Stellarium Custom Backgrounds

[catman161]

Hi Guys,

 

I spent the day with Dawson today going through astro stuff in general and he was kind enough to help me make a custom background that is my yard for stellarium.It was great to meet Dawson and I had a thoroughly good time, thanks for coming over  Now we spent a while doing this and got it to work on his laptop and my wifes laptop. Both his and my wifes laptops run windows seven and my laptop runs windows vista. Guess which laptop it refude to play ball with? That's right mine!

 

It is not a hu problem as I say, we got it to work on my wifes laptop so can just use that one. However I would relly like to know the reason as to why mine doesnt work? The landscape.ini file is the same the picture file is the same. We put it down to maybe just that as my laptop is older maybe it is just a hardware thing?? Wa shoping somebody might have exprienced this also and know a solution? If not is no big deal as I said I wll commandeer SWMBO's laptop..............with her permission

 

So my laptop:

HP DV2500

Windows Vista Home Edition 2007

Stellarium V 12

Mobile Intel® 965 Express Chipset Family (graphics)

 

Any opinons apreciated. Am hoping Damian may know something of this?

 

anyway a screenshot of what stellarium looks like if I try to use the "home" lanscape we created today.

 

 

[Allan the Plumber]

Hi Felix

Have resently done this to my Stellarium found a little YouTube video (no sound just prompts ) that helped found I could go back over what I was doing and double check,

Sorry doing ths on iPad so not able to copy an paste in the link but here is all the info from YouTube

"stellarium- how to create a costomised landscape" name of author beabertbiker

Try putting this into YouTube see what you get

Cheers Allan

[dawson]

Allan, we followed various guides and mimicked my attempt, plus we copied the new landscape folder to two other laptops and it worked a dream, which is why we thought it was maybe the workings inside the stoneage laptop

Interestingly though, we looked at the image (Png) files for the landscapes which come with stellarium and we couldn't find any differences between their properties and the properties of our image; we re-sized the file and made it under 600kb (original size was about 30mb); made png appear as PNG, altered the pixels per inch.... Always the black and yellow screen of stellarium-doom!

I think maybe one of felix's cats had wee'd on the graphics module.

It's a shame as it worked so well on the two other laptops.

Yes, i had a great day felix. Playing astronomy is so much more fun than going to work!

James

Edited March 22, 2013 by dawson

[Guest Ely Ellis]

I know this has probably been suggested but what about using XP or Win 7?

 

Or, is there an XP mode in Vista perhaps?

 

From what I have been reading with James's posts the other week, he seems to have gone fairly deep into it, so if he couldn't sort it then your only option maybe to upgrade the OS to XP (yes, upgrade! we all know Vista's reputation although I have never used it myself).

 

Maybe check if drivers are available for XP first though or you may end up worse off.

 

Cheers

 

Martin

[Big Al]

Felix - It could have been worse; you could have got

[Guest Kheldar]

Is there a line in any of the configuration files where you have to put something that includes "My Documents" ?

 

Vista doesn't have "My Documents" ... it only has "Documents"

 

This may be complete useless information, but there it is

[Perkil8r]

Now this I like the look of! Who will be the first to do Belper though?

[catman161]

Hey Stephen, thanks, but no nothin like that. Am gonna keep messing around with it but will most likely use the wife's laptop. It's newer, has newer OS and has more memory and a bigger hard drive and the custom background works! In fact I am not gonna bother with the old laptop!! Lol!

[Guest Tweedledum]

Hi Felix,

 

Have no issues in xp or W7.

 

Suspect it has something to do with Vista. I'll have a poke round. Essentially its very easy to do and as you have alredy successfully updated one laptop and the process is the same then it should be hunky dory..(Hate the word should!)..

 

Your laptop has sufficient grunt, you are running stellarium so its interfacing with the graphics drivers,mmm In the words of Arnie

 

Ill Be Back...

[Allan the Plumber]

Just a heads up

 

my laptop is runs on windows vista too

 

I know this may sound stupid but on occassions when I open Stellarium i get the yellow and black boxes I close it open it again sometimes it takes to the 4th atempt but it finally opens as my back ground

 

Sorry if this sounds stupid but has worked for me

 

Cheers

Allan

[dawson]

Allan, that's useful to lnow. Lets get felix to try that. Though i think he quite likes the speed and sleek lines of his wife's.

Jd

[Guest NeilH]

Vista and win 7 with some program's have issues if they are installed in the default program's file directories. The program file directories have some extra hidden admin rights on those areas and can sometimes cause software to have issues even if you are logged in as an admin user. I have a non astronomical software that if installed in the program file directory it would not run. If installed in a sub directory off the c: drive it would work, so like c:\astro it may work. Not sure of the full technical reasons for this but I think it is how some software write to the install directory and the permissions are more restrictive. May not though fix your issue and may not be the reason. Just from experiences I have had with other software.

Neil

[dawson]

I've just installed Stellarium on my old laptop, Vista, 32 bit, like Felix's, and it works a treat; I even installed Felix's back garden and that landscape works a treat too. We think the graphics of my Pavillion dv6000 is just better than the one in Felix's dv2500.

 

James

[Allan the Plumber]

I've just installed Stellarium on my old laptop, Vista, 32 bit, like Felix's, and it works a treat; I even installed Felix's back garden and that landscape works a treat too. We think the graphics of my Pavillion dv6000 is just better than the one in Felix's dv2500.

 

James

 

Me thinks Felix's wants a new laptop

 

If it's giving him this much trouble hey what the hell( my manta at moment) buy a flash new laptop   ;)    

 

Going to do this myself, company i used for the main tower computer I have ( all bells and whistles) is PC SPECIALISTS you can pimp up the base computer ie RAM hard drive graphic chip etc no problems with them and very helpful if your not sure what works

 

If my mother buys my laptop going to treat myself to a new shine laptop hope CC can copy   :facepalm:  

[Brantuk]

I got mine from ebuyer just after xmas - they're very good on price and extras and you can generally get a better spec than elsewhere for the same money.