celestia/ChangeLog

Celestia Revision History
-------------------------

1.00
* Initial public release


1.01
* Added more realistic and aesthetically pleasing ring illumination function
* Made planets project shadows onto their rings (requires multitexturing)
* Detect and use ARB_multitexture extension
* Some configuration parameters now read from a file
* Support for multiple solar system catalog files
* Split solar system files into solarsys.ssc and extrasolar.ssc
* Added Help/License menu
* Added simple camera orbit mode
* Fixed up parsing and printing of catalog numbers--still kludgy though


1.02
* Made Celestia icon appear in corner of window.  Whee.
* Fixed an extremely subtle numerical precision bug which manifested itself in
  a number of ways:  jittering when following small objects, incorrect
  targeting of small objects with goto, occasional flashes when closely
  approaching an object, and probably other things as well.
* Reversed rotation directions when orbiting--it's much more intuitive now
* Added an exponential dolly capability to the camera
* Double-clicking will now center on the selected object
* Fixed bug in elliptical orbit calculation
* When orbits are displayed, the Orbit for the selected object is highlighted
* Incorporated Scott Hudson's asteroid geometry data for Toutatis, Kleopatra,
  and Geographos.
* Fixed problems with disappearing labels and with misplaced labels for
  extrasolar planets
* Eliminated 'sticking' when mouse buttons released outside of Celestia window
* Added Real Time option to Time menu
* Reversed planet rotation direction so it's correct.  Oops.
* Added about a dozen extrasolar systems from Jean Schneider's catalog
* Create two new textures for extrasolar planets
* Moved Selection class outside of Simulation, as it's generally useful


1.03
* Rotating the camera is now more responsive to mouse movement
* 'Infinite mouse' hack allows rotating and dollying without having to pick up
  the mouse and reposition the cursor in the window
* Fixed z ordering for planets and satellites so small that they only appear
  as points.  Small satellites will no longer get obscured by planets they're
  in front of.
* Apparent magnitude calculation for planets now takes into account phase
* At close range, stars are now rendered as textured sphere meshes.
* Choosing stars by catalog number no longer selects a star even when the specified
  star doesn't exist.
* Added labels for stars; the list of labelled stars is read from celestia.cfg
* Cleaned up vecmath.h, added consts and reference parameters where appropriate
* Cleaned up StarNameDatabase


1.04
* Start out at the moon instead of in deep space
* Made picking of planets work properly for planets with disc sizes greater than one
  pixel.
* Added call to glDeleteTextures to Texture class destructor
* Added bump mapping.  Uses DOT3 bump mapping and only works on GeForce cards
  right now.
* Enabled user control of per-pixel lighting.
* Menu checked state for label options synced with renderer state.
* Added a context menu that appears when an object is right clicked.
* Celestia now uses texture coordinates from 3DS files
* Added 3DS model of Eros based on NEAR laser rangefinder data
* Added 3DS models of Deimos, Phobos, and numerous other asteroids and
  small moons based on Phil Stooke's models
* Replaced TriangleList class with much more flexible VertexList
* Introduced support for compressed textures; texture compression is specified
  on a per texture basis in .ssc files.
* Added a reverse time option
* Added an OpenGL Driver Info item to the help menu


1.05
* Made per-pixel lighting work for planets without bump maps too
* Allow user control of magnitude of faintest visible stars
* Added support for PNG textures
* Improved console: enabled backspace, relocated text entry, code cleanup, ...
* Corrected star positions by converting them from equatorial to ecliptical
  coordinates.
* Eliminated case sensitivity when selecting objects by name
* New ring texture for Saturn with separate reflectance and opacity
* Ring textures now specified in .ssc files instead of hardcoded
* Implemented date/time selector dialog box
* Changed the mouse wheel function from zoom to dolly.  Zoom is now controlled by
  shift left-dragging the mouse.  For mice without wheels, control left-dragging
  will dolly.
* Fixed orbit and dolly functions to work in follow mode
* Improved rendering of objects at close range: less clipping, extra sphere LOD.
* Fixed bug that caused irregular objects to be displayed at half their actual size
* ESC now cancels goto and follow instead of exiting app.
* Fixed orbital calculations for planets so their positions are now closer to
  reality.
* Completed extrasolar planets database; it now contains all known planets
  around normal stars
* Mir!
* MeanAnomaly field in .ssc files was incorrectly called TrueAnomaly; this
  is fixed, and solar system parser now also accepts MeanLongitude in orbital
  elements section.
* Epoch can now be specified for orbital elements.  Default is J2000.


