Setup
Setup, called by button on Main Panel or Alt+F5 shortcut, gives you access to additional program functions and settings. During setup session you can always click Help button, Apply changes, or Cancel session. Note that: NTP servers list and TLE update groups are saved immediately, selected World map preset is saved when you switch to other preset.
Setup groups are described below...
General
- RA/Decl output
- Style of degrees output for right ascension and declination (Decimal degrees or DMS for declination and HMS for RA).
- Lon/Lat output
- Style of degrees output for longitude and latitude (Decimal degrees or DMS).
- Local time
- UTC offset configuration, you can set it manually or use autodetect option
- Date
- Custom date format is available. Orbitron can display date e.g. as '01.30.2003' rather than '2003-01-30', so please choose date format and separator adequate to your inclination.
- Check for new version and messages
- Orbitron can check information about new version and messages. (Internet connection required). Application make it on start and display Message Board window if any news are detected.
- TLE update confiramtion
- If this option is unchecked and Orbitron detect that TLE is expired, application try to uprate TLE files without any questions. If no TLE updater group is marked for autoupdate, then orbitron will show TLE updater.
- Save profile on exit
- Option groups like General and Extra are saved always when Orbitron are closing. But there are profile dependent option containing: Location, Satellites (loaded/tracked/active), Visualisation, TLE updater, AOS notification, Prediction Setup that can be saved also. If this option is checked Orbitron will look the same after run as before last closing.
- Exit confirmation
- Display exit confirmation dialog before application close.
World map
World map tuning. Note that you can use your own map and satellite images by placing it in Data\ directory and naming: World-*.bmp and Sat-*.bmp. Note that map names including string "standard" are recognized as gray scale images (for land/see recolorize).
- Presets
- You can add, edit and remove presets which stores map configurations.
- Map image
- Selecting Standard map give you chance to customize land and sea colors.
- Sat icons
- Choose satellite icon you like.
- Colors
- You can change color for each map element.
TLE updater
TLE updater allows you to update your TLE data using Internet. It's full configurable. You are allowed to download TLE/TXT/ZIP files via HTTP connection. Downloaded files are writed/extract to your TLE\ directory, existing ones are overwriten. If you dowload ZIP file it will be decompresed. After update, setup will reload TLE data.
Time synch
Time synchronisation via NTP. If you have an Internet connection you can synchronize your PC clock very easly. Just select NTP server and click Synchronize icon. You can also click Check icon to learn time difference and leave your time as is.
- Synchronize PC clock when Orbitron starts
- If checked Orbitron will perform clock synchronization each time it starts.
- Ignore received time when difference is greater than 1 year
- It protect time synchronization with nonsense data.
Miscellaneous
Miscellaneous options.
- Radar viewport
- You can specify radar background image. You can turn it to * Blank or add your own files named Bckg-*.jpg to Data\ derectory. Radar viewport rotation option can be useful when e.g. you are looking through window at southern sky, then you can set it to 180 deg. to see your sky part on upper radar region.
- AOS notiffication
- Define Orbitron behaviour when AOS (Acquisition of Signal, Appear on Sky) is detected. You can set satellite AOS elevation limit, displaing of notice and sound to be played.
- User working directory
- If you use Windows 2000/XP your user account may not have privilages for writing to Program Files directory when orbitron is installed. In that situation you can't store there your setup/notes files. If you set user working directory to place in Your documents directory or somewere else you can write to - this problem disappears. When you click Browse button, please choose location when Orbitron creates your working directory named Orbitron.
- Language
- What can I say. Just select your language. If it isn't on list, then check www.stoff.pl, if there arent too, you can translate Orbitron yourself. Just contact me.
- Personal TLE directory
- It's extension to option above. If checked, Orbitron will use TLE directory located in your working directory if not main TLE directory in Program Files\Orbitron\TLE and you may be not allowed to use TLE updater.
Extra
You can find advanced and experimental options here. Just play with it and learn about...
- Save map shift and zoom
- If checked map shift and zoom (e.g. Europe view) are saved to profile with other parameters. If not, map is saved with zoom 100% and point (lon 180 W, lat 90 N) in left upper corner.
- Full interactive mode for viewport
- If checked, satellites and other vierwport content are displayed when viewport is moved/rotated by user.
- Automatic 'Sat on track' position
- If checked, satellite positon on track (begin/middle/end) is switched to middle when you
go to Simulation mode by clicking on track.
- Default mouse cursor
- Checked: Orbitron will use only standard mouse cursor (it fixes problem with cursor on some graphics cards).
Unchecked (default): Orbitron will use mouse cursors depending on context.
- Hide '?' tab from bottom panels
- There is '?' tab in main window's bottom panels, please check it to hide it.
- High resolution ground/sky track
- If checked, ground/sky track is drawed with higher resolution - contain more points. Track line is more soft with this option turned on. It's specially usable for satellites on high eccentric orbits like Molniya.
- Show application hints
- Determines whether Help Hints are enabled or disabled for the entire application.
- Moon rotation for southern hemisphere
- If checked, moon image will be rotated when you select location on Earth's southern hemisphere.
- Degree symbol for Big5 charset
- If you are using Big5 charset on your machine, turn on this option to make degree symbol displayed corrected.
- Printer: Don't use highlight
- Printer output without highlight (some lines of printout can be highlighted).
- Printer: Use raw output
- Sets printer output for text printers (plain text).
- ScrSaver: Turn back time if TLE expired
- Some users are using Orbitron only as screen saver, then they not update TLE data for a months.
Its protection for calculation on old TLE. If checked and user is loading expired TLE, then calculation time is turned back to time when the TLE was generated.