Topic: Where exactly is the Ceril VII Star System.

[vroomfogle]

I find this especially cool since I work in the field of remote sensing (satellite imagery), great idea using earth imagery for realism!

[mathhatt]

Very nice !

Is it possible to adapt the texture and shapes of clouds using the Essaence flows charts ?

[kmanktelow]

Hi, All,

mathhatt: Yeah, Celestia allows you to use two default colour/bump/specular maps (I haven't even looked at the bump and specular maps yet!)
One is often an artists impression- and is the one normally displayed- and the other has 'lok' in the filename. (eg: Kulthea.jpg and Kulthea-lok.jpg.)
The lok is short for Limit of Knowledge- as there are still some objects in the Solar System that we haven't been able to photograph from all angles- so the un-photographed areas are left blank in the lok files. So, you could have two colour/bump and specular maps for Kulthea- one that shows both Hemispheres- and one that shows only the Western Hemisphere's for the Players to see, for example. (The normally used maps are usually based on the existing lok map, with some artistic license used for the unknown bits.)

The essaence flows could in theory be done as an lok cloud map- although, I'll have to check that just to make sure. But, you could create additional colour maps of Kulthea and simply add the flows to them, and change the texture used, as required. (The other problem with using clouds to show the Essaence Flows, is that Celestia expects the cloud texture to rotate relative to the planets' surface- like real clouds do. So, you would have to set their motion to zero in the *.ssc file, save it, then re-open Celestia.)

The other 'trick' it supports is *-loc.ssc data files (location files) which allow you add things like Cities, Observatories, Landing Sites, Mountains, Seas, Craters, Valleys, Land Masses and the enigmatic 'Other Features'. The View>Locations menu allows you to check on or off certain features, and change the minimum feature size displayed. (The real trick with Kulthea will be working out where in degrees, minutes and seconds of Longitude and Latitude all the various bits actually are!!)

Vroomfogle: Hmmm, you work in the field of remote sensing/satellite imagery? Perhaps you might be the best qualified person to maps bit's of Earth Satellite images to the Kulthea map...
Seriously, though, I just thought that if I'm trying to create as realistic a map as possible for Kulthea, the best place to start would be to use real satellite imagery. And, as Earth's the only Kulthea-esque planet we've got that type of imagery for.....

Thanks for the encouragement though!

All the Best,

Kevin.

[vroomfogle]

Kevin, maybe at some point I'd consider doing such as project but you seem to be doing great so far and I've got too many projects on my plate to consider it now!    I've still got to go back to CC3 and finish my Emer map and do Jaiman.

I had entertained the idea of generating a proper earth datum for Kulthea and editing the map so I could reproject it into different projections and read it into a GIS program.....

But really you are doing a great job here, the patching of earth data onto the kulthea map is a great idea.   Still working on it?

[kmanktelow]

Hi, Vroomfogle,

I've been away staying with the Brother and Sister-in-law for a few days, so haven't had any time to play with the maps (couldn't really drag my desktop with me!) But, yes I am still going to be working on the map(s- Specular and Bumps will be attempted at some point.)

I'd also like to get a locations file set up, so that seas, landmasses, realms and other features can be labelled as desired- although that's going to be fun and games to do. (I'd also like to get set up some way of converting Kulthean Dates to Julian Calendar Dates, so that you can do things like set the date and actually see what moons are out, and things like that. Again, that's something that might well take a little while to sort out- as it means playing with various Orbital parameters so that everything meshes together...)

All the Best,

Kevin.

[kmanktelow]

Hi, All,

Well, the bump-mapping is pretty atrocious at the moment, the specular map could do with a bit of a tweak, but Jaiman is fairly complete and Emer is getting there- although it doesn't possess any mountain ranges yet.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/28576267@N02/2739986196/sizes/o/

Just to prove that I'm not lazing around in the glorious British Summer we're (not) having. Great weather for ducks... 

All the Best,

Kevin.

[mathhatt]

Very nice indeed

[kmanktelow]

Hi, All,

Just uploaded some shots of the Kulthean night sky, in an attempt to get some sort of starmap started.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/28576267@N02/sets/72157606654551222/detail/

They show the starts from 0 degrees through 360 degrees in 20 degree steps, along with the Northern and Southern 'poles'.

Unfortunately, I was a bit lazy and didn't want to wait for time to advance- even sped up, so the Ceril Star is visible in two pictures Twelve and Fourteen Hours....

There's also two bands of stars missing- between 30 and 60 and -30 and -60 degrees.

I've left the Celestial Grid On, in case anyone wants to try patching the pictures together, to create one huge starmap. (Hint, hint! Perhaps if someone does make a start they can pass it to Terry so he can start playing 'join-the-dots' to create the definitive Kulthean constellations!)

