© 6-14-02 Dr. Neale Monks

• Product Name/Version: The Digital Universe 2.40
• OS 9/OS X ?: Classic Only
• Company: Syzygy Research & Technology Ltd
• URL: http://www.syz.com/DU/mac/index.html
• Category: Astronomy Tool
• Price: $149.99 (Canadian)
• Requirements:
  • Mac OS System 7.5 or higher
  • 68030 CPU (90 MHz PowerPC or faster recommended)
  • 16 MB free memory
  • 5 Mb free hard disk space (20 MB or more recommended)
  • 2X CD-ROM drive
• Date of Review: 6/14/02
• Rating: Overall: 3 Bounces - Lustworthy

Ratings Legend
One Bounce: Lustless	This product is uninspiring and not only lacks lust appeal, but it also lacks even the possibility of lust-production.
Two Bounces: Lack-Luster	If you need what it is that this product does, look elsewhere or wait, it lacks lust-appeal.
Three Bounces: Lustworthy	A few rough spots here and there, but overall a high quality item worthy of lust.
Four Bounces: Pure Lust	Unalloyed lust.

The Digital Universe is a good value planetarium program for amateur astronomers. It includes a surprisingly good and well integrated astronomy encyclopaedia, and is bundled with a basic but amusing space flight simulator. Besides being priced very competitively compared with The Sky and Starry Night, The Digital Universe works on a variety of Macintoshes including older PPC and even 68K machines like Quadras. This may make it the only choice for users with older computers.

Installation

I had no difficulty installing The Digital Universe and the supplied instructions were perfectly adequate. One quirk to the installation that needs to be mentioned is the updating mechanism. Instead of simply downloading an updater file (as is the case, for example, with Starry Night), The Digital Universe needs to communicate with Syzygy's web site so that it can produce an updater file tailor-made to the installation you have.

The Digital Universe stands apart from many current planetarium programs in having the potential to work on low specification computers, including pre-PPC Macintoshes. Of course performance will be best on a high-end machine, but on a middling machine like my 500 MHz iBook I found performance to be sprightly in every regard. A full installation of The Digital Universe requires over 600 MB of disk space. This is about standard for a planetarium application. What is nice however is that there are much lighter installations, down to as little as 5 MB. Indeed, The Digital Universe can even be run straight off the CD-ROM without being installed on the hard disk at all.

The Digital Universe doesn't come with a printed manual. This is increasingly common with software, and I suppose is a good thing. After all it keeps costs down and saves on trees. But personally, I like manuals: I find them an essential part of the 'new product' experience, and indispensable when I'm learning how to use a new piece of software. Instead, the manual comes as an Adobe Acrobat file to be read from the computer screen. It could be printed off - but at 177 pages would you want to?

Performance

As mentioned above, The Digital Universe works well even on a mid range Macintosh. With stars and deep sky objects limited to ninth magnitude, screen drawing wasn't instantaneous, but neither was it annoyingly slow. With star magnitudes cranked up to fourteenth magnitude, screen redrawing took about two seconds.

Most of my use of The Digital Universe was under Mac OS 9.2, but it also behaved flawlessly within the Classic environment of OS X. The Digital Universe proved to be stable and predictable, and never once froze, even with the default RAM allocation of 12 MB.

User Interface

The Digital Universe is nicely designed but includes a sufficient number of oddities and counterintuitive controls to make the experience a bit heavy going at first. For example, to enter your observing location you go to a menu item that is inexplicably called 'Environment'. Once there though things get much better. The Digital Universe scores over some competing applications in being configured for a world, and not just a US, market. There are plenty of global locations, subdivided into regions and coordinates, together with all the various time zones. I did notice some weird entries in the lists of locations: for example, while London was under England, the English city of Leeds was under United Kingdom.

Once up and running, The Digital Universe is easy to use, but it lacks the fluidity that characterizes the very best software. In part this is because certain traditional Macintosh conventions have been ignored. For example, Command-F doesn't bring up a find feature, but instead switches to a full field of view of 180 degrees. To find an object the user needs to select one of no fewer than five menu items (of which only four have keyboard shortcuts).

Magnifying sections of the sky simulation is accomplished in at least three different ways. There is a zoom button on he Motions palette, plus keyboard shortcuts that can be configured to expand or contract the amount of sky covered on the screen to atch the field of view of the user's telescope or finderscope. The third method takes a moment to get used to, but works exceedingly well. If the cursor is taken to a point of interest and the mouse held down, the user can marquee off a region of the sky by dragging the cursor out from that point. The simulation is then redrawn to cover only the selected area. This can be repeated as required, allowing successively smaller portions of the sky to be examined. This is essential for producing the detailed star charts needed to find deep sky objects and faint stars. The Digital Universe makes the inherent compromises between the two dimensional simulation and the three dimensional nature of space obvious: when a region is marqueed off, it is distinctly curved and only becomes flat once the screen is redrawn at the new magnification. The process looks a bit weird at first but it does help to reinforce the spatial image in your brain with what you can see on the screen, and works well in the field. Moving around the simulation can be done using the same clicking and dragging, as well as using either the Motion palette or keyboard shortcuts.

