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.
I'm building a new PC for a remote observatory that also will do the stacking, as we will be using the new 60MP QHY I will use an 8-core i7 (is there any benefit going i9? ) So question on memory 32 GB seems like a minimum, but I want to be sure that it will not run out, is there any benefit to over dimension, will APP use for example 64GB ...
Second, we heard about GPU acceleration since a year now, what GPU would benefit the most AMD or NVIDIA? It all depends on the libraries used ... so any hint would be much appreciated.
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If the mosaic is huge then the more memory the better really. You will always have a case where it still won't be enough but with 64 that will require a biiig dataset. In the end you would need to chop up a project into multiple parts as the memory limit is... limited.
APP is going to use the Vulkan API, Mabula mentioned this a while ago indeed (maybe sometimes it's better not to do that as expectations run high then). But it is something he's putting a huge effort on in the next months. Vulkan is supported by both AMD and NVidia as far as I can tell on the compatibility list linked to in the wikipedia.
