In 1994, RedShift was the world's most popular multimedia astronomy program on the planet. It still holds up pretty good today. With RedShift you can explore the Solar System and beyond, and simulate astronomical events over a 15,000 year period, and much more. You can pause any animation and click anything (stars, nebulae, planets, moons etc) to pull up info on that object. Much of the text has hyperlinks leading to even more info and perhaps even better, RedShift contains a complete online Penguin Dictionary of Astronomy.
Macintosh 68030 or 68040 CPU or any PPC Mac or Mac clone capable of running a classic Mac OS, 7.0 - 9.2.2 - Basilisk II and SheepShaver are also OK. It does not run on Mini vMac.
- System Requirements Mac:
- System Software 7.0 to Mac OS 9.2.2
- QuickTime 1.5 or newer (2.5 on CD)
- Apple CD-ROM (or newer CD/DVD driver)
- System requirements PC:
- Windows 3.1 to Windows XP (set to Win 95 compatibility mode)
- QuickTime 1.1 or newer (1.1 on CD)
The RedShift application on the CD is FAT formatted (contains both 68k & PPC native code), which you can copy to your hard drive if desired.
RedShift runs directly from the CD. On a fast Mac this is good enough but on a slower Mac or Basilisk II or SheepShaver, the RedShift program (FAT) can be copied to your hard drive - the CD or .ISO is still required to be mounted for the program to access (600 MB of data).
There are also folders containing the 68k & PPC only versions of RedShift which you can use if you prefer. If the icons you see are initially "generic"; Copying the application to your desktop and rebuilding the desktop, will restore the proper icons for RedShift.
Its recommended in the "ReadMe" that if you copy the program to your drive, that you should also copy the five sample settings files to the same location. In the root level of the CD these sample settings files are: "Focus on Phobos, Focus on Mimas, Earth and Moon, Saturn with big moons, and Jupiter with big moons". Double-clicking any of the samples will launch the program into an animated demo and is a good way to start exploring RedShift.
Note: RedShift is optimised to run in 256 colors, but if your display is set to 1000's or millions of colors, RedShift runs its animations in 8 bit gray-scale which is not so good. On PPC Mac, you will be alerted and offered to change your settings to 256 colors but the 68k version does not, so you need to be aware of this if you run this on a 68k Mac or Basilisk.
On Basilisk II the animation is fairly choppy, not so bad on Sheepshaver but still choppy. Much better on the real deal.
Even choppier, but works. You can mount a CD of this and share it over a network (AppleTalk over TCP/IP).