Frequently asked questions :
 

1. Q: So, what is this thing all about?
2. A: Distant Suns is one of the premier desktop astronomy programs for Windows, having been on the market since 1985. You can find out more information if you go here.
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4. Q: Will Distant Suns work on Windows 2000 or XP?
5. A: Yup, same for Win-98/ME.
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7. Q: Why not put a space-station tracker in DS?
8. A: Not as easy is it sounds Keplarian-Elements breath! There are many fine satellite tracking packages available, both as stand-alone applications and web based apps, so I would recommend using those. Adding the same to DS would require a lot more effort then most people would assume and in turn distract me from my already limited time to fix bugs and enhance the main package.
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10. Q : Hey! Didn't this used to be called "First Light?"
11. A : Yup. Originally this thing was called "Galileo", but when my first publisher assumed room temperature, it was renamed "Distant Suns" (for legal reasons). In a blinding flash of incompetence, I opted to rename it First Light at a later date since the new version I had just finished was so much improved over the previous one it was virtually a new product. Of course, I lost a lot in name recognition. So after only a year, the name Distant Suns was dusted off and put back to use. For First Light owners, First Light 1.X is equal to Distant Suns 4.
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13. Q : I have lots of harddrive space to burn. How can I install the CD-ROM data onto my HD?
14. A : The easiest way is to copy the entire CD-ROM over to the drive, then "install" the program from there. From then on, it will look to your HD for the data instead of the CD.

• Q : I get an "out of texture memory" error when looking at Saturn. What gives?
• A : Saturn uses two textures, one for the surface, and the other, a very big one, for the rings. It is the ring texture that can fill up older graphics cards. The newer cards over the past couple of years should have no such problems. I would highly recommend investing in one, if you have an older machine, it will make things much more pleasant. If you cannot do that, then try the following : There are a lot of factors which may permit one card to work while another one will not such as the the graphics drivers or methods used to compress the texture in memory. If you are having problems try lowering the resolution of your screen. That is, if you are running a screen that is say, 1024x768, drop it down to 800x600.  Or if you are running more than 65535 colors ("16 bit" color), drop it down to 16 bits, and try again. In theory, these problems shouldn't happen with an "AGP" system, but I don't have one yet, so I cannot test it.
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• Q: I have the SETI version and there is no When and Where panel!
• A: A big "uff da!" on this one. When finishing up work on the second release I moved everything over from a cranky P166 to a newer Dell PII, and a lot of subtle things broke which should not have, including the fact that several windows failed to open. You may now download a replacement .exe file from here.
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• Q: Hey, my SETI target in Distant Suns is showing nothing but zeroes. What's the deal?
• A: Take a look at your ds4_seti.ini file inside your \windows directory. The path to your SETI@Home folder is controlled by this file. See if your SETI@Home path is correct. It has come to our knowledge,  that some users have found this path to point towards the ds4 directory instead of the SETI folder, and also towards the readme.txt file in the main Distant Suns folder. For most users or at least those who installed SETI@Home to the default location, the path should look something like: c:\progra~1\seti@h~1\work_u~1.sah in order for you to have the SETI target showing correct values for RA and DECL.

• Q : Why the funky filenames in the DS4 (regular and SETI version)?
• A : The Free version of Distant Suns, is the older Windows 3.1 product. In that case it still is restricted to use Microsoft's lame filename convention. The "~" is  used by Windows 98/NT to understand older filenames.
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• Q: The when I double-click on this ".zip" file it launches Adobe Acrobat (or Outlook, or something else). What's wrong?
• A: A .zip file should launch your zip application which will usually be the popular "winzip". If you don't have any zip-utility, then Windows should not do anything. Why it wants to open up some completely unrelated application is a mystery. To get Winzip, merely go to http://www.download.com.
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• Q: I try to install the software, but it crashes.
• A: I use a standard industrial off-the-shelf, installer. So, I am sorry to say, in the very rare times that it crashes it is a bug in the install software.
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• Q: When will there be a Linux version available?
• A: Only when someone else wants to write it. There is an attempt right now to develop one, but it is way to early to give it a release date.
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• Q: When will a Timex-Sinclair version be available?
• A: You have got to be kidding!