Astronomy Software?

[centus]

Hello,

I'm an amateur astronomer, and was wondering what the effort level would be in porting something like Stellarium (http://www.stellarium.org/) to the Pandora.

It is completely open source, there's a linux version, it uses OpenGL and QT4.5.

Thanks,
Or.

 

[dflemstr]

Just recompile it and it works, provided that the OpenGL-code only uses shaders... Otherwise, it should be pretty easy to port.
And iirc, that app is closely linked to the KDE distribution, so there might even be an ARM build of it.
Only time, or other members of this forum, will tell, though.

BTW, if for some reason we DON'T get Qt 4.5 on the Pandora, I will be very upset

 

[centus]

Thanks dflemstr!
Now I just need to wait for my Pandora to check it...
Actually, I could probably try recompiling it today on my linux box using gcc for ARM, right?

 

[lulzfish]

Thanks dflemstr!
Now I just need to wait for my Pandora to check it...
Actually, I could probably try recompiling it today on my linux box using gcc for ARM, right?

You could try doing that and then running it on a QEMU machine, but I don't know whether they have openGL going on there. Plus there's the distinction between OGL and OGLES to consider.

But if you have a virtual machine set up and an ARM compiler, definitely give it a shot.

 

[ldesnogu]

You could try doing that and then running it on a QEMU machine, but I don't know whether they have openGL going on there.

No, qemu doesn't support OpenGL (unless you use software Mesa).

 

[hobbyman II]

I have this wonderful thing on my PC called "Google", type in "stellarium arm" and you get links to debian/ubuntu/gentoo arm repos, wasn`t hard to do either, you should try it .

 

[dflemstr]

I have this wonderful thing on my PC called "Google", type in "stellarium arm" and you get links to debian/ubuntu/gentoo arm repos, wasn`t hard to do either, you should try it .

For some dumb reason I can't remember (for some project or something, dunno really), I had "127.0.0.1 google.com" in my "/etc/hosts" and I was too lazy to change it or to use other search engines (it was late etc )
Also, I live by the principle that if someone asks a question, that person should be the one to look for the answer actively, so I presumed that centus had already Googled it.

 

[ldesnogu]

I have this wonderful thing on my PC called "Google", type in "stellarium arm" and you get links to debian/ubuntu/gentoo arm repos, wasn`t hard to do either, you should try it .

Sorry but that doesn't learn us much except that the code is portable.
That doesn't answer the two main questions :
- what about OpenGL ES?
- what about user interface and the touch screen?

 

[sindbad]

Perhaps you should contact the Stellarium developers? There have been efforts to bring KDE to ARM devices before, like the nokia internet tablets and the neo freerunner.

 

[cb88]

what about nanogl...

also given that qemu is already slow and stelaruim runs like a slug with software GL probably not worth the effort since we already know it runs on arm

@Laurent its point and click so should work with the stylus shouldn't it?

 

[centus]

I have this wonderful thing on my PC called "Google", type in "stellarium arm" and you get links to debian/ubuntu/gentoo arm repos, wasn`t hard to do either, you should try it .

:blush: I'm embarrassed to say I only looked at their wiki and didn't google stellarium arm (you'd think it would be the first thing to do!

At any rate, as was already stated by Laurent, portability to ARM was not the main issue, I was more worried about the openGL vs. openGL ES

Any openGL wiz there who could take a look at the code and tell me if it's doable?

Thanks...

 

[centus]

Google is just great...
Found this on this very same forum:
QUOTE
http://www.gp32x.de/board/index.php?s=&am...st&p=640094

 

[lulzfish]

It looks like it mostly uses displayLists. I think it does some of the transformations on the CPU, but I haven't actually used the program so I have no idea what it looks like.

http://stellarium.svn.sourceforge.net/view...cpp?view=markup
This class looks like it does some transformation, and it puts everything into a display list. I'm pretty sure those were dropped for vertex arrays in ES, though, so that might need work.

from the forum post centus quoted:

Celestia and Stellarium are both open source planetarium programs that run in Linux using OpenGL. After a very, very brief look at the Stellarium source, I didn't see anything that would prevent a port to the Pandora. The graphics engine needs to be tweaked to OpenGL ES (from regular OpenGL) but that shouldn't be too hard. I think.
Once the Pandora is out, you can always ask if someone can do a port. If there's enough interest, you might just get it.

Well, duh :lol: it uses Qt and OpenGL. I think if somebody can change the display list stuff to vertex arrays and replaces the texturing with a simple texture map shader, it will be fine.

 

[hobbyman II]

I was mostly being cheeky, the number of times people feel compeled to ask simple questions on a forum when they have a whole world full of servers,networks, search tools and trillions of files bursting with information right at their fingertips just makes me smile.

personally I prefer Kstars, the trouble being my current system is Ubuntu and last time I installed it it didn`t want to display stars, which is a problem for an astronomy program you must admit, I don`t recall what dependencies Kstars has though, most K-apps need a fair few libs...

I just checked the version offered for Ubuntu8.10 and its intended for KDE 4.x, that may explain the missing stars, using the KDE effects driver maybe?, just trying it again and it requires 29 files to install, sounds too big for Pandora..

 

[dflemstr]

I just checked the version offered for Ubuntu8.10 and its intended for KDE 4.x, that may explain the missing stars, using the KDE effects driver maybe?, just trying it again and it requires 29 files to install, sounds too big for Pandora..


KDE4 uses shaders heavily. Especially the raw-3D-stuff like Marble etc... If your card doesn't support shaders, no dice. Differing library versions shouldn't be the problem.

KDE apps on the Pandora should be a breeze. Qt is optimized for very many platforms, including mobile ones, and as stated before: KDE4 has been ported to those Nokia tablets.

The space problem probably won't be an issue, if the devs chose to use the latest KDE libs.
We must get Qt4.5 at least to avoid having to package 50 mb of dependencies in the stellarium .pnd-file.
So, I beg you, o mighty devs of the Pandora: don't let the Pandora OS become another Debian, include the newest stuff in the core (that is halfway stable, of course), not just some 6 months old rocksolidly-stable library!

 

[sindbad]

It would be rather dumb not to include Qt 4.5 in the default image. Same goes for the latest GTK.

 

[daggerstab]

Perhaps you should contact the Stellarium developers?

Actually, someone mentioned Pandora in the mailing list some time ago, that's why I'm here now.

This is what Stellarium would look like at 800x480:

http://stellarium.hit.bg/screenshots/stell..._no_plugins.png

The "no plugins" thing is because plugins add buttons to the bottom toollbar and it goes out of the screen. Some of the dialog windows (QWidget-s, actually) are too big for the screen, too.

Unlike KStars, Stellarium is not tied with KDE, so I don't know where did this come from.

As for already existing ARM packages, all I could find are out of date (the last officially released version is 0.10.2). And for some reason, the most recent version offered for Jaunty is the buggy beta 0.10.0.

 

[Sphinxter]

I would not expect any embedded device to support every interface library on earth rather just pick one and stick with it for the greater goal of better more consistent application integration to a more seamless and pleasant user experience.

 

[sindbad]

I would not expect any embedded device to support every interface library on earth rather just pick one and stick with it for the greater goal of better more consistent application integration to a more seamless and pleasant user experience.

Not every single one, just the two very popular ones. Which are Qt and GTK.

wxWidgets for example wouldn't even take that much space in a .pnd if GTK were already installed..