# Celestia/Development Road Map

This page is obsolete. For current information, see Ideas for post 1.7 era on GitHub.
Here's a development roadmap for Celestia (as of 6/22/07), with tasks roughly prioritized highest first.

## Celestia 1.5.0pre3

* Don't require LuaHook for scripted orbits and rotations
* Fix cloud shadows
* ASAP
Celestia v1.5.0pre3 for Windows was made available on May 24, 2007. A list of the accumulated changes and the location for downloading the Windows installer are at https://celestiaproject.space/forum/viewtopic.php?t=11082&

## Celestia 1.5.0pre4

* Changes to standard data files:
** new Eros model
** new ISS and Mir models
** new Itokawa model
* Fix stars
* Allow star orbits to be toggled separately from planet orbits
* Eliminate OrbitBarycenter
* Adjust near clip plane for FOV (to preserve depth buffer precision)
* Don't show labels for star system barycenters
* Fix SSC texture override for meshes
Celestia v1.5.0pre4 for Windows was made available on October 29, 2007. Not all of the hoped-for improvements were included, but many bugs were fixed. A list of the accumulated changes and the location for downloading the Windows installer are at https://celestiaproject.space/forum/viewtopic.php?t=11605&

## Celestia 1.5.0pre5

Celestia v1.5.0pre5 for Windows was made available on December 18, 2007. Not all of the hoped-for improvements were included, but many bugs were fixed. A list of the accumulated changes and the location for downloading the Windows installer are at https://celestiaproject.space/forum/viewtopic.php?t=11807

## Celestia 1.5.0pre6

Celestia v1.5.0pre6 for Windows was made available on January 21, 2008. Not all of the hoped-for improvements were included, but many bugs were fixed. A list of the accumulated changes and the location for downloading the Windows installer are at https://celestiaproject.space/forum/viewtopic.php?t=11932

## Celestia 1.5.0 final

Celestia v1.5.0 for Windows and MacOS X, as well as a tarball of its source code, was made available on January 26, 2008. It can be downloaded from SourceForge.
Not all of the hoped-for improvements listed below were included, but many bugs were fixed. A list of the accumulated changes is available at https://celestiaproject.space/forum/viewtopic.php?t=11953
* Changes to standard data files:
** Switch to new rotation model forms
* Atmospheres
** Make dense atmospheres work better
** Fix artifacts from linear interpolation across triangles
** Fix too-dark sky at zenith
** Automatic conversion of new style atmosphere parameters to old ones
* Default body frame is based on parent, not center of orbit frame; is this right?
* Fix depth sorting of labels

## Celestia 1.5.1

Change of plans: Celestia v1.5.1 will be strictly a bug-fix release, plus translations which were not included in v1.5.0. Features listed below which weren't in v1.5.0 will be included in v1.6.0.
* Script function to show / hide individual objects
* Script menu Already completed for 1.5.0
* Make quaternion slerp more robust Already completed for 1.5.0
* Double precision SampledOrbits Already completed for 1.5.0
* Pulsar catalog?
* Triaxial ellipsoids for solar system bodies
* Fix multiple star handling in star database builder
* Bug fixing
Celestia v1.5.1 for Windows and MacOS X was made available on May 5, 2008. It can be downloaded from SourceForge.

## Celestia 1.6.0

For a more up-to-date list of features considered or implemented for Celestia v1.6.0, see the WikiPage Celestia/160Features.
* User-definable object classes
* Orbits:
** More flexible means to choose which orbits to display (custom classes)
* Allow orbits to be shown in any reference frame
* Script:
** Functions to deal with object classes
** Expose 1.5.0 reference frames in scripts
** Vector and orientation parameters for ScriptedOrbits and ScriptedRotations
* Markers:
** Labeled markers
** Allow different reference frames for markers
* Texture improvements:
** Use lower resolution virtual texture tiles for surface patches farther from camera
** Improve texture memory management
** Multi-threaded texture loader
** Optimize galaxy rendering: point sprites, vertex buffers instead of immediate mode.
* SPICE
** Allow lists of kernel files
** Manage loaded kernels
** C-kernel rotation model
** Generic frame rotation model
* Goto fixes:
** Fix center orbit (currently assumes infinitely distant target)
** Goto barycenter should pick a distance based on size of the orbits around the barycenter.
* SampledOrbit / SampledOrientation:
** Periodic SampledOrbits
** Support cubic interpolation of SampledOrientation files
* New Earth rotation CustomRotations--precession, nutation, IRTF93
* Internal changes:
** Implement velocity method for all orbit types
** Change internal time scale to be Julian days relative to J2000.0
** Use J2000 ecliptic coordinate system throughout Celestia
** CachingRotation base class
* More accurate lunar orbit
* Depth sort location labels (new drawable type: label cluster)
* New data:
** Create model for comet Tempel 1
** Create model for asteroid (66391) 1999 KW$_4$ and its moon
* Eliminate the .cms format
Celestia v1.6.0 for Windows and MacOS X, as well as a tarball of its source code, was made available on July 9, 2009. It can be downloaded from SourceForge.

## Celestia 1.7.0

* Spacecraft fly mode
* Network Server Separated
* Dynamic milky way model
* Earth, Moon, Saturn Ring Details
* Support Collada (.dae)
* Dynamic loading and unloading of add-ons
* Make add-ons easier to install
* Multiple names for solar system objects (done)
* For stars, do antialiased points in shader
* 3D graphic objects in scripts
* Reference frames
** Named frames
** Rotation offset frames
** Two-vector frames: closest point vectors
* Self shadowing for complex objects
* Address 16k light year limit (done)
* Supernova catalog?

## Celestia 2.0

* High dynamic range lighting - photorealism
* Light scattering model for rings
* Major UI improvements
* Advance Visual effects