Any idea of whether the next version of SE will incorporate the proper motion of stars as well as the orbital motion and periods for multiple stars and exoplanets? So we can model the past and future of the universe as well as see how the ancients saw the stars and how our descendants will see them- including precession of the axis?
If you mean stellar motion though the galaxy, it is in the TODO list, under the stars category. However, it is uncertain that it is possible, at least according to the TODO list.
It should be possible as Starry Night and Stellarium both advertise being able to see what the constellations looked like millions of years ago and millions of years in the future.
Speaking of old computers, I have one and I was looking to upgrade what I have but I saw my motherboard does not work with any video card above PCI-e 2.0
Right now I have a Core 2 Quad Q6600, 2 GB DDR2-667 memory, 640 MB Geforce 8800 GTS 112 SP graphics card. I set my computer to allocate 2 GB for video memory (640 MB from the video card and the rest from RAM.) I am using XP Home x32 which does not use much RAM so I allocated most of my RAM for SE. I run SE in a 1024x768 window so that should hopefully minimize its video memory usage
2 GB RAM is the most this motherboard will allow, however there is a bios hack that will allow it to take up to 4 GB RAM (but only 3.3 GB will be usable, even if I install a 64 bit OS.)
The two upgrades I am considering are:
https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product. ... -_-Product
EVGA GeForce GT 730 DirectX 12 04G-P3-2739-KR 4GB 128-Bit DDR3 PCI Express 2.0 Video Card
4GB 128-Bit DDR3
Core Clock 700 MHz
2 x DVI-I 1 x mini HDMI
PCI Express 2.0
I want the dual DVI ports since I run two monitors.
The other upgrade is
https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product. ... -_-Product
Crucial 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 667 (PC2 5300) Dual Channel Kit Desktop Memory Model CT2KIT25664AA667
DDR2 667 (PC2 5300)
Cas Latency 5
Voltage 1.8V
Should I do one or both upgrades, considering I will be limited by the motherboard to 3.3 GB RAM even if I go from 2 GB to 4 GB? Also should I do the upgrade from the 640 MB graphics card to the 4 GB graphics card even though the 4 GB graphics card is slower? See this:
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/gpu ... ,4388.html
On this hierarchy chart, it's 3 levels below my current graphics card, and my current card isn't the standard one, it's the SSC version with 112 shader processors, instead of 96, and performs more like an 8800 GTX (5 levels above the 4 GB card.) Problem is this motherboard is a PCI-e 4x board so the graphics slot might be the bottleneck anyway and the motherboard doesn't support anything higher than PCI-e 2.0 I am considering the two upgrades though because they are relatively inexpensive and I already bought a 2 GB hard drive and a copy of Windows 10 32bit/64bit Home. I'm not having any issues running the program in a 1024x768 window, however the program hangs upon closing and I have to kill the process in the task manager to close it (or tell Windows to close it in the pop up window.) I also worry that future editions of SE will have higher requirements- is there any news about that or will the current requirements to run SE hold for foreseeable future versions? I noticed that the video memory and RAM requirements have gotten higher with more recent versions. The other thing is I noticed via EVGA Precision that SE uses over 95% of my graphics card, is that dangerous to the long term health of the card and will it shorten its life? Would that be just as bad with the new card, should I get it?