WWT|Mars - WorldWide Telescope release with hi-res Mars imagery

Bosch

Hey folks,
If you want a really immersive experience browsing the latest NASA imagery of Mars, check out the latest release of WWT|Mars. It has more than 13,000 high-resolution images captured by a number of NASA’s Mars spacecraft, including the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter.

Here's a short video showing some of the new functionality...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3pF1ahoVUXA

Besides all the Mars imagery, also check out the Terapixel sky view and asteroids (all orbits calculated in real-time on your CPU)... speed up the time by a few magnitudes and check out the orbits of all the objects! There are also lots of new tours to take a look at.

Download (for free) from http://www.worldwidetelescope.org/Home.aspx - just click on the "Install Windows Client" button.

B.

ynotdu

Cheers for that Bosch,and jake 1.
I tried this out on a computer with only 512MB of Ram.XP SP3.
the tour of Mars is almost like being onboard the martian landers,rovers,orbiters.
Really Stunning and fun!
Want to download it now to a more powerful computer with better graphics cards and much more Ram.{Vista SP2:rolleyes:}

My problem is the programme keeps freezing/crashing the old computer.
Have You got any of these problems,or is it just the old desktop i have to use sometimes cannot handle it?

Microsoft net.2 is required as well as Silverlight{which is an optional download from Microsoft update.So anyone who use's Windows as their OS will need to choose custom search instead of express search to find Silverlight.

No problem i would say for anyone Who has their computer set to automatic updates,it should have NET.2,3,4 installed already,but Silverlight might not be installed unless You run a custom scan and it will be under 'optional' software.

as usual with Me meant this to be a short post but i am so impressed i want EVERYBODY to view the Mars images!:)

So what i meant to post in the first place to folks that have it installed,are You having any problems with higher spec computers before i risk installing it on what was an expensive laptop?

Cheers

Bosch

Yep, if you want a very smooth experience in WWT, you ideally need a machine with a bit of grunt, particularly in the CPU and graphics dept... see the recommended system config below for the Windows Client WWT app (although if you can get a 512Mb+ graphics card, that'd be ideal.) - a fast broadband connection is also vital to speed up the downloading/rendering of the imagery (which gets cached locally after being viewed once).

•Microsoft® XP SP2 (minimum), Windows® Vista®, or Windows® 7 (recommended)
•PC with Intel Core 2 Duo processor with 2 gigahertz (GHz) or faster, recommended
•1 gigabyte (GB) of RAM; 2 GB RAM recommended
•3D accelerated card with 128 megabytes (MB) RAM; discrete graphics card with dedicated 256-MB VRAM recommended for higher performance
•1 GB of available hard disk space; 10 GB recommended for off-line features and higher performance browsing
•XGA (1024 x 768) or higher resolution monitor
•Microsoft Mouse or compatible pointing and scrolling device
•Microsoft® DirectX® version 9.0c and .NET Framework 2.0

For the Web Client, you need Silverlight v3.0+ installed (available here)...

@ynotdu - I haven't seen any freezing/crashing which you mention, but it could be due to the hardware capabilities, particularly if it's an older machine - you might try turning off the asteroids to see if that helps, as I know their orbit computations are pretty CPU intensive.

I run the WWT Windows Client on a Win7 laptop (Dell Latitude D800) and it runs great, with very smooth zooming into the hi-def imagery, or playing the various tours... on higher-end machines (e.g. Dimension 9200), with better graphics capabilities, more CPU power and memory, WWT flies! (Try it with a wireless xbox360 controller on a plasma TV!)

B.

ynotdu

Cheers Bosch and thank You for going to such bother to reply.

having checked, the laptop meets about 80% of the ideal requirements.

So i am going to go for it!

Cheers!:)