----- Original Message -----

From: Ted Blank

To: guide-user@yahoogroups.com

Sent: Friday, April 18, 2014 6:40 PM

Subject: Re: [guide-user] Guide having difficulty creating animation trails on Asus eee machine

Hi Bill (and Clay), thanks for the feedback.  I should mention that I am not trying to make planets show animation trails, rather I am trying to use this feature to make animation trails for stars in declination as the Earth turns.  (This feature was first requested by Scotty Degenhardt for asteroid occultation pre-point work, and I use it all the time on other machines).  I'm hoping this little netbook will be a useful "guide" out in the field, and allow me to print fewer pages of star charts.

I've placed a '1' in the alt-J dialog, double checked the color of the animation lines, and toggled the overlays off and on.

And as I mentioned, I was able to get this to work one time just after installing Guide9 on this machine.  Once I deleted that animation trail, I could never get another one to appear.  This made me suspect that 1GB of RAM with Windows7 was just too little to let Guide do the needed calculations...

By the way, where do I access the "show at" ranges for these animation trails?  I have not been able to find this control, even in the manual. 

Thanks,
Ted

On Fri, Apr 18, 2014 at 7:21 PM, Bill Gray <pluto@...> wrote:

 

Hi Ted,

I'd suggest you go into Overlays... Toggle Overlays On/Off, then select
'Planet Trails for Animation'. Obviously, you'll want them turned 'on'.
Less obviously, the 'show at' ranges should cover the fields of view at
which you want planet trails to appear. It could be that you've set them
up to appear between 0 and 2 degrees, but are currently at a five-degree
field of view. In that case, the planet trails won't appear until you
zoom in.

Also less obviously, you should look at the line color. If you're
displaying black trails on a black background, you won't see anything,
even if technically speaking, Guide is 'drawing' the trails.

This issue with animation trails "vanishing" (or not appearing in the
first place) comes up pretty often. Which probably means I should re-think
the interface to make what's going on a little more obvious. I think a
lot of the confusion springs from the fact that you control trails partly
through 'Add a Trail', and partly through the overlay commands. I'll
have to give this some thought... there should be some way to consolidate
the controls.

-- Bill

On 04/18/2014 06:55 PM, Ted Blank wrote:
>
>
> I have right-clicked on the star (to select it), then attempted the animation.
>
> Step size is -5 minutes
> Round to nearest step and index marks are both checked
> Index freq is 2
> Time labels are on
> Time label freq is 5
> Number of steps 400
> color is red. (background is black)
>
> I had one successful animation trail created, after that nothing successful. That's what seemed so strange.
>
> Ted
>
>
>

> On Fri, Apr 18, 2014 at 6:49 PM, P. Clay Sherrod <drclay@... <mailto:drclay@...>> wrote:
>
> __
>
>
> __

>
> What intervals (in minute tick-marks) do you have set? Is your scale large enough that you can see the trail with the increments that you have designated? In many cases, you MUST right click on your target prior to issuing a command (via the animation tab at the top of the screen, not Alt-J) in order for Guide to recognize the requested target animation.
>
> ------------
> Dr. Clay
>
> Arkansas Sky Observatories
> http://www.arksky.org/
> ASO Petit Jean Mountain /MPC H41
> ASO Petit Jean Mountain South /MPC H45
> ASO West Conway /MPC H43
> .......serving astronomy since 1971
> ____________________
>
> ----- Original Message -----

> *From:* Ted Blank <mailto:tedblank@...>
> *To:* guide-user@yahoogroups.com <mailto:guide-user@yahoogroups.com>
> *Sent:* Friday, April 18, 2014 5:41 PM
> *Subject:* [guide-user] Guide having difficulty creating animation trails on Asus eee machine

>
> I have a small (1 GB ram) Asus eee mini-laptop with Windows7 Starter. I installed Guide 8 and Guild 9 (own them both) on the machine.
>
> Guide8 never was able to create an animation trail. (I did the alt-J 1 step on both).
>
> Guide9 created one animation trail successfully, but since then has not been able to.
>
> The menu appears, I enter all the data, say 'OK', Guide processes for a moment, then stops, and no animation trail appears.
>
> I have tried many combinations of screen color and trail color, still nothing.
>
> Is it possible that there is just not enough memory on this tiny machine to support making the trails?
>
> Thanks.
> Ted
>
>
>
>
>