Test reports
|
Test reports
|
»The compass for the universe
After there was another old warrior of the software guard, which has become a little smaller since then, who showed his
abilities on this place, there is another old friend, who is waiting on the AmigaOS for some years and who shall get
some attention: the astronome Digital Almanac. Well, it might have been not a bad idea, to look into the past and to
wallow in menories - but this is not the reason for our todays' DA-date, but a new test makes sense, because it is
available in a completely revised version and curries for the farvour of the star loving Amigan.
And in addition to the way of Shareware went in version one Achim Stegemann offers Digital Almanac II, from now on called
DA-II, as a full version on CD-ROM [1].
Even if the price of the CD-ROM (69.00 DEM (approx. 35.21 EUR)) is more than twice as expensive as the Shareware version
this becomes relative, because of the contents of the CDROM. In addition to the program packages, which are available in
the Aminet there are numerous additions on the CDROM, which I will talk about later.
The program author says, that minimum requirements are AmigaOS 3.0, a MC 68020 plus 68881, 6 MB free (!) Fast-RAM and
AGA. Really enjoying working, because of the fast speed and using all functions of the program, starts with AmigaOS 3.1,
a 68040 or better a 68060-CPU and 16 or more MB Fast-RAM.
If you want to use the MPEG support of Digital Almanac, you require the ixemul.library revision 39 or higher in your
Libs: directory. In addition you have have MUI revision 3.8 or higher installed on your Amiga.
DA was tested on an Amiga 3000 D under AmigaOS 3.5, powered by a 68040-CPU, supported by CyberGFX 3.x and 36 MB RAM and,
of course, MUI.
Digital Almanac is a horn of plenty of an astronomy program and offers a number of possibilities for star exploration.
On this space it should be best to let Achim Stegamnn speak for himself:
cite:
"
For a successful installation you whould download the archives
DAlmanac_Exe.lha and
DAlmanac_Data.lha or have the DA-II-CDROM [1]
from Schatztruhe available. In the Aminet you find more DA-II archives, which make additional data like e.g. an extended
star catalogue, textures for the planets and their moons, asteroids and DeepSky objects. All these additional data are
on the CDROM in addition to other goodies.
From now on the installation as well as the description of the program functions and file contents will be described as
on the DA-II-CDROM, which was given for a test from Schatztruhe to us.
After double clicking the CDROM icon a clearly arranged root directory presents itself in an AmigaOS 3.5 look.
In addition to the installation directory you find a complete Aminet archive of the Digital Almanac II files.
There is also a picture directory with 536 pictures of planets, nebulae and galaxies, which is more than 70 MB in size.
The PNG praphics can be directly embedded in Digital Almanac II. In the directory "GSC" you find a Hubble
GSC-star catalogue, which can be directly used from DA-II, which includes approx. 15 million (!) stars and a size
of 25 MB (1). The drawer planet maps contains the originals of the planet textures in JPEG format for DA-II, which
can be converted using the DT2Map utility to textures for Digital Almanac II.
The directory labelled "Bonus" contains in addition to datatypes for DA-textures, JPEG, PCD, PNG and RGFX the
Xpk system as well as the last revision of Peter Knights "VWorlds", another planetarium program.
And for all those Amigans, which really do not have added (the latest revision of) MUI to their AmigaOS, MUI revision
3.8 is included in a separate drawer.
The installation itself is made comfortable and as usual with the Amiga-typical Installer. The directory
"Install_DigitalAlmanac" contains another installation drawer and offers an English or German localized
installation.
The installation script itself allows a number of manipulation of the number of data installed. In addition to the two
necessary archives required for a rudimentary, but completely working basic system you can optionally generate and install
textures, asteroid data, DeepSky objects and the mega star catalogue.
Depending on the selected size all required files wander on the hard disk within a few minutes. If the installation is
complete, Digital Almanacs' installation requires between 12 and 36 MB of disk space.
Because Achim Stegemann worked hard on DA-II since the publication of the CDROM and released several bugfixed and
improved program revisions, the latest update on revision 1.8.6 was installed and considered in this test.
You can find the update files either on the homepage of the program author [3] or in the Aminet [2].
