On 06/25/2013 10:22 AM, Stephen Tonkin wrote:

> I concur with Pierre. I would far rather have planetarium software that
> is clean and extremely functional than that which is pseudo-realistic.

I've added in a little bit of "pseudo-realism", but almost entirely
in the interest of function. For example, the "realistic" sky (Display,
Background, Realistic) is something I use to give a quick idea as to
how dark the sky might be for a particular observation. The objects
around the horizon (Display, Background, Horizon Objects) helps
me avoid the blunder of thinking I'm going to see an event that will
actually happen below the horizon. (And if I see a rocket ship on
the horizon, I know I'm "observing" from the moon.)

Some people have modified the horizon and horizon objects to show
what's actually seen from their observing location. This is a bit
of a pain (you have to figure out what the limiting altitude above
the horizon is for a series of points around the horizon), but it
can and has been done. You can then also move/add things around
("there's a house to the south-southeast; put a dead tree over
here, and a live tree here, and a streetlight here.") This is
documented at the bottom of the file 'horizon.dat'.

-- Bill