Microsoft WorldWide Telescope on the Mac? You bet.
At the TED conference in February of 2008, Microsoft announced an astronomy visualization tool called "Microsoft WorldWide Telescope" (WWT) that lets anyone with a Windows-based computer fly around through terabytes of astronomical images.
Well, it was released last week, to quite a bit of fanfare. Of course, there was not a little bit of consternation out in the Mac world, in that WWT requires DirectX to run, and that means...Windows-only.
Of course, our ears always perk up at the sound of that over here on the VMware Fusion team, so we decided to give it a whirl.
We downloaded the application to a Windows XP VM, running on VMware Fusion 1.1.2 on a MacBook Pro, and took some of the guided tours provided by the product.
And based on our testing, WWT works a treat, letting us fly around the universe, the galaxy, or even just Earth from the comfort of my MacBook Pro. Very cool.
So cool, in fact, that we decided to put together a little screencast of some of the tours to share.
Check it out here on the VMware Fusion YouTube Channel:
Unfortunately it crashes when I try it.
screenshot: http://img.skitch.com/20080519-rmrtc1utacjia6hw6xcysg55ba.jpg
I'm using the VMware 2.0 beta with Windows XP SP2. I have several versions of Visual Studio & .NET framework installed (which I suspect may be interfering with it). DirectX 3D accelleration is enabled.
Any ideas how to make it not crash?
Posted by: Mike Cohen | May 19, 2008 at 01:48 PM
@Mike
This may be a 3D regression in the beta. Did DirectX update when you installed WWT? It should force an update.
Otherwise, it might be the beta. Sorry.
Posted by: Peter Kazanjy | May 19, 2008 at 02:16 PM