Gaia Sky 3.6.6

By tsagrista on 24 Jan 2025

📢 Today we publish the version 3.6.6 of Gaia Sky. This is a small update focused on fixing some bugs and improving performance. Also, it comes with proper handling of depth for volumes!

The Trifid nebula (NGC6514) rendered as a volume with correct usage of the depth buffer.

Features

  • move volumes earlier in the rendering pipeline, because they now write to the depth buffer.
  • check for dataset incompatibilities and ask user to confirm action when selecting incompatible datasets.
  • add window size and resolution of external view in settings, when the external view is active.

Bug Fixes

  • attitude indicator not scaling with units-per-pixel value in spacecraft UI.
  • incorrect initialization of label threshold in volumes in VR mode.
  • entering panorama mode resets back-buffer scale. The issue was that the dynamic resolution reset routine was always applied, and not only when the dynamic resolution setting was on.

Performance Improvements

  • replace arbitrary precision add() call with double-precision one to compute spherical coordinates of objects. Double-precision is more than sufficient for that purpose.

Build System

  • update install4j template to version 11.

Documentation

  • improve javadoc comments in settings class.

As always, you can grab it right here (link to repository).

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