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INDI Library v2.0.6 is Released (02 Feb 2024)

Bi-monthly release with minor bug fixes and improvements

Xplanet

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Replied by Rob Lancaster on topic Re:Xplanet

did you install xplanet? And once you did so, did you edit the path in the KStars options?
5 years 7 months ago #28170

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Replied by Andrew on topic Re:Xplanet

I had not taken any additional steps that I can recall for installations.
I appears I had not installed xplanet, I have done so now. At this point it opens but the only thing displayed is a featureless orb.
What next? Is the a documentation page I can follow?
5 years 7 months ago #28171

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Replied by Rob Lancaster on topic Re:Xplanet

Yes, as I said, you will need to install maps.

xplanet.sourceforge.net/maps.php
5 years 7 months ago #28172

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Replied by Wouter van Reeven on topic Re:Xplanet

Thanks, I wasn't aware of that either. I had a look at the page and there seem to be a lot of maps around. Any that you can recommend?
5 years 7 months ago #28175

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Replied by Rob Lancaster on topic Re:Xplanet

The ones i use currently are in the link that I posted, under flatplanet, the alien archive.

flatplanet.sourceforge.net/maps/
5 years 7 months ago #28182

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Replied by Rob Lancaster on topic Re:Xplanet

So your post made me think about xplanet again. I think I might make a couple of modifications, like adding a FOV slider. This could help in moon identifications and in zooming in and out on a planet and its moons to get better identifications of them
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5 years 7 months ago #28186

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Replied by Andrew on topic Re:Xplanet

Where do the maps belong on Linux?
5 years 7 months ago #28188

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Replied by Rob Lancaster on topic Re:Xplanet

If I am not mistaken, they should go into /usr/share/xplanet
5 years 7 months ago #28195

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Replied by Andrew on topic Re:Xplanet

Ok, I got the images loaded. Now I have noticed that the face of the planets being presented is incorrect. I referred to Stellarium and the Mobile Observatory app on Android for comparison. Also simulating light speed is not enough to account for the discrepancy.
One other bug, when viewing a planet with Xplanet for the first time there is an error.
Loading of the image file:///*/*/*/*.png failed
5 years 7 months ago #28197

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Replied by Rob Lancaster on topic Re:Xplanet

Right,

I did mention that there could easily be an issue with the planet feature predictions. That is probably an issue with either xplanet or an issue with the maps. Though I guess it could also be some issue with our parameters we are using for xplanet, but I would bet it is the maps. I am not an expert in xplanet, I only knew enough to get it working. I don't know if there are more accurate maps. The moon position predictions, though, I have found to be very good.

Loading the planets should not fail the first time, but it is possible. If xplanet takes more than 1 second to load the image, it might time out. I didn't want an issue with xplanet to completely freeze kstars, so I put a 1 second d timeout on it. One thing we could do is make use of another thread to accomplish the same task and provide more time to wait. If I do make some improvements to the xplanet viewer, I could add this too.
5 years 7 months ago #28198

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Replied by Rob Lancaster on topic Re:Xplanet

I did take a look at the documentation this evening and there is another parameter that we can use when xplanet is called that will make it faster, so it wont timeout.
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5 years 7 months ago #28199

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Replied by Andrew on topic Re:Xplanet

Thank you it looks like a pretty interesting feature.
Would it be possible to implement lightspeed corrections? The delay Earth>Jupiter can be 33-53 minutes, enough time for features to be missed. The simulated view should account for that to match features we can see in the moment.
Presumably it should only require an ephemeris calculation to find the distance, divided by lightspeed to give the delay, then subtract that from the simulation time.
5 years 7 months ago #28218

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