re: WorldWide Telescope

Francis Reddy — Wed, 21 May 2008 18:15:02 GMT

As you've discovered, WWT is nearly as graphically intensive as a recent game. You'll need a minimum of a 3D-accelerated graphics card with 128 Mb of RAM; 256 Mb recommended. (Other minimum requirements here: www.astronomy.com/asy/default.aspx?c=a&id=6931). It works very well on the midrange Nvidia cards, some of which are now available for street prices of ~$100.

The interface is very similar to StarryNight's: You view the universe from within a "star ball." But WWT's panning and zooming is much smoother and more responsive than StarryNight's.

WWT doesn't have satellite positions, but it includes moons and planets and can drive a telescope to targeted objects. The main point of WWT is to make vast amounts of imagery available and provide an authoring tool so that people can share their knowledge of and interest in the sky.

re: WorldWide Telescope

shrug_eric — Wed, 14 May 2008 14:39:41 GMT

Time for an upgrade?

I couldn't run the app properly on my laptop or desktop - the debugger says there's not enough video memory.

I would like to hear how the application compares to StarryNight to TheSky...The all-sky interface of StarryNight is the most intuitive to date, I think. Does WWT have updates for satellite positions, etc.?