Adding Planets to Celestia on macOS
17 hours ago
- Celestia is a space simulator for exploring space and is often used by sci-fi artists for worldbuilding.
- Planets in Celestia are defined using .ssc (solar system catalogue) files, which have a syntax similar to HCL.
- Documentation for Celestia is sparse and outdated, making it difficult to know where to place addon files.
- On macOS, you must modify the application bundle by placing .ssc files in /Applications/Celestia.app/Contents/Resources/CelestiaResources/extras/.
- A minimal .ssc file example creates a planet 'Alpha' around the star Gliese 555 with basic orbital parameters.
- After copying the .ssc file to the extras directory, restart Celestia and navigate to Gliese 555 to see the new planet.
- Celestia recursively reads all .ssc files from the extras directory, allowing organization into subfolders.