Release Notes

Gaia Sky 3.7.3 focuses on quality-of-life improvements, like the new ’load dataset’ workflow, and includes many important bugfixes.

Features

• Rendering
  • Add a new line shading method that uses screen-space derivatives instead of a power function for higher quality line rendering.
  • Add limb fade to the cloud layer based on screen-space pixel counts. This prevents clouds from appearing overly flat at the edges of planets.
  • Add PBR support in wavefront .mtl material files via common extensions.
  • Add intrinsic opacity to materials, and use it in the default model sorter for proper transparency ordering.
• File picker:
  • Add a proper history stack to the file picker.
  • Refactor the file picker to extract it as a reusable component outside of the default generic dialog.
• Datasets:
  • Redesign the “Load dataset” action. The new dialog has two tabs: in the first, Load installed dataset, the user can hot-load any installed dataset. In the second, Load file (.vot, .csv, etc.), the user can select any supported file and load it as a catalog.
  • Improve the layout of the datasets component and add a shortcut to load datasets.
  • Add dataset type icons to the datasets component.
  • Improve the handling of dataset cards.
  • Mission datasets can now be ‘selected’, which sets the time to the start of the mission and the spacecraft as the focus. Part of #908.
  • Add support for server dataset images in the dataset manager. Part of #908.
• Japanese translation now fully complete: proofread and edited by Hiromasa Yauchi.
• Add an updater helper to dispatch update events.
• Fix double index initialization issue in star and particle groups loaded on the fly. Add update callbacks to star and particle loaders.
• Add a Wavefront extension to handle packed PBR textures (occlusion, roughness, metallic) as map_PBR.
• Add support for camelCase names in dataset description properties (e.g., nObjects, numObjects, sizeBytes, releaseNotes).

Bug Fixes

• Shader positioning bugs in model-based particle sets (e.g. star clusters).
• Fix expanding/collapsing dataset widgets to resize the scroll pane and component pane correctly.
• Add a scroll pane to the datasets component, which can grow beyond screen bounds.
• Consolidate the parser used in the color picker to avoid inconsistent accepted formats that led to a crash. Fixes #910.
• Clarify information about the shader cache in translation files.
• Enable separate activation of gravitational waves and relativistic aberration effects.
• Ensure the bookmarks manager has an up-to-date bookmark list before reloading the component view.
• Fix crash caused by asterisks in Windows paths when the shader cache is enabled. Fixes #907.
• Fix uninitialized star textures in the main post-processor reload caused by a settings bookmark.
• Include activation check boxes in the fade in/out validators for datasets.

Performance Improvements

• Improved performance when loading object name translations (I18n and I18NBundle).

Code Refactoring

• Extensively refactor settings handling. Remove all static references to the settings and settings manager objects, keeping a single regular reference in the main GaiaSky class. Settings manager objects are now created on the fly whenever needed, with negligible creation cost. Given the all-encompassing nature of this refactor, new bugs may have been introduced, so please report if found.
• Extensively refactor star/particle groups and internal initialization state.
• Extensively refactor dataset metadata and related utilities. Add provides attribute to datasets.

Build System

• Complete migration of Gradle build scripts to Kotlin DSL, including the settings script.
• Update to Libgdx 1.14.1.

Documentation

• Add class-level Javadoc comments to gaiasky.gui.components classes.