2026-10-09 APP 2.0.0-beta48 has been released !
This is mainly a bug fix release for the reported bugs in beta47. In addition it has a significant User Interface performance improvement noticable when you need to process 1000s of images in APP.
2026-10-03 APP 2.0.0-beta47 has been released !
This is a very big release... many code optimizations/rewrites, many parts of APP are much faster and more precise, especially star analysis and registration are much faster ! Big mosaics will go much faster 🙂
And we introduce a new preview filter, which includes the new Adaptive Deep Sky Stretch and a General Levels Stretch, this has been long over due. The old preview filter (the panel on the right side to stretch and preview your data) has not been updated for a couple of years and it is a critical part of any APP session.
Adaptive Deep Sky Stretch or ADSS is a much more intuitive stretch algorithm. It is also color preserving (which is a great new addition in itself ! ) which means that the highlights are no longer bleached, color is maintained from the linear data while stretching. You can simply stretch your data using the sky background level and signal width sliders which work much easier and more intuitive. You no longer need to fiddle with the old complicated sliders with zoom buttons. All the zoom buttons for the sliders are made redundant. And you can enter slider values in the slider value fields yourself. I will make a youtube video in the coming days to explain and fully introduce ADSS. Once the video is ready, it will be highlighted on the forum.
RGB Combine upgrade !. The RGB Combine Tool has been rewritten mostly. The tool is faster and easier to use and most importantly, the Luminance slider to inject a luminance channel or channels into the RGB composite is now working correctly. It no longer bleaches the RGB colors. Combined with the new ADSS preview, you will get much better and easier great composites with great color! I will also explain this in a new youtube video.
Hi Mabula, I have installed APP in my Ubuntu 18.04.
I noticed that.
The OpenGL symbol is always yellow after an update from OpenGL 3.0 to 4.5 so not active. A mouse click on the symbol does not cause a
change.
Hi @minusman,
If the OpenGL symbol is yellow, it would usually mean that there is a problem with the OpenGL driver, for some reason the OpenGL initialization fails.
Perhaps you can elaborate about:
"The OpenGL symbol is always yellow after an update from OpenGL 3.0 to 4.5"
So, I assume you update your graphics drivers and then OpenGL in APP is broken ?
Can you tell me which graphics card and which OpenGL drivers you are installing?
Kind regards,
Mabula
I have a Radeon Fury X graphics card. The driver is the Mesa 18.3.3 which is included in the Padoka Stable PPA( https://launchpad.net/~paulo-miguel-dias/+archive/ubuntu/pkppa).
With best regards,
Henry
Hi @minusman,
Okay thanks, we need to do some testing and get some output from your Ubuntu + Mesa 18.3.3 installation to solve this.
Can you open a terminal/console and run the glxinfo command?
Can you send me all output?
I will try to create a test installer that will extract all output of the opengl initialization on your computer, which should tell us a lot more 😉
Mabula
Hi @minusman,
I just got confrimation, that there is an issue with the opengl library that APP uses and the latest version(s) of Mesa under GNU Linux... so you must be triggering this.
I know that this issue is being dealt with.
So for now, I suggest, you use a bit older Mesa version on which the OpenGL initialization does work. In the meantime, I'll communicate with the opengl library people on what I can do to speed-up the fix. Okay?
Kind regards,
Mabula
It's okay,Mabula. It's not so bad at the moment, the CPU rendering is luckily still available. I need the latest Mesa version for other software that needs it. I can make a screenshot only at the weekend.
With kind regards.
