RC1 release

Just a short note to say a big ‘thank you’ to the developers. I’m really impressed with the turnaround of our multitude of observations, however minor. I think my last image was built up over 12 beta versions!

After giving up on Maxim, using SGP has been a complete joy, and the results speak for themselves. (It is never mentioned, but SGP plays quite happily within the confines of a small laptop screen)
We users can do our bit by spreading the word, for instance has SGP ever been reviewed in an Astronomy magazine? If it has not, I can write to the UK publication ‘The Sky at Night’ and ask if they are interested in a review. I have written quite a few articles in my time and unless it is a clique, I should get through the door.

I am not sure how many of the imaging conferences the authors have been to but some of the bigger ones like AIC might be well worth their while and I would encourage them to give a talk or tutorial and have a display. Not until October for AIC but now would be the time to contact the conference committee.

There are a lot of higher end imagers still using the old standard software and assuming (totally incorrectly) that SGP is just for beginners. A conference presentation could go a long way toward correcting this misapprehension.

We were invited to talk at AIC last year. That’s just a ways for us to travel and it’s fairly expensive to get and stay there Plus my wife was 8 months pregnant at the time…so there’s that! We’re certainly not opposed to it. This year might be a better year for us to do something like that if we get the opportunity again.

To be honest current users of Maxim are not really our target audience. I mean we’re glad that we have them coming over but after you spend upwards of $1200 on a software package (to get similar automation as SGP) you’re not super likely to leave it for something else…we’re more after the people that would be purchasing something like that rather than converting current users. Having said that we’ve certainly had a number of Maxim users transition over to SGP and we’d certainly take more :slight_smile:

Thanks,
Jared

I think that once folks see what SGP can do compared to the competition, and then see what the price is compared to the competition, they will give it a try (and that is all it takes). I suspect that many imagers think that because MaxIm and such are high priced, they are therefore “high performance”. I guess there is always the mindset that expensive is always better. Just look at some audio gear if you ever question that! :wink: That is what I thought at first - it did not take long to realize that in this case more expensive is not only not better, but is (IMHO), not as good. That is why a talk at such as AIC is good as it lets folks see how the software works w/o having to install and try.

Speaking of watching the software work, has anyone done a screen capture video of SGP running a sequence? I know there are sequence creation and mosaic videos but maybe one showing it working would be helpful to those wondering about SGP.

When I upgraded to Maxim DL 6, I experienced so many frustrating crashes while standing outside in the dark, that it’s one of the main things that drove me to investigate SGP. I’m generally finding the UI for SGP to be rather more practically usable and am hoping to make this my first year or really using it seriously…

Just to pile on a thank you, as well! I know many of us file bugs, user errors as bugs, complaints, opinions, feature requests, etc. and it’s tough to manage, but between SGPro, PHD2 (thank you to Andy and his team, too), plate solving, it’s really getting world class. Congrats on RC1!

Indeed. Although I understand the need to keep old-time users happy, I was as old-time a user as MaxIm
had and I still feel that MaxIm was far past it’s time for an interface redo. That is one of the reasons I
switched to SGP as well.

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