of plans: Celestia v1.5.1 will be strictly a bug-fix release, plus translations which were not included in v1.5.0. Features listed below which weren't in v1.5.0 will be included in v1.6.0.

• Script function to show / hide individual objects
• Script menu Already completed for 1.5.0
• Make quaternion slerp more robust Already completed for 1.5.0
• Double precision SampledOrbits Already completed for 1.5.0
• Pulsar catalog?
• Triaxial ellipsoids for solar system bodies
• Fix multiple star handling in star database builder
• Bug fixing

Celestia v1.5.1 for Windows and MacOS X was made available on May 5, 2008. It can be downloaded from SourceForge.

Celestia 1.6.0

For a more up-to-date list of features considered or implemented for Celestia v1.6.0, see the WikiPage Celestia/160Features.

• User-definable object classes
• Orbits:
  • More flexible means to choose which orbits to display (custom classes)
• Allow orbits to be shown in any reference frame
• Script:
  • Functions to deal with object classes
  • Expose 1.5.0 reference frames in scripts
  • Vector and orientation parameters for ScriptedOrbits and ScriptedRotations
• Markers:
  • Labeled markers
  • Allow different reference frames for markers
• Texture improvements:
  • Use lower resolution virtual texture tiles for surface patches farther from camera
  • Improve texture memory management
  • Multithreaded texture loader
  • Optimize galaxy rendering: point sprites, vertex buffers instead of immediate mode.
• SPICE
  • Allow lists of kernel files
  • Manage loaded kernels
  • C-kernel rotation model
  • Generic frame rotation model
• Goto fixes:
  • Fix center orbit (currently assumes infinitely distant target)
  • Goto barycenter should pick a distance based on size of the orbits aroundthe barycenter.
• SampledOrbit / SampledOrientation:
  • Periodic SampledOrbits
  • Support cubic interpolation of SampledOrientation files
• New Earth rotation CustomRotations--precession, nutation, IRTF93
• Internal changes:
  • Implement velocity method for all orbit types
  • Change internal time scale to be Julian days relative to J2000.0
  • Use J2000 ecliptic coordinate system throughout Celestia
  • CachingRotation base class
• More accurate lunar orbit
• Depth sort location labels (new drawable type: label cluster)
• New data:
  • Create model for comet Tempel 1
  • Create model for asteroid (66391) 1999 KW₄ and its moon
• Eliminate the .cms format

Celestia v1.6.0 for Windows and MacOS X, as well as a tarball of its source code, was made available on July 9, 2009. It can be downloaded from SourceForge.

Celestia 1.7.0

• Spacecraft fly mode
• Network Server Seprated
• Dynamic milky way model
• Earth, Moon, Saturn Ring Details
• Support Collada (.dae)
• Dynamic loading and unloading of add-ons
• Make add-ons easier to install
• Multiple names for solar system objects (done)
• For stars, do antialiased points in shader
• 3D graphic objects in scripts
• Reference frames
  • Named frames
  • Rotation offset frames
  • Two-vector frames: closest point vectors
• Self shadowing for complex objects
• Address 16k light year limit (done)
• Supernova catalog?

Celestia 2.0

• High dynamic range lighting - photorealism
• Light scattering model for rings
• Major UI improvements
• Advance Visual effects