Mar 28 2026 APP 2.0.0-beta40 will be released in 7 days.
It did take a long time to have the work finished on this and it will have a major performance boost of 30-50% over 2.0.0-beta39 from calibration to integration. We extensively optimized many critical parts of APP. All has been tested to guarantee correct optimizations. Drizzle and image resampling is much faster for instance, those modules have been completely rewritten. Much less memory usage. LNC 2.0 will be released which works much better and faster than LNC in it's current state. And more, all will be added to the release notes in the coming weeks...
Update on the 2.0.0 release & the full manual
We are getting close to the 2.0.0 stable release and the full manual. The manual will soon become available on the website and also in PDF format. Both versions will be identical and once released, will start to follow the APP release cycle and thus will stay up-to-date to the latest APP version.
Once 2.0.0 is released, the price for APP will increase. Owner's license holders will not need to pay an upgrade fee to use 2.0.0, neither do Renter's license holders.
Hi. I am having a large (24" f/3.3) welded aluminum Dob built, on a dual-axis equatorial platform, so it will be capable of imaging. At 2313 mm FL after the 3" Big Paracorr, I will be able to bin my ASI6200MM pixels 3X (1.00 arc-sec/pixel) or even 4X (1.34 arc-sec/pixel), and with such large pixels (11.3 um and 15.0 um), I will be able to use really short exposures and still swamp the read noise at my 21.2 SQM imaging site. But the downside of exposures in the 5 to 30 second range is a LOT of images to register and stack. Each image is 120 MB, and there could easily be hundreds, if not a thousand of them to process. My understanding is that APP can handle all of the cores and threads you can throw at it, which under Windows 10 maxes out at 32/64. So AMD Threadripper 3970X. My questions relate to the right amount of DRAM, how that breaks among DRAM sticks (so how many), and about the M2 SSD(s). I am currently looking to use G.Skill Trident Z Neo DDR4 3200 CL14. My questions are:
- Is 3200 CL14 (14-14-14-34) still the highest performance option?
- For 32 GB, is 4x8GB better than 2x16GB?
- Would 64 GB be better than 32 GB? That would be 4x16GB.
- On the M2 SSD front, I am holding out for Samsungs imminent launch of their 980 Pro PCIe 4.0 M2 SSD.
- That will be available in up to 1 TB capacity. Would that have benefits over the 500 GB version?
- My MB choice, the Asus Prime TRX40-Pro S, has room and cooling for two M2 SSDs. Would their be any advantage to adding a second M2 drive, and putting the OS and APP on that? If so, can I assume that it would also want to be PCIe 4.0 and fast? What capacity would be best?
Thanks!
All the best,
Kevin
Hi Kevin,
So I’m not super into the latest PC technology, but 3200 memory seems plenty fast still. The timings and optimal memory configurations are usually something for games optimization (or overclocking to the edge of stability, which I wouldn't recommend for a processing computer). I don’t think it’ll make a huge difference for APP’s processing. If you can afford the best, indeed a threadripper is amazing, APP uses as many cores as you have. If 64GB is an option choose that. That SSD is going to help you a lot as well, in this case it doesn’t really matter what size, so I guess the more the better as well, especially when your projects are that big.
In the future APP will also harness the power of the GPU. It’s not necessary to buy the best right now as it isn’t in yet. Personally i would buy a decent GPU and wait for that option and buy a good one then.
Thanks, Vincent.
All the best,
Kevin
