Release Nightvision 3.0.1


F_Slim

IDDQD
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Hi there,


maybe you remember that I once tried to port Nightvision to the Pandora?


Now that I have a Pandora to test it, it finally works. It still may crash from time to time, but there is nothing I can do about it.


This is a Java-app, so you need to have WizardStan's java.pnd installed.


So what is it?


From the homepage:


Night Vision is a "planetarium" program that will display the heavens from any location on earth. Viewing options allow the user to control which sky objects to display, which font to use, and manipulation of various star parameters. Time may be set to run at multiple speeds, including backwards. Star charts may be printed.


Night Vision is written in 100% pure Java. This allows it to run on any computer that offers a recent Java Runtime Environment.


Version 3.0 adds:


Solar system window showing planet locations and their orbits


Now licensed under GNU GPL 3 with source code available


http://www.nvastro.com/nvj.html


nvj20.gif



solar system window:


sswin.jpg



My own opinion: It is a very nice, lightweight planetarium/star chart software. It has some nice and unique features and the controls should be perfect for the Pandora. (It is however not a full 3D-view like Celestia, nor a sky-replacement like Stellarium. You should go outside and gaze at the stars with your own eyes, and this program will help you to identify planets, stars, even galaxies.)


You will have to define your location first. The list of cities is not very comprehensive, so you should type in your coordinates (use eg. http://itouchmap.com/latlong.html to look them up, make sure you use degrees and minutes, it does not understand the dezimal notation).


You have to manually save location/preferences and windows size/position settings from the File-menu! Settings are written to an .ini file in the respective /pandora/appdata/ folder on your SD-card.


Left-click will center the view there. You can drag a box or use z/Z to zoom. Also note the scroll bars for zoom (left) and navigation (bottom/right). You can even add a third one at the top, or switch between RA/DEC or azimuth/elevation scrolling (one of the very cool features). For anything else please refer to the help (either click on Help or press F1).


The navigation on the "sky" may be a bit confusing at first. So zoom out and maybe reduce the shown objects/labels, or test the program on your PC on a big screen.


Grab the .PND from the repo here and have fun:

In the Menu it shows up under "Education"


Link to WizardStan's java.pnd: http://repo.openpand...detail&app=java


(and please no Spam about Stellarium etc., open your own thread if you have to, or use an existing one. Thanks)
 
Looks interesting, I used to love a similar program I had for DOS a long time ago..


Yeah Random Crashes seems to happen a bit with Java and the Pandora, I had this issue with JCloisterZone that I packaged about a month ago.. I tried a lot of different things to prevent crashing, haven't had any luck resolving yet.. I haven't pushed it up to the repo yet since I wasn't sure it was stable enough.
 
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Well, Java is a resource-hog in general, so overclocking does seem to help making it more stable.
 
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