Gaia Sky 3.3.0

By tsagrista on

📢 Gaia Sky 3.3.0 available now!

Code Refactoring

  • The largest change in this version by far is the complete refactoring of the internal model. We have moved from an object-oriented inheritance hierarchy to an entity component system (ECS).
  • Move render lists to Java collections.
  • Flatten object hierarchy by removing some classes, merging their functionality upwards.
  • Abstract attitude loading system, remove Gaia class, use heliotropic satellite.
  • Add I18nFormatter to reformat i18n files.
  • Remove old date formatting infrastructure (desktop, html, mobile) in favor of a direct approach.
  • Remove useless number formatting infrastructure.

Features

  • Enable minimizing focus info interface.
  • Adjust debug interface layout.
  • Key bindings file versioning. If the key bindings file starts with the line #v[version], that version is compared to the default one and overwritten when necessary. That makes updating key bindings much easier.
  • Recompute UI scale at startup when starting with default config file.
  • Add back-buffer scale API call.
  • Add back-buffer scale controls to UI.
  • Add repository to -v information.
  • Rename fisheye post-processing effect and shader to reprojection. Update cubemap projection from fisheye to azimuthal equidistant.
  • Add shaders for Lambert equal-area, orthographic and stereographic projections.
  • Add re-projection GUI drop-down in preferences window. Add setReprojectionMode() scripting API call.
  • Include orthographic projection in panorama mode. Includes both hemispheres on the screen, side by side. Can be cycled through with ctrl+shift+k.
  • Include “orthosphere” panorama mode – orthospherical projection with both hemispheres overlaid to give a view of the celestial sphere from the outside.
  • Add new camera mode, orthosphere view, which includes the regular and the cross-eye orthosphere projections.
  • Add cross-eye view of the orthographic projection of the celestial sphere.
  • Add support for KTX and ZKTX textures.
  • Change from thread to scheduled task to remove the mode change info pop-up.
  • Add mode change pop-up setting to enable or disable showing a pop-up with information when changing modes (panorama, planetarium, stereo, etc.).
  • Add GUI button to exit stereo mode.
  • Add new object type, ‘cosmic locations’, to mark the positions of interesting areas or regions.
  • Enable scene lights for shape objects when static light is off.
  • New model attribute ‘blendMode’, which defaults to ‘alpha’ but can also be set to ‘additive’ to control the object blending.
  • Enable gamepad operation in welcome GUI.
  • Add zero-point to gamepad configuration.
  • Introduce gamepad support for spacecraft mode, remove ‘Gaia scene’ camera mode (can be mimicked with focus mode), refactor input controllers, fix default SDL gamepad mappings file.
  • Add several new functions to enable setting the camera state from scripts.
  • Add time zone to settings. Time zone can be either UTC, or the system default. Update date dialog year limits, fix time component layout.
  • Adapt raymarching effects work with ECS model.
  • Light glow effect now works with ECS model.
  • Expose post-processor properties as settings in configuration file.
  • Save configuration when closing dataset manager window.
  • Add popup notice when opening the keyframes window if component ‘others’ is not visible.
  • Add full screen bit depth and refresh rate to fully qualify selected full screen modes.
  • Improve layout and information of crash window.
  • Add notice when there are no datasets.

Bug Fixes

  • Disable tessellation on macOS by default.
  • Bug in latest version determination in version checker.
  • Remove unnecessary spacing in layout of focus info interface.
  • Trajectory size determination algorithm not accurate, breaks when adding points close to the origin.
  • Add model size attribute to compute solid angle for model objects more accurately.
  • Correctly query graphics device for resolution and apply scaling.
  • Toggling SSR and motion blur does not update depth state in some shaders.
  • Double definitions in shader libraries.
  • Render constellation boundaries as closed polygons in order to avoid artifacts.
  • Index errors in keybaord in controller GUI.
  • Back-buffer scale is now applied correctly (and only once), works with external view.
  • Remove angle from zenith from cubemap renderer in planetarium, use shader-based solution.
  • Prevent rendering titles if panorama mode is on.
  • Initialize position from coordinates object during initialization phase.
  • Land at location never returns. #674.
  • Set foucs with FocusView object type. #671.
  • Provide a correct index mapping for arbitrary attributes with string values.
  • Particle size of interactively loaded point cloud datasets.
  • Vertically flip UV coordinates of two-faced billboard to correct texture orientation.
  • Regression in billboard group rendering. #663.
  • Update coordinates in invisible only when present. #662.
  • Prevent runtime error due to non-invertible matrix in spacecraft entity.
  • Diffuse color contribution calculated incorrectly when nLights > 1 in normal shaders.
  • Names in star groups can now be localized, fix focus name in panel.
  • Translate strings of filters, shapes, datasets and minimap. #403.
  • Moon orbits are recomputed more often.
  • Filters crash with instanced star renderers.
  • Modal windows made not collapsible by default.
  • Hotkey tooltip backgrounds.
  • Jump in Pluto’s orbit due to deviation between full periods.
  • Highlight ‘all visible’ setting in quad-based star renderers.
  • Frame sequence number synchronized, value updated when opening preferences.
  • Use view angle instead of view angle apparent in go to object API call.
  • Increase number of vertices of minimap shape renderer, fixes crash in heliosphere minimap.
  • Typo in Jupiter English translation file, add meshes to data descriptor file.
  • Break link in dataset manager if too long.
  • Make sure direction and up vectors are orthogonal in camera transition call.
  • Increase size star point buffer when needed.
  • Null-check satellite attitude before getting quaternion. #402.
  • Empty tips may crash Gaia Sky at startup.
  • ‘add scene graph object’ event missing source object. #400.
  • Remove phase of pi radians in default-model orbital elements.
  • Regression with libgdx 1.11.0 that caused vertical tooltips.
  • Null-check settings in crash reporter.
  • Workaround for libgdx backslash bug in asset manager. Fixes #398.
  • Hide system cursor correctly with GLFW until libgdx 1.10.1 is released.
  • Use minimum width for debug interface to prevent dynamic resizing depending on content.

Build System

  • Move repository from Gitlab to Codeberg.
  • Update Gitlab references to Codeberg, when possible. Use Codeberg API for version checking.
  • Update changelog template repository to Codeberg.
  • Remove Gitlab CI file.
  • Extract documentation to own project, which is no longer a submodule.
  • Upgrade to libgdx 1.11.0 and LWJGL 3.3.1 — this adds M1 Mac support.
  • Add aarch64 JRE to macOS bundle for M1 machines. Move to macOS single bundle archive from deprecated old single bundle.
  • Force safe graphics mode on M1 macOS.
  • Use default GC (G1) in favor of Shenandoah (only LTS).
  • Upgrade gradle wrapper version to 7.5.1.

Documentation

  • Update repository pointers to Codeberg.
  • Update in-app mastodon reference from cat to social, as it’s in English.
  • Remove twitter link, add mastodon hashtag.
  • Improve comments on color maps GLSL code.
  • Add new panorama orthographic projection to API Javadocs.
  • Remove wrong license (leftover from old copy-paste) in fisheye fragment shader code.
  • Add contributor.
  • Typos and so.

Style

  • Mend variable names in about window to follow camel case.
  • Fix linter stylistic warnings in GUI and interfaces.

You can get this release in our repository.

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