What a fun additon Chris, especially now it will read system time.If nothing else I can now check out what, if any, planets I can see from my home - once I find where that is in FS :-)One thing crossed my mind.I believe the orbit of the International Space Station is published and is sometimes visible from the UK. Would it be easy to include this or is its brightness not worth the effort?

ISS moves quickly too - crossing the sky in about 10 minutes. Maybe as an AI flight? ;)Best,sg

That's a barley water fueled spectrum if ever I saw one...but cheers!!

Hi Chris,The pop-up help message for "use current" and "auto run" is the same message as for "show circles". And the "planet size" message is for the "date-month-year" area and is the same. Not nit-picking here but a new user may get confused. Just trying to allow you to polish things!Hope this helps,JimActiveSky Supporthttp://www.hifisim.com/images/as2004proudsupporter.jpg

Hi Chris,Great addon - this is just what we stellar/planetary gazers needed :)I have the 'Autostar' folder in the 'Flight Simulator 9' folderYour update has been applied. I check 'Show Circles' and 'Show Names' and everything displays in the sim as it should.No. of stars added: 7900Total no of Stars: 16995 (I am using the 'Real Stars' addon)I uncheck 'Show Circles' and 'Show names' and nothing changes - I still see the grid of circles and the planetary names.No. of stars added: 588Total no of Stars: 9683 (I am using the 'Real Stars' addon)Values copied from the autostar.ini file:08052004d:Program FilesMicrosoft GamesFlight Simulator 90.2104040christmas.bmp 0 0 0 0 11 1 1ZAny thoughts? Presumably I have misunderstood something somewhere along the way.Thanks,Mike

Mike,Try this:Make your changes, exit AutoStar, restart AutoStar, generate stars again.Hope this helps,JimActiveSky Supporthttp://www.hifisim.com/images/as2004proudsupporter.jpg

Jim, darn, I noticed that too but forgot to actually fix it - there'll probably be another update next week.... Best regards, Chris

Hello Mike, glad you like it! This is very odd. It certainly works fine on my system and presumably on others. The first two star numbers you quote are the same as on mine - I also use Real Stars. But the second two star numbers I get if just names are enabled - are you sure names weren't enabled when you checked the number of stars added? Could you just check again - with everything disabled it will add just 20 stars (four per planet). There's one (though probably remote) possibility. The problem could be stars_base.dat - could it already have the names and circles added? After running AutoStar with all options off Windows Explorer shows these file sizes: stars_base.dat 429 kb stars.dat 430 kb Could you run it with all options off and check the file sizes? As we both use Real Stars they should be the same. As another test you could delete stars.dat and create it from scratch with all options off. Are the file sizes the same and do the circles and names still appear? If stars_base.dat appears suspiciously large, you could restore it from the backup or the original RealStars zip. The program creates the stars.dat file in three stages:1. Copy stars_base.dat to stars.dat.FileCopy fs_path$ + "stars_base.dat", fs_path$ + "stars.dat"2. Create a string A1$ with the new text.3. Append the text to stars_dat.Open fs_path$ + "stars.dat" For Binary As #5 Put #5, stars_length, A1$ ' stars_length is length of file stars.dat (append a1$ to file) Close #5 Providing stars_base.dat is okay, it should work. But if any VB experts can see a potential problem, then let me know! Best regards, Chris

Glad you like it! As sg pointed out, it wouldn't be possible. All the program can do is add extra stars. Maybe you could suggest moving satellites to Microsoft for the next FS version. That would be pretty neat.... Best regards, Chris

Hello sg,>You're a machine! If only.... Actually, there are a couple of things to mention. I've increased the number of stars per planet to sixteen and it looks a lot better. It looks quite convincing over a large zoom range of 0.31 to 1.5. (with larger zoom values you can always decrease the planet size setting). I'll probably look at adjusting the planet brightnesses so, for example, Mercury is less bright than Venus. I had an idea about comets. As I mentioned, Microsoft crippled the display by limiting the brightness range to a ridiculous 3:1, so it's very difficult to get a realistic brightness range. Then I had an idea: dithering! This was used on early computers that could only display, say, sixteen colours or brightness levels. For each bitmap pixel the program draws a number of stars - the brighter the pixel, the greater the number of stars. This can give a far greater dynamic range than 3:1. Unfortunately, as the number of stars is increased for better image quality, the brighter the comet gets. This is a major problem but first results are quite encouraging. If it works reasonably well I may add a comets option - you would set position and size and - hopefully - the program would automatically orient the comet so the tail points away from the sun. Best regards, Chris

That sounds awesome! Can't wait for the next version...Thanks again - glad I started this thread - seems to have attracted a fair amount of attention. Congrats on a great addon.Best,sg

I'll plug anouther astronomical website real quick:www.calsky.comDefine your location if it doesn't automatically pull it from your CNN.com cookie, and click on the calendar link. One of the many things it will tell you when you can see it from your location is the ISS...Best,sg

Hello sg, comets are working reasonably well, so I've added a complete comet section. They do look a bit grainy due to the dynamic range limitation, but dithering improves it somewhat. Could be out tomorrow (Sunday). I'm also glad you started this thread - it was a perfect opportunity to give AutoStar another go! Best regards, Chris

>>ISS moves quickly too - crossing the sky in about 10 minutes. >Maybe as an AI flight? ;)>>Best,>sg:-doh Guess I forgot about that. Last time I looked at the viewing data for the UK I think it was only visible for about 1 minute.Still a very neat add-on and this threaad has probably increased the number of downloads for Chris, and given him more work :-)Thanks again Chris.

Hi Chris and Jim,Sorry to take so long getting back but I have been entertaining the 11 month old grandson today......or was it the other way around ;)In fact, the clue came from Chris' suggestion that I checked the file sizes and immediately it became obvious where the problem lay. Stars.dat and stars_base.dat were both 805KB.Thinking back, I ran the program following initial installation and creation of the stars_base.dat file and, had I left it at that, all would have been well. However, I had left the value of NumStars=9095 thinking I would never use the image feature and so would not need the larger figure recommended in your autostar_v1.doc. Curiosity got the better of me, I changed the value to 200000 in the 805KB file, instead of using the original, and then created another stars_base.dat file. Darn it....mea culpa :(Once again, thanks for a great addon and I've now seen Santa! Pity the grandson won't be old enough to appreciate it this Christmas, but perhaps it will impress the missus instead when the time comes :)Cheers!Mike