Custom Horizon Limits

Sequence Generator Feature Requests
1

Hi
It has been nearly 2 years since regular requests started happening for this sort of a feature
Using the suggestion of most restrictive view in my location means I’d be looking at a horizon of 60% instead of the more realistic variable. With free products providing a custom horizon via a text file, surely it needs to be considered as a true way of doing multiple target sequencing

Thanks

2

Hear, hear. Fully support this request. It is the main thing missing from SGP in my opinion. Would make planning a session so much easier if we could just let SGP determine local horizon rise and set times for objects rather than using other software to determine those times and then manually adjust those in SGP prior to the start of each sequence.

3

Just asking for an update on this outstanding request. There seems a lack of communication from the admin team on whether this is to be implemented or not.

Thanks

Steve

4

This is on our list, but we can’t make any predictions or estimations on when. What we dont plan on doing is providing a junky text interface as a “good enough” for now implementation. It doesn’t need to be perfect, but it does need to have at least a rudimentary way to define horizons in the UI. Aside from the UI, this requires new sequence execution parameters too so it’s not an easy addition.

5

Good to know this one is still on the list Ken. It would be a most welcome addition. Understand there is a lot of work behind it for the UI, for the Planning Tool and for the Sequencer to calculate target altitude, start and end times relative to local horizon.

Do not discard the “junky text interface” so quickly though. These are quite useful and have become rather universal as well. After all most of the work for the user is measuring that local horizon, which is easily documented in a text file or spreadsheet.

Once that file is available it can be used in a number of astronomy applications like Stellarium, CdC, AstroPlanner and others. Would be great to add SGPro to that list.

6

We’ll agree to disagree on this. From the beginning, this has been against our philosophy and begins a trend that moves the app away from usable and toward useful, but only for power-users and engineer-types. Standing by this philosophy has not betrayed us yet…

That said, we will, of course support the import / export of any community standards or text / csv documents for those that prefer it… it just can’t be the primary method used for definition.

7

Understood. You will know your target audience best and I respect your design decisions.

In case you are not familiar with Paul Rodman’s AstroPlanner, you may want to have a look at the GUI elements he has designed for this functionality. Perhaps an interesting source of inspiration to shape your ideas on this subject.

Glad to see that text import/export is also intended to be included.

Once SGPro 4.1 is ready for release this custom horizon feature will be high on my wishlist, but I am sure your ToDo list is long enough already. Good luck with everything!

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