Like the title...

- an option for some cursors tipology to choose from;
- "night vision" interface... (well... a bit for "defcon 1" maniacs, but could be useful);
- real time FFT audio spectrum analizer to show frequency peaks of "singing pulsar";
- same as above but concerning the exoplanet detection's techniques (scaled up, otherwise we will see just a flat line).

lowest priority:
- gravitational lensing effect;

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Never at rest.
Massimo

Good idea to set up and discuss wishlists at this time. We are still flexible enough to implement certain wishes that fit into the general .Sci framework!

FFT for pulsar audio and visualization of certain exoplanet detection techniques sound like very good suggestions. Yet for exoplanet detection, micro-lensing is an important tool as well.

Dawoon's (aka DW) lensing implementation is currently making good progress. He has already agreed to write a little report here about the background, the motivation and the status of the lensing project in .Sci very soon. Stay tuned.

Fridger

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The "night vision" setup is an old wish of mine too (see shatters, looong ago) because there is nothing worst than a non adapted bright UI when one is at night in the middle of the nature with almost no light around. Actually the UI is in standby (the dev effort is on "serious" things ) but once the default big revision of the UI is done, perhaps we could think in a skin to switch on a night adapted UI...

"night vision" interface...

as in ? what
a red outline theme ?
like stelliarium ?

or just a "black and gray theme" with green highlights ( and blue halo around the window) like this
( svn build 5229 )

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"I don't pitch Linux to my friends, I let Microsoft do that for me."
Using OpenSUSE Leap 15 & CentOS 7.6

Since I can remember there has been the discussion among Amateur Astronomers (of which I am one), whether it is advantageous to switch the electronic gear displays to red night vision during field work with the telescope. Extensive studies have finally demonstrated that the effect is close to NIL. I have never use mine either...

Fridger

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My guess is the necessity or not of a "night vision" UI greatly depend on how people use the soft. I'm pretty sure many astronomers don't even look anymore to the sky when it's time to set up a computer assisted telescope, specially if one is looking for some DSO's or other very dim objects... For such use, of course such feature is useless.
We may also consider .Sci won't be used on the field, no interface to telescope, most features quite advanced with (for now) a strong focus on DSO's etc...
We may also consider .Sci will still be a good soft for the basics, so amateur astronomers could be tempted to use it outside as a sky map. For them a dim UI would be certainly welcome.

That said, .Sci UI won't be Celestia's UI. Eventually the global philosophy may well end to be a full screen use with integrated panels to the canvas. In such case, we need a visual good balance between the different elements so a dedicated "night vision" skin may well be not necessary at all...
Anyway, the topic being VERY low priority, the discussion is opened but no concrete result on this side should be expected for the near future.

A night vision UI must have some good functional use, otherwise it wouldn't be worth the considerable development time it will cost! My above example with amateur telescopes was NOT meant as a real possible application of .Sci, but more as an illustration that even traditional uses of night vision eventually were recognized to be rather useless. It is related to the fact that such a typical red illumination also disturbes the total dark adaptation of the eye that is needed in astronomy for recognizing very fine objects. Anyway, my personal motivation for coding this is rather low, until we don't have a certain 'abundance' of coders in the team

Chris' writing may lead to the impression that we are still in the planning stage of the GUI of .Sci. But actually we have already spent many weeks in the design and coding of .Sci's new UI in the beginning of 2013! While the new GUI may not yet be final, it doesn't need much more development for now, except perhaps some polishing here and there. It is quite clear that we will spent any free resources now to a further implementation of new astrophysical and cosmological visualization functionality, rather than to GUI polishing or even night vision.

Fridger

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it dose depend on HOW bright the red light is
red is good for LOW POWER and very dim UI it is seen by the rods in the eye rather well ( at a LOW LEVEL )
and is easier to read black type on white PAPER with a red light than a blue light ( at the same very low level)

but for a computer display one would want to use something like
text and outlines as (#703838) on a (#000000) background

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"I don't pitch Linux to my friends, I let Microsoft do that for me."
Using OpenSUSE Leap 15 & CentOS 7.6

I think a night view mode is just useful. Imagine you are outside enjoying the beautiful sky, when you are going to launch Celestia, suddenly, a flash come out... That must be terrible. I am afraid that he cannot see the milkyway any longer.

I read an interesting research report some days ago. It said, dim red light can keep those who stay up calm, while a bright light or a blue dim one at night may drive one mad!

One little question: How much of the relativity effects will be considered in .Sci?

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Hanghang

While I am not a fan of a "night view" mode, relativistic effects are definitely planned. Firstly, a General Relativity (GR) framework is obligatory for a sensible simulation of cosmological effects! Effects due to Special Relativity (SR) can and should be implemented, too. However, there are some conceptional problems to be solved first: for consistency, in SR all speeds are bounded above by the finite speed of light (c). Giving c its measured value, it would take a long long time before we could reach a system beyond our solar system in celestia.Sci simulations . Hence we need to think about suitable "tricks" to circumvent this issue in simulations.

One of the most instructive web sites with a vast number of clean simulations of various SR effects is the one by Prof. Ute Kraus and her group (Univ. Hildesheim/Germany): http://www.spacetimetravel.org/


Fridger

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A long time ago, I already described why the current implementation of Celestia (observer apparently moving at v > c) isn't in conflict with relativity theory : the observer is never moving at all, relative to the globaly cosmic frame (the one in which the CMB is locally isotropic) ! All the observer could do is "jump" from one position to another one, in a continuously way. His apparent motion is virtual.

The global frame of Celestia is defined by an infinite number of static observers, each one at rest relative to the next one. When the user starts "moving" in space (whatever the velocity), he's just switching from one static observer to the next. Again, this is just a virtual motion, and can be done at any rate (i.e. any "velocity"). There is NO conflict with special relativity theory here.

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"Well! I've often seen a cat without a grin", thought Alice; "but a grin without a cat! It's the most curious thing I ever saw in all my life!"

Maybe to show on screen just the time spent by the observer to "jump" elsewhere...

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Never at rest.
Massimo

Martin,
the v > c consistency requirement in Celestia could be justified with various related arguments, like yours above or my presumably even older arguments at shatters.net. As to your above liberal use of "infinity" I would be at least careful, though...

Generally, what you were describing above for v > c , is well-known as a Tachion scenario. Tachions themselves are indeed NOT inconsistent with Special Relativity. The big problem arises however, with Causality, when the Tachionic particles ( v > c) are allowed to penetrate the light cone, thereby interacting with normal particles that travel with v<= c!

Many possibilities about re-conciling v > c travel with SR were recently re-evaluated and re-discussed in the Particle Physics literature, in the context of trying to understand the findings of the (now proven incorrect!) OPERA experiment that had claimed Neutrinos to travel with v > c! See this link to my respective thread:
viewtopic.php?f=2&t=416

For celestia.Sci the SR challenge will be considerably bigger than it used to be for Celestia: we want to implement in 3D graphics all the characteristic observable effects of SR that critically depend on the ratio v/c being <= 1. For a summary and nice, instructive videos, see once more this site http://www.spacetimetravel.org/.

Fridger

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Yep. I often get confused when I see the Celestia's camera is running in a faster-than-light way. That's impossible in reality.
The relitivity work of .Sci is awesome!
This reminds me of another space simulation program called Space Engine which shows the camera speed... It sometimes reach a speed up to thousands even millions of c!

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Hanghang

No, it IS possible ! Read again my explication above.

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"Well! I've often seen a cat without a grin", thought Alice; "but a grin without a cat! It's the most curious thing I ever saw in all my life!"