Release Notes

This release adds a high-resolution Milky Way texture for the high quality graphics preset, fixes the star disc size when the star point size is set to a negative value, and retunes the default star brightness. It also trims what the distribution ships, bringing the disk space requirement down from 300 MB to 230 MB.

Features

Milky Way texture

• Add a high-resolution Milky Way image (data/tex/mw_large.png), and split the extras descriptor into extra-high.json, extra-normal.json and extra-low.json, so that the graphics quality preset selects the texture to use. The high preset now loads the large image, and the normal and low presets keep the regular one.
• Bring the Milky Way alpha up from 0.2 to 0.3 in all three presets.

Star rendering defaults

• Lower the default star brightness (scene.star.brightness) from 6.648 to 5.2.
• Lower the default point size from 9 to 8.

Bug Fixes

• Fix the high-resolution Milky Way image being assigned to the wrong presets: the large texture was loaded by the normal preset instead of the high one.
• Fix the star disc inner radius when the star point size is negative. The negative value now falls back to 8 instead of pushing the radius below its floor.

Build system

• Exclude hipparcos.csv, hip_pm.csv and the models/iss directory from the distribution package, which shrinks the download and the installed footprint.
• Update the disk space requirement from 300 MB to 230 MB in the README and in the requirements page.

Documentation

• Fix the 360 mode keyboard hint markup in the 360 mode page.
• Update the version note on the documentation index.