The WorldWide Telescope

If you haven’t heard of this project, now is a great time to check it out. You can find the project at: http://www.worldwidetelescope.org/

The Microsoft Research team has created this site which allows you to explore the universe in a very unique way.

I think you will be blown away from all you can do with this. They currently allow you to download the Spring Beta and plan on updating and improving this program moving forward.

Note: Keep in mind is that the program does require 3D Graphics and DirectX to be installed in order for it to run.

Once you have it installed, it is easy to move around and look at things, such as:

There are also some tours which are very cool to look at and give you a lot of interesting and unique information. Some of this stuff you can get in other places, but there is nothing that is this complete. Here is part of one of the tours:

If you have kids or if you are just curious about our universe, I highly recommend getting this program and checking out all is has to offer. Feel free to post on here if you find anything really cool in it and I’ll check it out.

Published 13 May 08 09:43 by Tom

Filed under: WorldWide Telescope

Comment Notification

If you would like to receive an email when updates are made to this post, please register here

Subscribe to this post's comments using RSS

Comments

# spencer said on May 13, 2008 1:45 PM:

How did yours look like that? mine looks like a bunch of squiggly lines on a white background. this sucks. This isnt space. Is it my graphics card?

# Tom said on May 13, 2008 1:52 PM:

It is possible that it is your graphics card. Do you meet the requirements for it:

http://www.worldwidetelescope.org/experienceIt/ExperienceIt.aspx

Also, you can post this on the forum for the WorldWide Telescope:

http://community.research.microsoft.com/forums/95.aspx

# Tim said on May 15, 2008 2:36 AM:

Wow...I downloaded too and had the same problem. These requirements are pretty formidable and are going to preclude a great number of users.

# Tom said on May 15, 2008 10:00 AM:

Tim,

I agree that the requirements are pretty steep. Please also remember that this is still in Beta so they could change. I would also recommend posting to the forum and getting a discussion going there on it.

# david suess said on May 16, 2008 9:09 PM:

why could direct x and 3d graphics be included in the download

# Tom said on May 19, 2008 10:24 AM:

David,

I assume they didn't want to add direct x to the download so as not to make it larger then it needed to be for those that already have direct x. And if you don't, then you still download it the same way and it takes the same amount of time.

# Casey said on October 7, 2008 5:11 PM:

When the app starts on my laptop, it brings up an error dialog indicating that I need "DirectX and 3D Graphics installed."

The "3D Graphics" phrase is not clear. I assume this refers to the video hardware requirement:

- 3D accelerated card with 128 megabytes (MB) RAM; discrete graphics card with dedicated 256-MB VRAM recommended for higher performance

But other users are trying to "download" 3D Graphics, which is less than useful. . . .

Name (required)
Your URL (optional)
Comments (required)
Remember Me?

Search

This Blog

Home
Email

All my posts are provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confer no rights. All the expressions expressed herein are entirely my own and not necessarily those of Microsoft. In addition, thoughts and opinions often change. Because a weblog is intended to provide a semi-permanent point-in-time snapshot, you should not consider out of date posts to reflect current thoughts and opinions.