Before starting the program for the first time you can manipulate the behaviour of the program editing the tool tpyes
of the DA-II icons. So you can command, if DA-II starts with the coordinates of your home location or if you want a
screen mode requester to be opened for screen mode selection, how the paths for the picture files and the GSC-star
catalogue are and if you want additional data to be loaded (asteroids, DeepSky objects, which size the cache shall have
etc., etc.).
After starting the prgram DA-II presents itself similar to its predecessor with a virtual starry sky and a little
status bar in the left top corner. Compared with the CD-ROM revision 1.7 you find the pixel size adjusted to the
brightness. In addition to the stars the figures, short names of the constellations including the names of important
stars of the sign of the zodiac.
The map of the starry sky can be projected as view of a planetarium (with rektascension and declination for position)
or as local sky (with azimuth and height as coordinates).
In addition to this ther is the "e;Orrey" mode, which offers the possibility to choose a view on planet
constallations and orbits from any place, no matter if in or out of our solar system.
To fly to a sign of the zodiac, a unique star or a planet in the far reaches of space with more than light speed you
use the well done zoom function. The desired object is fixed by pressing the left mouse button and with pressed mouse
button you can choose the circular zoom area.
In addition to moving using the cursor keys Digital Almanac II offers a powerfull support possiblity with the
menu point "Windows/Teleskope..." for navigating through the sea of stars. If you are lost in the far reaches
of space and don't either find home nor backyard using the middle button in the "Move" area of you telescope
window brings you directly home to the starting point of your voyage. Compared with this the Warp drive of the starship
Enterprise is old hat...
If you leave the mouse pointer for some time on the starry sky or the the buttons ore input elements of the various
program windows the BubbleHelp support of MUI will show you a short explanation about the function or possible actions.
If you get the wish to manipulate the starry sky individually after exploring the virtual universe for the first time you
find many things for doing this in the menus. In "Windows/Preferences..." you can select the objects to show as well
as the precision of the position calculations, the tpye of display and projection, manipulating the names of the stars and
objects in and out of our soloar system as well as their minimal brightness, which is considered when drawing the starry sky.
In addition DA-II can be motivated to use textures for displaying the planets, so you can watch the real surface of the
planets in nearly any size and colour depth, even when zooming. The included textures can be replaced by the ones you
created by yourself.
If all stars/objects are activated for showing, the remarkable performance becomes very low when drawing
the starry sky, even with a fast processor. This is due to the immense computing, which has to be done. And the
680x0 processors have a hard job to do. Another interesting setting can be made using the menu point "Windows/Coordinates".
In the popping up window you can freely choose the terrestrial coordinates and point of time. Usually you had to
look for look for the geographic degree of longitude or the degree of latitude in some geogprahic book.
Not with DA-II: One one hand there is an extended list with characteristic locations and if your location is not listed,
DA-II offers a world map, which can be sized. If you click on the desired location, its geographical coordinates are
directly filled in. Very nice.
If there is only AGA available, this function cannot be used, due to the limited Chip-RAM.
At the same time you this menu point offers you a time window for travelling through the milleniums of the past and
the future.
If you double click an object in DA-II's star world, the program shows individual properties of the object like details
about name, position, appearance, own motion and distance.
In additional you can show the right picture - if you got a picture collection in time, which can be expanded in time.
The number of the collected pictures is nearly unlimited. You only have to consider, that the name of the picture is
the same as the name used for the object in DA-II. The program documentation helps with good examples. DA-II loads the
pictures using the DataTypes. So you can choose any picture format you have a Datatype for on your Amiga. Achim Stegemann
includes on the CDROM a first base of picture material.
If you want to use your pictures with those on the CDROM, there is just one litte problem: Because DA-II supports only one
picture directory, you have to copy the pictures to the directory, which includes
the ones you collected.
The picture list can also called and watched seperately without selecting an object.
Another interesting feature of DA-II is its ability to show motions of objects as animations. With "Telescope"
you can record the section of the sky for a freely setable period of time. "Object" allows the animation of
a certain object and the motion of its view. Using the Drag&Drop function you can draw any object of a list onto the
text field and select it that way. So watching an eclipse or the rotation of a planet is just a few mouse clicks away.
