SciTech Skyview or stellarium or CDC on low power pc

[Horwig]

My obsy pc died, so I got another one, but this one has a motherboard graphics chip only, and no room for an add on graphics card, so with with only open GL1.1 Stellarium is very clunky, and will not even open my personal landscape file.

My mount runs with a Sidereal Technology controller, I'm finding the Skyview a bit clumsy, and I miss my landscape illustration

My question is basically, will CDC fare better than Stellarium on my PC, it's a Dell Optiplex 780 USFF, a dual core Pentium E5500, 2.8Gig running Win 7.

 

How do people rate the different planetarium softwares?

Huw

[D4N]

CDC is much less demanding on the system resources than Stellarium and will run fine on even very basic computers.

[steppenwolf]

I use Cartes du Ciel with my SiTech controlled mount and it is working beautifully on an aged Windows XP computer and a 1024 x 768 display!

[RichLD]

+1 for CdC 

[Dave_D]

skytechx is even better... totally trounced CdC on a 1.6 gig single core intel atom machine i used to use for the scope

http://skytechx.eu/

posted this a while ago as a direct comparison, both over RDP on the same computer

http://vidmg.photobucket.com/albums/v369/vanityassassin/VID_20150808_221528_zpsfhn4j2gg.mp4

(turn your volume up so you can hear the key presses)

[stash_old]

++1 CDC but may look at skytech(MP4 didnt work on my PC just sat there no matter what you clicked(on 35mb FB link!) as CDC mouse control/fov drives me mad sometime but CDC runs and runs in MHO

[Horwig]

Thanks all, am I right then that CDC does not require openGL to operate, and that landscapes are not too draining on resources?

Huw

[steppenwolf]

The landscape overlay is just a line that you can fill underneath with a colour of your choice if you want. Here's mine:-

[Horwig]

10 minutes ago, steppenwolf said:

The landscape overlay is just a line that you can fill underneath with a colour of your choice if you want. Here's mine:-

Ahh, I thought you could import a panorama, like in Stellarium?

[steppenwolf]

Maybe you can but, what would be the point of that when what you are after is mount control? I guess I just like to keep it simple .......

[RichLD]

2 minutes ago, steppenwolf said:

Maybe you can but, what would be the point of that when what you are after is mount control? I guess I just like to keep it simple .......

Agreed  - CdC isn't the best visualisation tool but is tough to beat for low overhead (free) mount control. The FOV indicators and user objects are also very useful and the GUI is very configurable, it just takes a bit of getting used to after Stellarium's "realistic" views.

3 hours ago, stash_old said:

CDC mouse control/fov drives me mad

Also agreed! These days I tend to use the Framing and Mosaic wizard in SGP...

Must check out Skytechx though 

[Horwig]

2 hours ago, steppenwolf said:

Maybe you can but, what would be the point of that when what you are after is mount control? I guess I just like to keep it simple .......

Oh, OK, I admit, I do so like pretty graphics

[steppenwolf]

Oh I like good graphics too but they do take up valuable display, memory and processing resources!

[Horwig]

Thanks all, what do you know, installed CDC on my steam powered PC, getting to have a good play with it, not bad at all on first sight, and would you believe it, pointed it at my landscape file from Stellarium, and it just worked, it even came across in exactly the right position, and it runs just fine.

Converted, I'm a happy bunny!

 

Huw