TheSkyX Professional Edition

[cfranks (Charles)]

Originally Posted by Octane

The screen real estate is an issue for me.

My observatory computer is a tiny little Acer Aspire One notebook which is mounted on the pier and I remote into it via TeamViewer.

It happily runs everything at the moment, but, the screen real estate issue is going to be problematic. I might need to think about another way of getting higher resolution...

In the meantime, TheSky6 continues to work on it.

H

H,

I use an Acer Aspire one Netbook on my G11 backup system and haven't suffered any from a lack of screen real estate with TSX. but I don't use the Planetarium part of the display very much. With Windows XP, I use a screen resolution of 1024 x 768 and, as Marcus said, TSX is a one-stop shop for everything I need. The only problem I have suffered over the last 3 months is when taking my second or third image, the clouds roll up!

Charles

[frolinmod]

Originally Posted by Octane

lol, Rick! No need to apologise at all. I am having the exact same problem, even when I have Bayer/Flamsteed designations disabled. There is some upside down alien text in red next to all objects. I thought perhaps it was my video card playing up; it still happened after updating the drivers.

Not happening here guys. Perhaps your video driver has lousy OpenGL support or perhaps you've been spending all your money on psycadelic drugs, eh. More seriously, how does one duplicate this?

[Octane (Humayun)]

I'll take a screenshot a little later. My video card is a fairly good one.

H

[RickS (Rick)]

Originally Posted by frolinmod

Not happening here guys. Perhaps your video driver has lousy OpenGL support or perhaps you've been spending all your money on psycadelic drugs, eh. More seriously, how does one duplicate this?

The problem with Bayer designations has happened consistently to me on three different hardware platforms (two generations of high-end Lenovo laptops and a desktop system with Nvidia Quadro video card and drivers) over several years of Windows 7 x64 and SkyX updates. It has been a reported problem since 2010. My original problem report was a follow up to someone else reporting the same issue (same drugs?) back then. One of the Bisque's responded to say the problem would be fixed. Since then I have tried to follow up several times but any new forum posts by me on the topic have just disappeared. Pretty pathetic...

[mithrandir (Andrew)]

Originally Posted by Octane

I'll take a screenshot a little later. My video card is a fairly good one.

As far as OpenGL is concerned NVidia drivers beat Radeon ones hands down. Always have done.

If Rick is seeing problems on NVidia I would blame the fault on TheSkyX.

[frolinmod]

Originally Posted by RickS

any new forum posts by me on the topic have just disappeared. Pretty pathetic...

That's a serious accusation. I've never seen them delete a post that wasn't spam. Not even posts from super obnoxious people. What's your username over there?

[frolinmod]

Originally Posted by Octane

I'll take a screenshot a little later. My video card is a fairly good one.

Unfortunately a screenshot by itself won't help anyone duplicate anything.

BTW, turning off the "smooth moving labels" feature in the Labels tab keeps TheSkyX from using OpenGL to render Bayer designations.

No wonder I can't duplicate it. That post over on the SB support forum is for Mac and I'm running Windows.

[RickS (Rick)]

Originally Posted by frolinmod

That's a serious accusation. I've never seen them delete a post that wasn't spam. Not even posts from super obnoxious people. What's your username over there?

Username rickstevenson. Here's one of the threads on this problem: http://www.bisque.com/sc/forums/p/10...641.aspx#39641

I made additional (equally polite) posts which just disappeared.

[frolinmod]

Originally Posted by RickS

Username rickstevenson. Here's one of the threads on this problem: http://www.bisque.com/sc/forums/p/10...641.aspx#39641

Ah, must be a Mac thing then?

Originally Posted by RickS

I made additional (equally polite) posts which just disappeared.

That username has only two posts - ever. Let's do a test. Use that username to post something on TheSkyX SB support forum (not the presales forum which is tape delayed and moderated) right now and let's see if it gets deleted. Mums the word. Let's see what happens.

[gregbradley]

Sky X on paper is a dream. In my use I find it both much better and much worse than Sky 6. Its more likely to crash than Sky 6. If there is any issue with the mount etc it will simply need rebooting. Sky 6 is more stable.
Its quite a complex piece of software and with that comes potential problems.

For example I cannot get it to operate my camera and filter wheel which should be a no brainer but isn't. I also find the display of the sky and objects not as good as Sky 6. That's just my preferences. I sometimes revert to Sky 6.

Greg.

[RickS (Rick)]

Originally Posted by frolinmod

Ah, must be a Mac thing then?

As I mentioned above the problem occurs on Windows 7 as well. The guy who originally reported it was using a Mac.

