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.
I find it sometimes beneficial to move project files back and forth between APP and PixInsight. In order to do this I must save files to .tiff or .fits. It would be helpful if APP could read and write PixInsight's .xisf files.
Yes that may be handy, but our fits format is more standard in general and compatible with more programs. It's not that xifs stores more data for instance.
@vincent-mod One potential advantage of .XISF for me is NINA now can write compressed .XISF saving about 1/2 the space. I take short exposures so that is nice. Alternatively, I wish .FITS had a fast basic lossless compression option.
even in Kstars/Indi it is now possible to save in XISF. Perhaps it would be usefull for the guys with full frame cameras to use the XISF due to less file size...
The file compression is a good argument, only thing I can say for now is that support may be added but it's not a priority for us at the moment.
I want to revive this thread, because I just have read, that Siril will have the ability to read (not write) XISF-Files in the near future. Since this file format seems to be supported by even more AP programms it would still be very nice, if APP can read this format too. For me it would be sufficiant to read this format, since Kstars can save and read this format. And the reduction of file size is significantly in Kstars (its about 1:3). I also use PI for using BXT and NXT, but APP is still my favourite AP programm for stacking (for me its is far beyond PI in case of stacking) and final procedures, so from my side it would be very nice if APP support XISF too!
hi @juergenn,
This is on our todo list for sure, we need to finish work on other priorities first 😉
APP uses FITS and can also read compressed fits, we will soon offer saving of compressed fits as well in addition. Lossless fits compression has been around for a long time. It is more a problem that capture software does not produce it for an unknown reason. Images Plus used to capture in lossless compressed fits and APP can read and process data like that.
Mabula
