Gaia Sky is a real-time 3D Universe application that runs on Linux, Windows and macOS. It is developed within the framework of ESA's Gaia mission to chart more than 1 billion stars.
A part of Gaia Sky is described in the paper Gaia Sky: Navigating the Gaia Catalog.
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3.5.321 Sep 2023 03:25
minor feature:
Full changelog
:
Atmosphere object distance falloff.
Exit JVM process with a proper status code depending on application state.
Mismatch in bundled JRE versions in install4j script.
Glitches and artifacts in atmosphere ground tessellation shader.
Base opacity applied to model bodies when rendered as billboards.
Update minimum required JRE in install4j script to 15. version tag.
Use camrecorder target frame rate instead of frame output system one in keyframes.
Check keyboard focus state when polling cursors in main mouse/kdb listener.
Raymarching event description.
Small improvements in UCD parser for IDs and magnitudes.
do not preemptively check display resolution in macOS, as it usually runs a headless JVM.
Clean editing keyframe on deletion.
do not render keyframe lines/points when camcorder is playing. index in path linear interpolator.
Features:
New welcome screen title design and splash.
Add check for keyframe timings (t_kf fps 1 == 0) and respective notice.
Add new visibility type 'Keyframes', which controls the keyframe points and lines. Add new keyboard mapping SHIFT+K to toggle it.
Add tooltips to keyframe playback buttons.
Move `onlyBody` trajectory attribute to `bodyRepresentation`, which is an enum that enables the representation of only body, only orbit or both. The `onlyBody` attribute is still kept as a proxy. Rename `pointColor` to `bodyColor` in trajectories. `pointColor` is kept as an alias.
Skip back/fwd, step back/fwd, play/pause and timeline slider all work. Move keyframes logic and model to keyframe manager.
Add direct playback capability to keyframes. Still WIP.
Keyframe system to use new camera path object in export operation.
Move from buffered file-backed recording and playback to model-backed solutions for the camrecorder. This means that, during recording, the data is captured and stored in memory and persisted to disk when the recording finishes. During playback, the data is loaded to memory at once at the b
3.5.215 Sep 2023 14:05
minor bugfix:
Full changelog
:
Exporting keyframes to camera path is missing the very last frame.
Restore line rendering in keyframes, lost in a regression during the line refactoring campaign.
Only deactivate main mouse/kbd listener if the current dialog is modal.
Full-screen log item in translation files.
Visual layout and information structure in about window, system tab.
Apply patch provided by luzpaz ing many typos in comments and strings.
Features:
Improve keyframes window layout, with more space for keyframes and better sizing of keyframes table.
Default to full screen for small displays, and refactor display resolution fetching process.
Check AMD APU code name to detect Steam Deck.
Steam deck programmatic detection to default to full screen at startup.
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3.5.023 Jul 2023 03:15
major feature:
Full changelog
Features:
Add control for maximum number of velocity vectors per star set in preferences dialog, performance section.
Add CLI flag to force HiDPI mode either to 'Logical' or 'Pixels'.
Enable holding comma or period to slow down or speed up time. Map time speed up and slow down to d-pad up and down in game controllers.
Add `trailMinOpacity` to trajectories. This raises the opacity of a trail to the given minimum value.
Speeding up and slowing down time can be done by pressing and holding '.' and ',' respectively. No more frantically clicking a key. Also, the time warp change is smooth now.
Add camera position/orientation named bookmarks, additionally to the already existing object bookmarks. Add bookmarks for many eclipses in the default bookmarks.txt.
Use coordinates provider from objects to sample periodic orbits instead of hardcoded algorithms.
Dim atmosphere w.r.t. camera, star and eclipsing body positions during eclipses.
Initial support for ephemeris based on Chebyshev polynomials.
Add support for VSOP2000.
Add eclipses by projecting the shadow umbra and penumbra from moons to planets and vice-versa. The option to outline the umbra and penumbra is given as a checkbox in the preferences. Eclipses can be deactivated, also from the preferences window, graphics tab.
Celestial sphere showcase script.
Add a few showcase scripts.
Scripts showing an object on a horseshoe orbit around Jupiter.
Update wording on point and line styles in preferences dialog to make it more concise and clear.
Use GPU lines as the default line renderer for trajectories. This results in a big performance improvement, especially when many lines are on display. GPU lines now also can use the geometry shader to render as polyline quad-strips.
Use a geometry shader to generate the triangles in the polyline quadstrip renderer instead of the CPU. Performance is much improved.
Add geometry shader stage (optional) to shader program provider and to extended shader pr
3.5.119 Jul 2023 17:13
minor feature:
paths in Windows do not accept certain characters and are unsuitable to represent our bookmarks. Add specific BookmarkPath implementation that fixes this.
VR flag from --openvr to --openxr.