There are no fewer than five floating palettes in all. These don't dock at the top of the screen or click together to form a bigger palette, and do seem a bit untidy. The Display palette allows the user to switch on or off certain aspects of the simulation such as planets, celestial coordinate grids, and constellation stick-figures. Another palette gives the user control over time, but this one is a bit flawed. It allows the user to change the amount of time each step forward or backwards represents, but doesn't allow the user to revert to the current time, or to choose between regular calendar, sidereal or synodic months.

The Planetarium & Encyclopaedia

Aside from these user interface quirks, the simulation is good and has lots of nice features. The stars can be plotted with their Flamsteed and Bayer numbers as well as their names, for example. Clicking on the screen brings up a list of nearby objects from which you can jump to a relevant entry in the astronomical encyclopaedia. It is possible to zoom in on planets and so locate the satellites of Jupiter or Saturn or watch the changing phases of our Moon. As with most modern planetarium programs, The Digital Universe can control a telescope via a serial cable (with most modern Macintosh computers this requires the use of a USB to serial cable adapter).

In terms of realism, The Digital Universe does a good job at least as far as the stars are concerned. With overlays and things like deep sky objects and planets switched off, the density and brightness of the stars is very pleasing and the can fairly be called photorealistic. However, the stars do not seem to be coloured, and neither are the standard markings for double or variable stars used (although variable star designations are available). On the other hand the pictures used for the planets are very plain and not at all clear, so events like shadow transits are not easy to see. Finally, although there are links to pictures of deep sky objects (both in the encyclopaedia and online), there are none in the simulation itself.

Star charts can be printed from the simulation, and these are in the standard black stars on a white sky format. Magnitude tables are plotted as well. A nice feature, and essential if you plan to use the program in the field, is a 'Night Palette' function that switches the screen to a dim red mode that doesn't ruin dark-adapted vision.

So far, the features listed are more or less equivalent to those of competing applications, but The Digital Universe does have one aspect that no other similar product even approaches, and that is a tightly integrated and very readable encyclopaedia. As mentioned above, one way to dip into this encyclopaedia is by clicking on an object in the planetarium. Otherwise, there is a menu item that links into the four main sections that cover basic astronomical principles, biographies, a dictionary of definitions, and various astronomical objects including planets, deep sky objects and spacecraft.

The sheer depth of this encyclopaedia is amazing and unlike the rather simple book that comes with Starry Night, this encyclopaedia is aimed at amateurs with a fair knowledge of astronomy already. As such it goes into considerable depth and covers not just the obvious but the positively arcane, such as objects that don't exist but were once though to, such as the satellites of Venus and the Sun's dim companion star "Nemesis".

Even better, the encyclopaedia is lavishly illustrated, with photographs of just about every spacecraft ever launched, dozens of shots of the planets and their satellites, even a few QuickTime movies of things like the dusty 'spokes' on Saturn's rings and various Shuttle launches. There are also a few 3D photographs of objects to be viewed using the (supplied) 3D spectacles. A fair proportion of the images are taken by amateurs, and the editors have done a good job in sitting these with the flashier NASA and other professional materials to make the entire product rounded and stimulating. Indeed, the encyclopaedia is one of the best astronomical resources I have come across for the Mac.

3DStars

Although clearly carefully designed and mathematically correct, the 3DStars application is really a toy with very little purpose or usability, but as far as it goes, it is fun. Essentially it is a flight simulator of sorts, but instead of landmarks, all around are the stars of the Milky Way galaxy plotted in their correct places. The effect is best when run in 3D mode and while wearing the special 3D spectacles, when the movement of the stars around you is very impressive indeed. Using the keyboard you can fly forwards or backwards, rotate or turn around, and generally zip along to see what the Sun might look like from Alpha Centauri.

The problem with 3DStars is that you really have no idea where you are going. Obvious patterns like the Pleiades or Orion's Belt vanish as soon as you move a few light-years from the Sun, and none of the stars have names. Moreover, your options while flying are very limited and there is no way to make like Captain Kirk and 'lay in a course for Rigel'. Worse still, you have to use the keyboard for controlling your trajectory; I couldn't figure out any way to use a joystick, so even that simple pleasure of mindless flying around was awkward and forced.

Having said all this, when set to 3D mode and with the 3D spectacles on, the effect is very good and a fun toy to share with others. But without more depth, either in being able to control your course or describe what you are flying past, the novelty does wear off quickly.

Conclusion

After using The Digital Universe for a couple of weeks I continued to find the quirks in its user interface annoying, but nevertheless there is much about it that is very good. It is unquestionably a capable and powerful program, and would easily satisfy the needs of the casual to intermediate amateur astronomer. But taken as a whole, with the fascinating and well thought-out astronomy encyclopaedia and the pleasant enough 3DStars toy, The Digital Universe is an attractive and well-rounded package for the user looking for a general astronomy resource rather than the perfect planetarium program.

- Dr. Neale Monks

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