1.06
* Made Alt+F4 exit the app.
* Fixed text rendering to be pixel-accurate; labels and console text are now
  crisper and don't have any missing pixels (need to test on more graphics
  chipsets.)
* Updated parser to handle negative numbers.  Big oops.
* Corrected errors and omissions in extrasolar planets catalog.
* Added locations menu for saving and recalling favorite places.
* Added intro message.
* Removed stars without spectral class info from database.
* Included support for cloud maps
* Added extrasolar planets from the ESO's April 4th announcement
* Axial rotation for stars
* Alleviated clipping of very distant stars (Deneb was missing from Earth's
  sky due to this bug.)
* Increased depth buffer precision for planet rendering--this should improve
  the quality of rendering with 16-bit z buffers
* Added option to render constellation diagrams
* Use strips instead of lists for rendering spheres
* Enabled keyboard control of zoom with home and end
* Implemented basics of linear scripting system
* Run a script at startup; the script filename can be set in the config file

Code revisions:
* Converted Simulation class to use Julian days instead of seconds as internal
  time units.
* Eliminated brain damaged observer methods in Simulation
* Cleaned up Console class


1.07
* More corrections to planetary orbital calculations
* Accept LongOfPericenter as well ArgOfPericenter in solar system catalog files
* Updated parser to accept C-style string escapes
* Render the Milky Way and other galaxies
* Added more constellations
* Display constellation names
* Cleaned up render menu
* Added FPS counter
* Implemented basic WWW info feature for planets and stars
* New script commands: renderflags, labels, orbit
* Implemented a scripted demo mode
* Placed ISS in Earth orbit
<<<<<<< ChangeLog


1.08
* Initial UNIX port
* Created GLUT based front-end
* Created abstract Timer class with Windows and UNIX implementations


1.09
* UNIX port fixes: eliminated friend templates in Quaternion, added -lm to
  configure.in, added missing return type for methods in Console and Overlay


1.0.10
* Fixed problem with ring shadow texture by setting wrap mode to GL_CLAMP_TO_EDGE
* Corrected scale of ring shadow to match size of planet
* Switched to octree based visibility determinination algorithm for
  stars.  The result is better rendering performance, especially when
  many stars are displayed.  The octree algorithm is also lag free, meaning
  that all star "popping" is eliminated.
* Added setvisibilitylimit command for scripting.
* Fonts now selectable in celestia.cfg
* Added more and fewer visible stars options to render menu
* Fixed BigFix precision bug that appeared only with certain compiler versions.
* UNIX version: Enabled arrow keys and home/end in UNIX version
* UNIX version: Implemented frame rate counter
* UNIX version: Added mouse wheel support
* UNIX version: Fixed bug that caused picking to happen while dragging mouse
* UNIX version: Added more compiler optimization flags to Makefile
* UNIX version: Ctrl-Q now exits program
* UNIX version: Fixed vertically flipped textures
* UNIX version: Initial Gtk+ version, with rudimentary GUI


1.1.0
* Added RotationPhase field to solar system bodies; tweaking this makes sure
  that the right part of the planet is dark at a given time.
* Changed axial tilt of Earth so that the North Pole is illuminated in summer,
  not winter.
* Added option to render celestial coordinate sphere
* Added geosynchronous follow mode
* Added synchronous command to enable geosynchronous follow mode
* Fixed disappearing stars when modifying field of view
* Fixed bug reading angle in galaxies file
* Made it possible to select an object by 'path' e.g. Sol/Earth/Moon
* Bound { and } keys to control ambient light level
* Windows version: added solar system browser window
* Windows version: added star browser window
* Windows version: separated update from redraw so animation no longer occurs
  when dragging modal dialogs over the view window
* Windows version: made context menus work when running fullscreen

Code:
* Fixed bug in quaternion to matrix conversion; conversion was returning the
  matrix representation of the conjugate.
* Moved common UI code into CelestiaCore