To nicely watch motions, which run over a longer period of time, you are spoilt of the choice setting the steps of time
sections. You can choose seconds, minutes, hours, days, wekks, months or years in addition to real time.
If you want to get an impreesion of the differences between the positions "Object" and "Telescope"
you can choose in the "Project/Open..." menu between "Halbe-Bopp-Fix" and "Hale-Bopp-Flight"
and play it as animation. An animation can also saved, if you want. The Saving formats are IFF-Anim(5), QuickTime(JFIF-JPEG)
and MPEG.
In addition it is possible to save the current screen as (sky) map in various picture formats to hard disk.
Many menu options are also available in a tool bar, if you want. The colours of many screen informations (like
sign of the zordiac, milky way, planet grids, name of stars and objects) can set freely.
Using the menu point "Extras" you find a calendar function for any month of the desired year, which
shows remarkable results of sun, moon, planets and, if activated, also of asteroids in a table. You can also query
with "Solar eclipse" resp. "lunar eclipse" the happening of these events for any coordinate on
Earth.
With Digital Almanac II ARexx entered the program structure as supporting element. A commented list of the implemented
ARexx commands can be found in the program documentation. ARexx scripts can be executed out of the program using the
menu point "ARexx/Execute Macro...". Then a file requester opens, where you can select the macro or you can
choose directly from the menu, where up to 10 different macros can be located. If you want to use DA-IIs' ARexx port
you have to ensure, that the command RX is in the REXX: directory and RexxMast runs (, of course). A tiny example script
can be found in the ARexx directory of the Digital Almanac II drawer.
Talking about program documentation: It explains as AmigaGuide file (nearly) any program functions at least enough,
very often very detailed. Just an unselectable link ("Pictures" in the "Description" section) and
a wrong link in "Update" and two unexplained program functions ("Extras/Solar Eclipse" and
Extras/Lunar Eclipse") spoil the quality of the documentation a bit. But the features listed last are mostly
self explaining and can be "explored" using the BubbleHelp.
For any Amiga using only the AGA mode for graphic output Achim Stegemann includes the program FBlit. FBlit allows an extension of the Chip-RAM border, to show also large pictures. The program could not be tested in combination with DA-II due to the lack of an AGA chipset.
In the sub directory "Developer" of the Digital Almanac II drawer the Amigan, who is able to program and likes experimenting, finds informations and help, how to control a real telescope using DA-II.
On the Aminet-CD 35 you find a special version of Digital Almanac II, which has less limitations than the unregistered Shareware version.
Far away from mentioning all the program functions you have much to explore in and around Digital Almanac II
Already the first revision of Digital Almanac offered an enormous number of functions and high performance. This is
also true for revision II without any limit. With a very low shareware price and a well acceptable price of the
commercial version (due to the increase of value of the CDROM) DA-II is unique on (not only the German) Amiga market
of astronomy programs. It competitors either disappeared a long time ago from the Amiga market and went to the Wintel
world (Distant Suns) or they became very silent (Digital Universe).
If the Amiga is equipped with the desired hardware using Digital Almanac II is much fun.
Since October 1997 I use Digital Almanac in the registered version. To any time Achim Stegemann replied to my questions,
ideas and wishes with much engagement. A great support.
I can recommend Digital Almanac II to anyone interesting in stars.
A mailing list for Digital Almanac can be subscribed on the homepage of the program author.
| Prices: | Keyfile for the Shareware-Version 30,- DM (15,- Euro) |
| CDROM with many Extras 69.00 DEM (approx. 35.20) | |
| [1] | Stefan Ossowski's Schatztruhe, www.schatztruhe.de |
| [2] | in the Aminet under |
| misc/sci/DAlmanac_Ast.lha | |
| misc/sci/DAlmanac_Data.lha | |
| misc/sci/DAlmanac_DS.lha | |
| misc/sci/DAlmanac_Exe.lha | |
| misc/sci/DAlmanac_Extra.lha | |
| misc/sci/DAlmanac_Maps.lha | |
| [3] | Internet: http://www.rzuser.uni-heidelberg.de/~astegema/dalmanac.html |
| eMail: achimste@gmx.de |
