Celestia Forums

Just like the topic says...

Cheers, Anders

WinStars is vastly superior a program.

atimholt wrote:WinStars is vastly superior a program.

Definitely NOT.

I did an in-depth comparison of the latest (shareware) Version of Winstars2 after contacting the Author.
There is a switch between "Planetarium mode" <-> Stellarium type and "Solar System mode" <-> Celestia type.

This program (version2) is still comparatively young and lacks a LOT of polishing and tuning at many places. It has many elements from a mix of

XEphem, Stellarium AND Celestia.

What really works neat --and we should have implemented it since a LONG time in Celestia-- is a feature that we coded already many years ago in XEphem: a one-click updating via the internet of ALL

comet, asteroid and spacecraft orbital elements

from the official servers.

This and the optional matching overlays of DSS1/2 deep-space photographs are certainly ideas borrowed from XEphem. Also, there is an option for /real-time/ cloud covers in case of Earth.

Bye Fridger

t00fri wrote:...
What really works neat --and we should have implemented it since a LONG time in Celestia-- is a feature that we coded already many years ago in XEphem: a one-click updating via the internet of ALL

comet, asteroid and spacecraft orbital elements

from the official servers....

Pff... and what do we wait to have such feature?

ElChristou wrote:Pff... and what do we wait to have such feature?

A cross-platform toolkit.

Actually, we could just aswell use libcurl, but Chris is always reluctant to introduce new lib dependencies.

t00fri wrote:This program (version2) is still comparatively young and needs still a LOT of polishing and tuning at many places. It has many elements from a mix of

XEphem, Stellarium AND Celestia.

And contrary to those softwares, Winstars is not opensource and restricted to the Windows platform (although it has been reported to work with Wine).

Christophe wrote:

t00fri wrote:This program (version2) is still comparatively young and needs still a LOT of polishing and tuning at many places. It has many elements from a mix of

XEphem, Stellarium AND Celestia.

And contrary to those softwares, Winstars is not opensource and restricted to the Windows platform (although it has been reported to work with Wine).

Yes, but it's the new WinStars2 that is now shareware, while Winstars1 was OpenSource, I have read somewhere.

Bye Fridger

Christophe wrote:

ElChristou wrote:Pff... and what do we wait to have such feature?

A cross-platform toolkit.

Actually, we could just aswell use libcurl, but Chris is always reluctant to introduce new lib dependencies.

Maybe not everyone appreciates right away the importance of such a handy update possibility, notably for spacecraft elements, but also for the others.

+++++++++++++++++++++++
If one really wants to be able to step out into the garden at some predicted time, look up into the sky for some spacecraft crossing over one's head and

say BINGO ,

then one has to upgrade the spacecraft elements no less than every 3-4 weeks!. Everybody is aware of the reasons why?
++++++++++++++++++++++

I made extensive tests of the required upgrade frequency years ago with XEphem.

So an easy one-click updating is really crucial!

Cheers,
Fridger