reviewed Stellarium 0.11.4

While borrowing (and repairing) the Horvatin laptop, running Windows 7 Premium, I suddenly realised I could run the 64-bit version of Stellarium. I've never seen it in action on a Windows box. I downloaded
version 0.11.4.

Immediately turned on the constellation borders. As I suspected... The frame rate dropped but the application continued to respond well. Whereas on a 32-bit OS, it's a slog.

There didn't seem to be any font display problems. That's good.

Huh. I guess I overlooked this version. I like the "Information tab" in the Configuration dialog. This allows a reduction is the "chatter" when selecting an object. I turned off a bunch of fields.

Spotted the new "Show nebula background button" on the Navigation tab.

Ooh. An exoplanets plug-in. Cool! That'll be neat for star parties...

There's an Observability plug-in. Sounds interesting. I'll have to explore that one later.

Discovered a few new keyboard shortcuts

• Ctrl Alt Shift ] and [ for advancing or retreating on sidereal year. 
• Alt s for toggling the star labels. 
• Ctrl n for toggling red light night vision mode. 
• Ctrl Alt e to toggle the exoplanets markers and labels. 
• Ctrl h to return to the "home" location, i.e. the default direction and field of view.

Looks like I'll need to update my shortcut guide...

And it looks like it visually compensates for air masses or atmospheric extinction. Impressive.