REVIEW: Distant Suns 5.01 CD-ROM

by: Jason Compton


Hopefully, most of you recall the Distant Suns 5.0 review from a few issues back. The verdict-Distant Suns is a capable, but aging, astronomical observation package with several good characteristics for beginning stargazers. However, in terms of flexibility, contemporary data, and sheer volume of observable objects, the new Digital Universe had the clear advantage.

That gap has been closed somewhat, but not entirely, by the release of Distant Suns 5.01 CD. Included on the CD is the Distant Suns program for FPU and non-FPU machines, as well as images for both ECS and AGA users. However, graphic card support is still non-existant and the AGA mode did not properly promote under CyberGraphX. (It seems to look for the AGA hardware)

Most of that shipped on a few floppies before. Included on CD are a number of interesting animations, as well as the large Hubble Guide Star Catalog and Stars on Demand databases of sky objects. This puts a vast amount of observational power at your fingertips.

The company now publishing the Distant Suns package, Chaocity, should be applauded for finishing this product and seeing it through. Unfortunately, Chaocity's size have left little time for the actual improvement of Distant Suns, and it shows when a brief comparison is made between the main engines of DS and Digital Universe.

Still, Distant Suns has beaten DU to the punch of supporting this thorough of a catalog, and does so without requiring wholesale copying to the hard drive-the program will read the Hubble GSC and the Stars on Demand from the CD-ROM drive.

The DS 5.01 CD-ROM is still less expensive than the Digital Universe and of course still is configured to be a bit more friendly to the first-time user than DU is. Investigating the universe just got a bit easier.

Chaocity
221 Town Center West #259
Santa Maria, CA  93454
USA
805-925-7732 voice
805-928-3128 fax

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