I'll try to get the missing stars added tomorrow evening.

All the Best,

Kevin.

[vroomfogle]

Oooh, Kulthean Constellations, how cool that would be !

[kmanktelow]

Hi, All,

Well, I cannot believe that I'm back to work already!?!?
The three weeks flew past, and I didn't get half of what I wanted to do, done.

Anyway, I've improved the Bump mapping, and am gradually working on the Colour mapping- and have started to play with the location file:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/28576267@N02/2772923228/sizes/o/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/28576267@N02/2772075793/sizes/o/

Currently, it only shows the continents and the Lonely Sea- which is a start. (The fun bit is keep having to modify the file, exit Celestia and the rerun Celestia to get it to load the modified files. Memory Fragmentation city...)

Hopefully, I'll be able to finish adding the seas, then start looking at adding the various countries/realms to the location file- although I need to figure out the best way to use the size parameter- and the various code letters Celestia recognizes...

All the Best,

Kevin.

[RandalThor]

DUDE! Rock on! Those are awesome!

[kmanktelow]

Hi, All,

I know I should have been working on the Kulthean maps, but after reading Xa-ar, I just couldn't resist doing something else...

http://www.flickr.com/photos/28576267@N02/2855788204/

I promise I'll get back to work!

All the Best,

Kevin.

[mathhatt]

nice work

[Micael]

Hi, all of the Links do Stars and Pictures of Kulthea are no longer valid- so anybody have these somewhere und could it post again please? Thanks micael

[kmanktelow]

Sorry, I haven't used my Flickr account for years now......

Looks like the closed it. 

https://1drv.ms/f/s!AuOfIRuJvq23j5gtVBFgCcboKO6qkg?e=AklfKa

Link to the files on OneDrive.

All the best,

Kevin

[Micael]

Very nice, thank you- a few questions to the pictures: 1. Why so many similar continental maps? Some of them seem to have more white colours? Why you have done some many different northern stars views? Thanks micael

[kmanktelow]

The actual Kulthea map is two different maps (West and East hemispheres) joined together - both with different colour schemes.

That then had to be spherically mapped onto a sphere created in an old 3D rendering program called Imagine 3D and then the sphere had to be opened up to convert it to the Mercator Projection required by Celestia.

Then I started brushing on image data from a real satellite photo of the Earth, gradually covering up the original large resolution image and then scaling it to the size required for mapping it to Celestia, testing how it looks, back to editing, rinse and repeat.....

Very time consuming.

Thinking about it, AI would probably actually help?

But, like so many things, life got in the way - grandkids, etc.

I know I uploaded the Celestia files I'd done up that point to the Iron Crown Website, so it could have been dragged and dropped into the program directory but don't think it got put up - and I suffered catastrophic hard drive failure and lost all bar the images I'd uploaded to OneDrive.......

[cdcooley]

I have a copy of that set of Celestia files. They were available somewhere at some point, or maybe you sent them to me directly, I really don't remember because it was a very long time ago. I can send them to you or post them if you like.

I used them as a base for my own personal take on the Kulthean system and updated them for Celestia 1.5 and then again recently for 1.6.4. So if you don't mind and anyone is interested I could share my version as well.

In fact, I've been planning for some time now to make my version available since I'm reasonably happy with it even if it's not quite as complete as I would like and because I always hesitate before sharing something I've done for my own fun where it can be criticized by others.

Here's what I've written in my ReadMe so far.

This is an add-on for Celestia (https://celestiaproject.space/) and it would not be possible if kmanktelow on the I.C.E. Forums (now https://ironcrown.co.uk/ICEforums) hadn't shared a set of files for Celestia many years ago.

This was developed using version 1.64 on Windows but should work with with all 1.64 and newer versions on all platforms. I don't recommend the Mobile Celestia version on the Microsoft Store which has a broken implementation of the event handlers which require the scripts to be constantly running to work. (I don't know if that script behavior is a bug introduced in that particular version or an intentional change for all of Mobile Celestia but if intentional then the developers of Mobile Celestia don't understand the concept of event handlers. There's an alternate callback mechanism that is tied to the script execution and the event handlers were supposed to persist even after a script terminates. Sorry, had to vent my frustration on that one because the newer version has some really nice improvements otherwise.)

The parts of the addon are the resource files needed to add the Kulthean star system, a few scripts, and a diagram of the new keyboard map provided by the scripts.

The resources are in the "extras/Ceril-Kulthea" folder and that matches how they should be added to your Celestia installation.

The scripts can live anywhere but Celestia does have a folder specifically for scripts. Note that you can start Celestia using the "Kulthean Key Map.celx" script if you want to use all my extra key functions.


