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DA, third time terrific
The virtual planetarium Digital Almanac III
Shortly before probably the most important festival of the year, I found 2 MB of data in my email mailbox. Achim Stegemann [1] had fulfilled his announcement and sent out a Christmas update of Digital Almanac III, Release 2.0a, to registered users. This welcome surprise and the fact that a star plays an important role in the Christmas story, were enough reasons to write a few lines about the third generation of THE astronomical program from Germany. It is also interesting to discover whether DA III is only a the third infusion of a tepid coffee or a strong mocha with a new taste.
Unlike earlier versions, DA III is available on CD-ROM only. But that is no wonder when you look at the 460 MB of data that fills a good amount of the disk capacity.
The program itself, including the star data, uses 380 MB whereas the GSC contains 252 MB data. For visual support, Achim Stegemann has included 81 MB of context sensitive accessible images of star clusters, galaxies, planets and moons in good and very good quality. The bonus directory contains many useful tools and datatypes. MUI 3.8, which is required, is also included on the CD. An extensive directory of planet textures, a PDF file about the Messier catalogue, and finally a developer and icon set directory complete the CD-ROM.
The first version of DA was even then a complex program which handled huge amounts of data. This complexity increased with newer versions, so that theoretically the CPU would be fast enough and the free RAM large enough for convenient working. The program is still usable on a 68020, but to work comfortably at least a 68040/40 is required. Warp speed is achieved with a PowerPC dual board (CyberstormPPC or BlizzardPPC) and WarpOS 4. It runs on all systems from Amiga OS 3.0 through 3.9, provided that they have at least 8 MB of free Fast RAM (recommended are 32 or more) and MUI 3.8 is installed. A graphics board with CybergraphX V3 or V4 or Picasso 96 is highly recommended.
DA III was tested on an A3000D with AmigaOS 3.5, 36 MB RAM, 68040-CPU and a RetinaZIII with CyberGraphX 3.x. Furthermore, it had to prove itself under Linux and UAE-0.815-JIT with Amiga OS 3.1 and Picasso 96 on a Athlon600 with 128 MB RAM and a GeForce2 GTS.
Version III supports 68k-CPUs but also Motorola's PowerPC, which makes calculations extremely fast. You get a virtual telescope with three different views, with a freely selectable time and location for observation, even outside of Earth. The star catalogue now includes one million stars up to +16m. If you think this is not enough, you can also include the Hubble GSC star catalogue, which contains 25 million stars.
Using the mouse and the keyboard, you can freely zoom around the virtual firmament or choose a position. The location of the planets is calculated very exactly, using DE404 or VSOP87 integration tables. You can also visit the moons of Mars, Jupiter, Saturn and Uranus. The high-resolution textures of the planets and moons are a feast for the eye in 8 bits and even more so in 24 bits.
Having visited the planets, you can now start to explore a collection of over 80.000 small bodies and asteroids as well as about 1000 comets. And if you should spot a new object in the real sky, you can integrate it into DA III.
Also included is another database with more than 100.000 deep sky objects, from the catalogues Messier, NGC, IC, UGC, PGC and many more. DA III enables you to create ephemerid tables, to calculate lunar and solar eclipses and to save these as animations in IFF-ANIM, Quicktime or MPEG format. You're doing all this on an intuitive MUI interface with support for drag and drop.
You can print out high-resolution star charts. And to connect the virtual and the real sky, you can let the program control a telescope motor!
The window that opens up after a double-click on the CD-ROM icon, is very orderly and follows the style of Amiga OS 3.5/3.9.
The installer opens its own window and determines the individual size of the installation by asking the user several questions. While the installation takes place, it displays astronomical pictures to lessen the boredom of waiting. You can influence the data to be installed over a very wide threshold - not everybody can spare 400 MB of hard disk. But that's no problem at all, since the installer is smart enough to keep unused components on the CD-ROM. If they are required, they are automatically read from there. You can also install them later anytime.
Most noticeable is the support for PowerPCs through WarpOS. All currently available boards for the Amiga (BlizzardPPC, CyberstormPPC) are supported. The documentation is completely written in HTML, no AmigaGuide anymore. By now, there are plenty of browsers for the Amiga, even demo versions should suffice (and the demo version of IBrowse is included on the CD). HTML has also some advantages when creating documentation, because AmigaGuide can strain with big documentation files. Using the also included OpenURL, you can view the manual directly from DA III.
Faster drawing routines, where trigonometric formulas have been replaced by a quicker matrix operations, increase the display speed. The star catalogue is now available in two different formats, using the old, but fast method if only a few stars have to be drawn, while for more stars the new format, which is comparable to the format of the GSC catalogue, is used. The rendering of the GSC catalogue has also been improved and is now noticeably faster than in DA II.
The ray tracing for the planet textures almost reaches warp speed under CGX, and realistic lighting of the planets can be achieved, provided that you are using a CGX screen in 15/16/24 bits. The world map and the moon can be displayed as a freely rotatable spheres.
DA III is more stable than its predecessor. The author has changed many parts of the program, with more attention to stability than speed. The speed comes mostly from the new mathematic algorithms and is mostly as good as DA II, sometimes even better. The bigger star catalogue is now the standard in DA III. DA II used the small catalogue of about 500.000 stars, but DA III with PPC support now defaults to the bigger one containing one million stars. DA III automatically adapts the size of the catalogue to the available memory, so that lesser Amigas can run the program, too. If the program cannot allocate enough memory to remember the positions of all stars, it restricts memory usage to store only the brightest stars. A requester will notify you of that.
Asteroid catalogues and user objects have now merged. DA I and DA II only had one window to display ephemerids or pictures. DA III opens a separate window for each new element. The PixelCheck function (used to avoid bright stars being overwritten by less bright ones), which previously only worked on 8 bit screens, is now also usable with 15/16/24 bit screens, but it does lower the speed and take up more memory.
If you zoom in close to Mars and moon, not only is the planet's texture displayed, but also geological objects and the landing sites of space crafts.
Thanks to the included program FTP-Mount, you can update your asteroids database directly over the Internet. DA III does all the downloading, unpacking of the GZIP file and converting it into DA III format. Depending on the speed of your connection, the download may take up to 30 minutes.
Following the current trend, there is no printed manual. But the HTML based online help is remarkable. Besides an extensive introduction to the usage of the program, you can also follow the DigitalAlmanac-workshop. Step by step, you can create different configurations. It starts with simple star charts, includes eclipses and ends with a QuickTime animation in which you are riding on a comet through the solar system. On the way the various complex panels will become understandable.
When using the right hardware, working with DigitalAlmanac III is real fun, on a "real" Amiga as well as under UAE. To come back to the question at the beginning of the report: it quickly shows that DA III is really a strong mocha that will taste very good to Amigans interested in astronomy.
It might be a desolate commercial Amiga market, but you will be impressed with the enthusiasm of the program's author and be grateful for such a pearl of a software. You can find more information on the homepage of DigitalAlmanac [2], and not only about DA III.
So, to conclude the result in one sentence: CALL NOW AND ORDER!
The program is available from
Achim Stegemann,
Kirschgartenstraße 69,
69126 Heidelberg
on CD-ROM for the price of 80,- DM (~40 Euro). Registered users of earlier versions can update to Version III for 50,- DM (~25 Euro). The cost of postage and packaging will depend on your location.
[1] achimste@gmx.deUwe Pannecke <Uwe.Pannecke@t-online.de>
