WWT | Rethinks!

Software Review : Microsoft WWT June 3, 2008

Posted by Abdurahman in Software Review, technology.
Tags: WWT
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Finally, Microsoft released software that they claimed it can change the world.

This software need fast internet connection to download the data. fortunately myself live in a country which has broadband internet. but it’s still a bit slow for me :).

Here are the minimum system requirements.

Microsoft® XP SP2 (minimum), Windows® Vista® (recommended)
PC with Intel Core 2 Duo processor with 2 gigahertz (GHz) or faster, recommended
1 gigabyte (GB) of RAM; 2 GB RAM recommended
3D accelerated card with 128 megabytes (MB) RAM; discrete graphics card with dedicated 256-MB VRAM recommended for higher performance
1 GB of available hard disk space; 10 GB recommended for off-line features and higher performance browsing
XGA (1024 x 768) or higher resolution monitor
Microsoft Mouse or compatible pointing and scrolling device
Microsoft® DirectX® version 9.0c and .NET Framework 2.0
Required for some features; Internet connection at 56 Kbps or higher.

Software screenshot, it tells where the picture was downloaded from internet.

I think it’s more to games requirements rather than astronomical software. But you will love it when you see the Graphical User Interface (GUI), especially if youre very interested in astronomics. The WorldWide Telescope takes images from several location in internet and put them together into a virtual night sky.

Theres also a guided virtual tours. You can choose 30 installed guided tours. just sit back and watch the tour like a real astronomer (or even for 5 year-old kids) and control the software. you can pause the tour and take a look on your own, then resume the show or jump to the another tour.

You also can jump to earth. But the image quality is not as good as google earth anyway.