Nightshade^® Simulation Software

Nightshade is simulation and visualization software for teaching and exploring astronomy, Earth science, and related topics.

Our emphasis is on usability, realism, feature stability, and performance. Nightshade is largely backward compatible with scripts for Stellarium 0.8.2 and earlier using the StratoScript™ language developed and maintained by Digitalis Education Solutions, Inc.

Digitalis leads development of Nightshade, which is run under an open model where anyone can submit a bug report, feature request, code changes, and otherwise get involved. Most source code is openly available and our development roadmap is public. Our project site is: http://www.NightshadeSoftware.org.

Nightshade NG (Next Generation)

Digitarium systems ship with Nightshade NG. Check out some feature highlights.

• Nightshade NG was a complete rewrite from the ground up which threw out the limitations inherited from earlier projects in favor of advanced features supported by cutting-edge simulation techniques.
• Commercially licensed editions for dome use are exclusive to Digitarium hardware:
  • Nightshade NG Professional
  • Nightshade NG Basic

Nightshade NG Basic is a budget version with more limited features, as shown below.

Feature	Basic	Professional
Supports add-on terrain data sets	★	★
3D model support	Built-in models only.	★
Travel within the Solar System	★	★
Fly to stars		★
Fly to volumetric nebulae models		★
Travel outside the Milky Way Galaxy		★
Volumetric Milky Way Galaxy model		★
Sloan Digital Sky Survey galaxy 3D dataset		★
Data Console tab in the Universal Console with curated planetary and sky survey datasets.		★
Soundscape adaptive soundtracks		★
Required for multi-projector support		★
Required for digital audio support		★