Stellarium 0.13 does not work on laptops anymore. Older version did work on them. The New version requires Windows 7 and a 3d graphic card. The older versions worked fine without a graphic card. There is suppose to be a MASE version that suppose to work in these cases. Just passing along the word.
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Hello James!
PortableApps.com Updater and Portable App Directory is for obtaining only newest, updated applications.
But previous versions of the PortableApps.com software (Platform, Apps) is still available.
Look the PortableApps.com Project page on SourceForge.org.
Here you can browse, choose and download various versions of
PortableApps.com files for App manually installation from Menu:
PortableApps.com Platform Menu -> Apps -> Install a New App.
Then open downloaded the .paf.exe file and install your application. It is easy.
Also for Stellarium Portable available a variety versions (v. 0.9.1 - v. 0.13.0) of the installers.
The problem is that newer versions are more demanding.
But some laptops can handle it.
I can run it on mine with minimum problems.
And mine is a Hp with Windows 8, a i3 processer, 4GB Ram, and a Intel(R) HD Graphics 3000 card.
It has nothing to do with being a laptop, some laptops will work with the new version, some desktops will not.
As you mentioned it's because the new version uses more advanced 3D features which are not present on many older (and some low-end newer) graphics cards (and older versions still required a graphics card, it just didn't have to be a new or fancy one).
Also, you mentioned that there is a MESA build, and I think that version allows for software rendering instead which is much slower than the hardware rendering used in the standard version, but should work on just about anything that the older builds used to work on.
Now, for comparison purposes I've extracted both stellarium-0.13.0-win32.exe and stellarium-0.13.0-MESA-win32.exe, and the only difference I can find is that the MESA version includes a file called
opengl32.dll, so having not tried Stellarium on a computer without hardware 3D support I don't know for sure if adding that file is really all that's necessary in order to use software rendering or not, but I would think it would be worth a try, so I've uploaded the file to a temporary file host for you: http://tempsend.com/A3C42ACB68Let us know the outcome, and if it works John might consider including it in the official release, though if it's presence blocks hardware rendering in favour of software rendering then some custom coding will need to be used to first detect whether or not it'll be needed, and second move it so that Stellarium can only find it when it is needed.
Also if you don't want to trust that .dll I won't blame you, you can extract the installers yourself using innounp, just download it from http://innounp.sf.net, extract the .rar file (you can use 7-Zip to do this), and run the following command:
where
X:\Path\Tois the path to the installer, and you'll findopengl32.dllin the resulting{app}directory.~3D1T0R
Did you do a full compare on all files using something like WinMerge and the only difference was that opengl32.dll? If so, we could switch it back and forth. Maybe give the user an INI option to enable software. Or possibly blacklist/whitelist cards based on speed using the HwInfo plugin.
This is also off as the opengl32.dll library is already included with Windows itself.
Sometimes, the impossible can become possible, if you're awesome!
Yes, but being unfamiliar with Inno Setup I'm not 100% certain of my findings.
What I did was use innounp to extract each of the two installers by running the command I listed in my previous post & moving the resulting {app} directory and .iss file into their own folders, then I used WinMerge (Portable I should add ☺) to compare the two folders, and the only differences were a) the MESA version included opengl32.dll (which I believe is the MESA library masquerading as OpenGL so as to run the required rendering through it's own functions), and the .iss file included one more line which
AFAICTis simply to include the opengl32.dll in the installation directory.The reason that I'm not certain that this is in fact all that's necessary is that having no prior experience with Inno Setup (except for running Inno Setup installers to install things before) I'm not sure if the .iss and those files are the only things that effect the install, or if there's something more that innounp isn't showing me.
Edit-1: MESA's website says it's capable of hardware accelerated 3D, and that if that's unavailable it "falls back on one of its software renderers", so moving opengl32.dll around may not be necessary.
Perhaps a DevTest would be in order?
Edit-2: That's right … I read a little more, and remembered some of what I had known before, and MESA is basically an Open Source software implementation of the OpenGL graphics rendering APIs, which has more recently included some hardware accelerated implementations for a relative few graphics cards. So the presence of MESA's .dll will cause you to use software rendering unless you happen to be using one of those cards.
So if there's a way we can detect whether a graphics card is 3D hardware acceleration capable we should move MESA's .dll out when it is. Barring that we could use the HwInfo plugin and make a list of cards which require MESA, updating it as they come up.
Edit-3: So far I've only been able to find one place with a possibly useful list for black-/white-listing Graphics cards for MESA usage: Mozilla Wiki - Blocked Graphics Drivers
~3D1T0R
The reason for the asking is that I assist a Prof of Physics at Weber State. He uses Stellarium (portable and regular) in his classes teaching astronomy. They use laptops as we all know. They also would like portable solutions, so they don't have to install anything on them only to uninstall later. I hope that I can give my professor an answer.
For right now, you can just drop the opengl32.dll file from the local install into the portable one and it'll use it all the same.
Going forward, perhaps we'll make it available as an INI switch or go with some sort of GPU detection setup.
Sometimes, the impossible can become possible, if you're awesome!