Have people done real world tests on what the Sky X vs Sky 6 PE offers?

[g__day (Matthew)]

Folk,

Just wondering if anyone has done a fair and detailed comparison of what the Sky X (plus Tpoint) gives over Sky 6 PE (plus Tpoint).

Many thanks for feedback,

Matthew

[bert (Brett)]

I can't give you a mathematical answer, but I'll give my thoughts. In my home obs I use sky 6 and old tpoint with an eq6. In my remote obs I use a paramount and skyx with integrates tpoint.

Although the sky 6 is more stable than sky x, I have found that when tpoint is added to sky6, I get a lot more crashes.

I dont use the skyx at home, I simply cannot get it to run reliably enough working with ascom, as both my observatories run autonomously, if I get a crash in software, more than likely I'll crash an ap130 scope into a pier, which is something I am not keen to do. I do not have this problem with the pme as it has mechanical stops.

Tpoint is completely integrated into skyx and not an add on, still it must be purchased.

In my remote obs, I have had to use sky6 to 'rescue' the mount when the skyx crashed it, and even with a reset would not slew the paramount.

One really nice feature of skyx tpoint is the supermodel option, essentially it works out what terms are applied automatically. It also has a automap option, but aag tpoint mapper works better anyway.

Brett

[frolinmod]

TheSkyX is very different from TheSky6. Now that I'm used to it, I find it much easier to use then TheSky6 with few exceptions.

What made it worth upgrading for me:

1. I purchased directly from Software Bisque and negotiated a Universal License rather than individual licenses when I purchased my Paramount ME. That certainly made it more affordable.

2. Tpoint is much better. It's integrated and straight forward rather than an afterthought. Tpoint itself is also a newer easier to use version with internal improvements.

3. The supermodel feature is wonderful as it takes all the grunt work out of creating a model once you have enough data to feed it.

4. Plate solving works much better though I had to change the defaults in the automated calibration to match the image link defaults to make it work one hundred percent. I think it should ship with them matching, but the Bisque's disagree.

5. The Paramount mount support is better and more straight forward. One good one that I especially like is that synchronization history can be examined and rolled back if need be. That's handy to spot and fix those occasional accidental sync mistakes.

6. The camera, mount and focuser control are better, though I usually have TheSkyX set to use CCDsoft as my camera.

7. I like the Database Add On and have it loaded on my internal hard drive.

8. I control my mount remotely, so the virtual mount display is sometimes handy.

9. TheSkyX interface is more multithreaded.


More importantly, TheSky6 has been retired, is no longer being sold and is no longer being enhanced. It's irrelevant. TheSkyX is the current version.


Some "bad" things about TheSkyX:

1. It's more demanding of cpu and video hardware. It really needs modern hardware to shine. Your video card needs to have good and current OpenGL support. If you're clinging to old hardware, then it may disappoint and frustrate. I have run it on an old 3.2GHZ Pentium acceptably, but I wouldn't want to do that all the time.

2. In order to work properly it needs to be set to run in Administrator mode on Windows 7. Same with CCDsoft.

3. The "follow the mount as I move it around" horizon drawing feature from TheSky6 horizon editor is not present in TheSkyX's horizon editor. But you can bring over your TheSky6 horizon file with only a minor edit in Notepad needed to make it work. So I draw my horizon in TheSky6 and bring it over to TheSkyX.

4. Windows Remote Desktop Connection doesn't support modern versions of OpenGL at all (like OpenGL versions from the current century, literally)! So it's not possible to use many OpenGL features while running over a Windows Remote Desktop connection. This is a stupid Microsoft problem rather than a TheSkyX problem, but because I'm a curmudgeon and because I like remote desktop so much as compared to it's competition, it's a PITA for me.

TheSkyX has been rock solid reliable for me. But my mount (Paramount ME), camera (QSI) and my focuser (Optec) are all supported by TheSkyX and CCDsoft, so I'm not needing to use any ascom drivers. That's probably why it's been so stable for me.

[g__day (Matthew)]

Thanks! So for me - I'll probably use what I have better and wait a year or two before all the kinks are ironed out of the SkyX and upgrade to a better product.

I'm curious - does the SkyX only have to be run in Administrator mode once - to register all the classes correctly in Windows, or must it be run in this elevated mode all the time to work properly?

[frolinmod]

Originally Posted by g__day

I'm curious - does the SkyX only have to be run in Administrator mode once - to register all the classes correctly in Windows, or must it be run in this elevated mode all the time to work properly?

If I remember correctly, and that's not a sure thing these days, I first ran it as Administrator only the first time so that it could register properly, then ran normally from then on and it worked fine for me. But at some point I ran into some Windows 7 nastiness and I've ended up changing the properties on the TheSkyX executable to make it run as Administrator all the time. I've done the same thing with the CCDsoft executable. I've not run into any trouble since.

The daily update installer must always be run as Administrator.