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Maestro: Keep up with vehicle traffic on Mars Pick of the Week
Maestro imageThe macosxhints Rating:
9 of 10
[Score: 9 out of 10]
If you're fascinated by the Mars landers (Spirit and Opportunity), then you'll want to take a look at Maestro. Maestro is a "lite" version the software that NASA uses to work with the two rovers. Written in Java, it's relatively easy to get working, though you'll have to have 10.3 -- you need Apple's Java 3D and Advanced Imaging Update, which requires 10.3.1 or newer. Both Maestro and the Java updates are somewhat sizable -- about 45MB in total, so you'll want a fast connection or a lot of time on your hands!

Once you've downloaded and installed Maestro and the Java 3D updates, you head back to the Maestro site to download data updates. These smaller (under 4MB) files contain data that's been sent back by the rovers. At present, there are two Spirit data files, but none for Opportunity. Download the data files, launch Maestro, and click on the Spirit button on the main page. There are two windows - a Conductor and a Browser. The Conductor is pretty nifty, and gives you a series of images and audio of Spirit's arrival, step by step.

My only real gripe is that the installer wouldn't let me specify the install directory, only the drive. I had a bit of trouble when I first tried moving it after install, but a reinstall and re-move seemed to work just fine. Probably user error on the first try :).

There's a lot more you can do with Maestro, but it's this week's Pick of the Week for the amount of pure science imagery that it enables anyone to see and use. Pretty amazing stuff...
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had trouble
Authored by: SOX on Jan 26, '04 12:18:44PM

When I get to the 3-D movable image for the first update from spirit my 512MB computer just hangs at the point of loading 60% of the images. Well it doesn't hang exactly: I can rotatte the partial image. It just never completes the load. Is this a memory issue? any body else see this? (I am running 10.3.2. on an 800Mhz iMac. I tried downloading it a second time but got the same results.



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had trouble
Authored by: Reddog on Jan 26, '04 02:28:03PM

I don't know if your problem is lack of memory, but the Maestro program DOES like lots & lots of memory. I have a DP 1.42 G4 with 1.5 gig of ram and Maestro uses every bit of it that it can and then pages out another gig to virtual memory after I've been playing with it a while..

Go to the View menu and play with Imaging Performance memory cache. Maybe that will help you.

Pat



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had trouble
Authored by: LFransson on Jan 26, '04 02:31:44PM

I don't think it's strictly a memory issue. I have 1.25 GB RAM, and I'm not getting past 60% either.

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Larry Fransson
Seattle, WA



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had trouble -- limited real RAM
Authored by: Krazy on Jan 27, '04 12:16:04AM

I too have had problems with 512 Mb of RAM. I've yet to download the spirit data updates, but even using the test data, I only get to around 98% of the data loading. What is confusing is the progress bar gets stuck there. First time I saw this I thought the program had hung. Also I've noticed lots of 'WARNING' messages output to the console....

Having experimented recently moving my virtual memory to a rather small but separate partition, (1GIG = 2 x real RAM), I was not surprised at all to see disk full warnings (for the swap partition) -- at which point the sensible solution was to kill the app. It seems to be a real memory hog! I guess the developers have loads of memory to burn so have no reason to make it work in a small memory footprint.

I suggest that people complain if they are having problems via Maestro's Forums: http://mars.telascience.org/forums



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had trouble
Authored by: sjha on Jan 27, '04 11:41:00AM

I have exactly the same problem - 1GHz G4 iMac with 512MB memory running OSX 10.3.2

---
Steve Ashcroft



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Maestro: Keep up with vehicle traffic on Mars
Authored by: Ilgaz on Jan 26, '04 10:50:06PM

If I worked at Sun I would go mad to that company.

There is a thing called "java webstart", installed on ALL machines (not just macs) and its just made for such purposes!

If they weren't lazy to create a webstart file, it could download required extensions, install program (with uninstall option) to right place, create icon at desktop for ALL OS'es...

Guess whats needed for user? Clicking a icon on webpage.

Anyone out there from NASA? I hope you guys didn't read my post, imagining the crap needed to install the real stuff on your macs ;)



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Maestro works, game breaks!
Authored by: jsdetwiler on Jan 27, '04 08:55:48AM

Maestro worked great on my 800Mhz G4 iMac.

But the Java 3D and Java Advanced Imaging extensions broke my new Law and Order game from Aspyr. The game depends on Java 1.4.1. The Java 3D and Advanced Imaging install replaced the libjawt.dylib file. The game would freeze whenever it got to any of the 360-degree scenes.

I de-installed the Java updates and re-installed Java 1.4.1 and removed Maestro. I liked Maestro, but I paid money for the game.



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Maestro: Keep up with vehicle traffic on Mars
Authored by: rmessnerjr on Jan 27, '04 02:03:55PM

Don't even try to run it on an iMac DV SE (G3 400MHz) with only 384MBs RAM. Takes forever to load even a slice of any of the images.

Gotta get a G5 soon.

---
RalphM



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Maestro: Keep up with vehicle traffic on Mars
Authored by: Krazy on Feb 08, '04 06:20:14AM

To turbocharge your Maestro experience, upgrade Java to 1.4.2 (via software update). Performance is very much improved afterwards!

Its not a complete fix.... I still get paging happening eventually with 512Mb RAM, but least I'm not waiting 5 minutes for the screen to redraw.



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