Originally Posted by frolinmod

That username has only two posts - ever. Let's do a test. Use that username to post something on TheSkyX SB support forum (not the presales forum which is tape delayed and moderated) right now and let's see if it gets deleted. Mums the word. Let's see what happens.

Here's another thread on the same bug: http://www.bisque.com/sc/forums/p/10...763.aspx#39763

There are two posts by me in each of those threads so it seems odd that the forum claims I only have two posts.

I can't see any point in doing a test. I don't care if you disbelieve my claim that further posts on the topic have vanished. What is clear from the posts that remain on the forum is that the bug was reported in late July 2010, Daniel Bisque said in early August that they were working on a fix, and my follow up posts in August 2011 and July 2012 were ignored. When my subscription lapsed later in 2012 the bug was still not fixed. At best this is poor customer service, especially for a product that has a yearly maintenance fee.

Cheers,
Rick.

[Octane (Humayun)]

Andrew,

I'm running an nVidia card.

Will post a screenshot today showing the issue and to confirm it's the same as Rick's issue.

I'm not complaining, as I can live with it, but, as Rick has mentioned, the software carries a yearly maintenance fee; why do people pay if bugs that are reported (by more than one person) haven't been squashed after four years?

H

[frolinmod]

Originally Posted by RickS

I can't see any point in doing a test. I don't care

Looks to me like the problem is user apathy and lack of user followup. Good luck with that.

[rogerg (Roger)]

Originally Posted by Octane

... the software carries a yearly maintenance fee; why do people pay if bugs that are reported (by more than one person) haven't been squashed after four years? ...

Yes ... mixed feelings about SB support. I most commonly find they loose interest in solving my problem (that's the negative). That is after initially responding and being helpful at first (that's the plus). I put it down to being just another pleb in the southern hemisphere , as we know what respect they've had for SH issues in the past

All in all, on the whole, the software works and is the best option available for what I want to do

[frolinmod]

Support is a team effort with the user being an important part of the team. The user's job is to provide as much intelligent useful information as possible (such as a detailed description of the environment, the settings and exactly how to reproduce the problem) and to continuously and doggedly persue the case until it is resolved. If the user is passive aggressive, expects to just say there's a problem, give as little information as possible, not regularly follow up and expect the problem to just magically fix itself, that isn't always gonna happen. It's easy to fix something when the engineer can reproduce it. Not so easy when he can't (because the user didn't give good info).

SB's support forums are also no charge. You get what you pay for there. They should charge so that they can hire some professional support people to be the followup bulldogs (in both directions).

[RickS (Rick)]

Originally Posted by frolinmod

Looks to me like the problem is user apathy and lack of user followup. Good luck with that.

Curious logic, Charles, but you might be on to something. Think how much money IT companies could save by just ignoring support calls and blaming the customers for not trying harder.

[RickS (Rick)]

Originally Posted by frolinmod

Support is a team effort with the user being an important part of the team. The user's job is to provide as much intelligent useful information as possible (such as a detailed description of the environment, the settings and exactly how to reproduce the problem) and to continuously and doggedly persue the case until it is resolved. If the user is passive aggressive, expects to just say there's a problem, give as little information as possible, not regularly follow up and expect the problem to just magically fix itself, that isn't always gonna happen. It's easy to fix something when the engineer can reproduce it. Not so easy when he can't (because the user didn't give good info).

There's a clear and detailed statement of the problem by the original poster.

There's an acknowledgement by Daniel Bisque:

We're working on an update to TheSkyX Student (in conjunction with TheSkyX Pro and TheSkyX Serious Astronomer Edition) that should resolve this issue. I don't have a firm release date right now.

And from then on all correspondence is ignored. Yep, clearly the customers are to blame...

Sorry, H, I'll shut up now

[Octane (Humayun)]

Rick, no, please, don't.

frolinmod, I haven't reported the problem to Software Bisque, yet, but, I will. As a UNIX sysadmin, I know just how important it is to describe the issue in its entirety. I will do that when I get some time /after/ trying to fix it myself. Admittedly, I haven't spent much time playing with the software other than going through the common settings.

The worst part about this issue is that even when I disable labels, they remain on the screen.

H

[Logieberra (Logan)]

I really enjoyed using TSX in conjunction with the MX. I did find a glitch in the orientation of the 'Virtual Telescope' for southern hemisphere users, but after a detailed post, including a video showing the actual error on screen (which SB were appreciative of) the glitch was fixed ASAP by Richard Wright under the next Daily Build.

I also loved the layout and general operation of the SB support forums. Very smooth indeed, especially when compared with the clunky YahooGroups layout as used by many north american astro companies. To each their own

[Mckechg (Grant)]

Do any of the people in this thread use SKY X on MAC with Synscan controller? I am stumped with a few issues.