Keiron Smith
Hi Paul,
We may actually add a few terabytes of data in the coming years and the setup and streaming is an attempt to avoid having anyone buy a 3Tb or larger hard drive for Starry Night alone :) I often think of it as Google Maps - Google has amassed terabytes of satellite imagery and even their mobile apps simply stream it from the web as opposed to downloading or forcing you to install everything locally.
We do one better in this regard - when we download the data for you on the fly we only do it once! After that it is stored locally - but it is still just a tiny fraction of everything that is available.
Starry Night is kind of like Google Maps of the Universe - which also means a much bigger place to map out!
Glad to hear that you are using Starry Night in a classroom setting! Which grades do you teach?
Marko Kudjerski
Simulation Curriculum Corp.
Well, that's better, but I don't like to rely on the Internet being up, and the cloud being available, when I'm teaching a class. I've been burned too many times. Again, there's really no reason that all of that information should be required to be on C:.
Hello Paul,
Thanks for your reply! Actually, both the solution and the design here is to make this data available to you no matter how small your SSD drive is! This is why we have the streaming data which is the default setup. The program will download only the images it needs as it needs them. The additional (aka. "offline") data installation is meant for people who have really large hard drives and absolutely no connection to Internet on an ongoing basis.
Just to re-iterate - the add ons are always there and always on! You are not losing anything by choosing not to download those feature. The "installation" that the program refers to is merely an attempt to cache everything from the internet at once! If you notice, it is not the default setup. These are by no means "add-ons" but rather solutions for customers without internet connectivity.
I hope that this encourages you to just go ahead with the default setup and use the software as it was best designed to both give you what you need and not burden your machine with gigabytes of additional data.
I suspect that some of the confusion here comes from the installer's descriptions of these features. Admittedly, the descriptions could be much clearer about this data being completely unnecessary for the vast majority of users as the application automatically downloads what it needs from the internet. We will make changes for the next version of the Starry Night installer.
We are always working on trying to improve the experience and provide as much data as possible smoothly. Your feedback is highly welcome and we take all your comments with great importance!
Thank you!
Marko Kudjerski
Simulation Curriculum Corp.
No. That's because there is no solution, and the lack of a solution is by design. I am very unhappy as it is a very bad software design on your part.
I have an SSD disk that is my c: drive and hosts operating system files. All software and data goes on the d: drive which is a spinning metal hard disk.
I can install the bare program on d:. It lets me do that. But it insists on installing all the add-ons on c: and only on c: and there is simply not enough room left on that SSD to do so.
You should let me install on the partition I prefer, not the one you prefer. There's really no reason to force images and stuff onto c:.
So the "solution" is to simply not have those parts of the software available to me, even though I paid for them.
Hello Paul,
My name is Marko and I am one of the developers of Starry Night.
We understand your frustration due to the limited size of SSDs and large size of "Offline data". I also run on small SSDs and often have to be very cautious and conservative about what I am placing on the main drive.
That being said, we kept limited hard drive space in mind when designing Starry Night 7 and this resulted in the default setup which includes streaming data. All the data that Starry Night 7 needs, besides the basic application, is actually downloaded by the application while you run it and installing it offline is by no means required. As you can see, we opted for the streaming option due to the limited sizes of hard drives and largely underutilized data. Chances are that under typical usage you will use only 1/10th if not even less of all of the data available. The universe is a big place meaning that we need to have everything available in some form which is where streaming really shines - your computer will download (and CACHE) only what it needs as you run the program. The next time you visit the same location the data will be readily available, offline, and will only take up a tiny portion of the total size of data packages.
I realize that the sense of having everything available offline can put one at ease, but at the same time it has its costs. The offline data is very large and completely unnecessary if you have an internet connection readily available.
Finally, if you would still like to have the offline data locally and do have a second hard drive (something that majority of laptop users don't have - a single SSD is all that they get), there are ways to make this work but they involve installing the data on the main drive first.
Once you do install the data you can move the folder C:\ProgramData\Simulation Curriculum\Starry Night Prefs to the other hard drive.
Finally, you need to create a windows link (not a shortcut, but a link).
Open command prompt and type in:
mklink /j "C:\ProgramData\Simulation Curriculum\Starry Night Prefs" "D:\Starry Night Prefs"
where D:\Starry Night Prefs is the Starry Night Prefs folder that you moved to another drive.
Clear skies,
Marko Kudjerski
Simulation Curriculum Corp.
"2. Panoramas, Planet Images, and Additional All Sky Image Data
These components are optional.
Users can choose not to install these components.
Users CANNOT change the installation path of these components, they can only be installed to the default path."
That, in fact, is the problem. SSDs are small. There isn't room to install Panoramas and Planet Images. But you're not allowed to install them anywhere else. That is very poor design. And there is, apparently, nothing that can be done about it. So no, that didn't help. It just underlined what I already know. You guys have a very bad installer.
HI Paul,
Please review this KB article and see if it helps.
Keiron Smith
Starry Night & Sky Safari Software Support Team
I got past it.
The problem is that certain items can only be installed on the C: partition. I reserve C: for OS. All programs and their associated data need to go on D:. C: is an SSD and does not have the space that you expect to be there. That is very poor design.
Hi Paul,
The error appears to be saying that your computer hard drive does not have sufficient space available to complete the installation of Starry Night Pro 7.
How much space do you have the your HD?
Keiron Smith
Starry Night & Sky Safari Software Support Team
Comments