The "Kulthean Custom Key Map Layout.html" file shows all of the new key bindings added by the "Kulthean Key Map.celx" script. There are a number of convenience functions not directly related to Kulthea but the most important new features are bound to keys v and d. The v key toggles a display of the current Kuthean date and time. The d key puts you in a date entry mode so you can directly set a particular date and time. Since Kulthean dates span such a huge range of time the default "Set Time" dialog is terribly inadequate (and would be based on Earth time which isn't very convenient if you want to look at things from a Kulthean perspective).

If you have trouble with (or just don't want to use) the "Kulthean Key Map.celx" script there are two others with more limited features. The "Kulthean Goto Kulthea.celx" script will simply and quickly position you in orbit above Gryphon College. The "Kulthean Date Mode.celx" script shows the current Kulthea date and time and allows you to change it by pressing d, but implements the feature using a keyboard callback which won't interfere with any other key remapping you might have and is only active while the script itself is running. (Press ESC to cancel the script at any time.)

For this addon I have chosen the star 9 Cet/ HIP 1803 / HD 1835 / SAO 147237 to be Kulthea's sun, Ceril. This G3V class star in Cetus (the Whale) is has the right size and luminosity and is the best match I can find matching the the SpaceMaster description of Ceril. It's a bit closer to Earth than it should be, but most SpaceMaster star positions and distances are acknowledged to be wildly inaccurate and I wanted a star of the right type, size, and brightness to be very similar in appearance from Kulthea as Sol is from Earth. The file Ceril.stc can be edited if you want to have Ceril be some other star. The source files I was working from used TYC 3698-1970-1 and the line to restore it to that position is commented out but in Ceril.stc.

The Kulthea_locs.ssc file has the Western hemisphere continent and ocean names.

The Ceril_Asteroids.ssc file was generated by kmanktelow and the only changes I made were to anchor them to the name "Ceril" so that you can decide the true location of Kulthea by editing Ceril.stc.

The Ceril.ssc file has updated information for the rest of the system including Kulthea's moons, all of the planets, and the comet Sa'kain.

All values have been set to match the Shadow World Master Atlas 3rd and 4th editions and an asteroid placeholder is included so that Kulthea is counted as the 7th planet.

Kulthea's orbit and rotation are set to align with Earth so the grid views work and its year of 350 (25-hour) days matches the average Earth year of 365.2425 (24-hour) days.

Earth's Solstice on 2000 Dec 21 at 13:37:03 UTC is synchronized with the Kulthean Solstice of SEI 2751-1-1 at the start of the Predawn Quintar in central Emer and the solstices remain aligned for many thousands of years with only minor variations.

Kulthea's moons are all aligned so that they are new and full on the correct dates each year. I've even managed to get Sa'kain's orbit set so that Charon is in its tail on TEI 2625-2-1.

And for fun, there's a "Rift" at the L1 Lagrange point between Orhan and Kulthea. (While in the Ceril system, just hit Enter and search for Rift. Otherwise it's very hard to find because it is so small.)

Finally, there are the textures for Kulthea. I've created the base textures in a semi-realistic style. I'm not an artist and I actually prefer the look to be slightly "map-like" rather than fully realistic. The "limit of knowledge" textures act as an overlay to show the roads, regions, towns, and other sites of Jaiman. (I haven't gotten to any other continents yet.)

[kmanktelow]

Feel free to share it, it would be great to play with Celestia again... 

[cdcooley]

I've uploaded both the original 2008 files I had and my revisions to the TinyPortal Download Vault. We'll see how long it takes an administrator to notice.

In the mean time I've also put them on Dropbox along with some screenshots for those who are curious.

https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fo/6ong1vxx5r2f2orcm6wtc/AAy4dvJltC8TJ96XaXgGlK8?rlkey=exu9uolrjutv4zctf1r676kuf&st=hhr1hl9u&dl=0

I can also make the source textures I created in Gimp available, but just the main Kulthean texture is almost 1GB using the compressed settings so I'm not putting those up unless someone promises to take them and improve them. (The source texture is 16384x8192 and has multiple layers involved, with an even more detailed version over Jaiman.) The actual plugin files are using the Virtual Texture system which breaks that into smaller, more manageable chunks.

That Dropbox folder also has a file called "KultheanCalendar.html" which includes a Javascript-based calculator and clock that shows paired Kulthean and Terran times. Since Dropbox is just a file storage and sharing site, you will need to download that html file if you want to use it, so I've also included a screenshot of what that clock looks like. This is technically unrelated to the Celestia stuff, but the same date and time conversions are included in the Celestia scripts. Just without the cute clock display.