Celestia/Development Road Map

This page is obsolete. For current information, see Ideas for post 1.7 era on GitHub.

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 https://celestiaproject.space/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 https://celestiaproject.space/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 https://celestiaproject.space/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 https://celestiaproject.space/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 https://celestiaproject.space/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.

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

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.
 * 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
 * Multi-threaded 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 around the 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 1.7.0

 * Spacecraft fly mode
 * Network Server Separated
 * 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