Changes from Version 4.x to Version 5

Following is a list of the major and most notable changes that have been made for v5 of Solar Fire. A large number of smaller changes have also been made, but have been excluded from this list for the sake of clarity and brevity.

32 Bit - Solar Fire is now a fully compiled 32bit Windows program, running on Windows 32 bit platforms such as Windows 95, 98, NT4 and later releases. It is now able to access the full power of the 32 bit computer chips (such as Pentium processors), and take advantage of powerful operating system features, such as long file names.

State of the Art Calculation Accuracy – Planetary calculations now use the Swiss Ephemeris™, based on JPL (Jet Propulsion Laboratory) data, providing state of the art accuracy across more than 10,000 years. The full set of Swiss Ephemeris asteroid files may now also be used with Solar Fire (available for free via web download or at low cost on CD).

Astro-Locality Mapping – A new mapping module is included to allow planetary, eclipse path and local space lines to be viewed on a selection of world maps. This module is compatible with (and may be upgraded to) Solar Maps as a fully comprehensive mapping package.

Astrologer’s Assistant – a new and very powerful task automation feature which allows you to record various tasks and then save them for replay at any time. For example, you could record a task to print a chart, calculate a progressed chart and transits chart for the current date, display them together in a triwheel and print them, run a dynamic report with a years transits and progressions and then print that out. This set of tasks can then be replayed for any other starting chart at the click of a button.

Animated Charts and Pages – any chart or viewable page can now be run as a real-time astrological clock, or animated backwards or forwards in time using customizable time steps.

New Chart File Structure – a new chart file storage structure allows users to save almost all kind of charts generated within Solar Fire, including progressed, directed and composite charts, for example. Solar Fire is backwards compatible with all earlier version chart files, and can optionally save to earlier chart file formats if required. Comments may now also be saved with subsidiary charts, and enhanced chart comment editing features make it possible to access and edit chart comments whilst casting a chart, as well as at any stage prior to saving it. Chart files may now be accessed from (or saved to) any location on your computer or network.

Toolbar Buttons – a fully customizable Toolbar contains graphical buttons for all frequently used option in Solar Fire, allowing quicker access to commonly used features.

Screen Customization – the user may now easily select background colors and graphics for the Main Screen and all data viewing screens (such as chart viewing pages), and save these preferences along with other color selections in named Color Schemes. These allow different colors to be selected for use with a printer, thus obviating the need to change color selections when printing.

Synastry Reports – full text for synastry reports has been included as part of the standard interpretations text base, and is easily accessible via a new menu item.

Eclipse Data – 5000 years of accurate solar and lunar eclipse data has been included, plus a module to allow flexible searching based on chart contacts, eclipse types, Saros numbers etc…

Page topic index – displayed chart pages may now be selected via a customizable topic index, where pages can be grouped into categories such as Beginner, Classical, Cosmobiology, Esoteric, Vedic etc. Many new page object have been added such as square (traditional and vedic) charts, dasas and bhuktis, flexible listings of asteroids, arabic parts, fixed stars and other bodies, etc…

Email Support – Chart data and graphical data (such as chart page displays) may now be saved into JPG file format for easy attachment to emails, and (for MAPI compliant email programs like MS Outlook and Eudora) the email program is automatically launched with the data file/s already attached or listed in the body of the message.

ASCII Data Export – a powerful and highly flexible method of exporting chart details and or positions of planets, midpoints, asteroids, stars, Arabic parts etc, which can be read in by other programs such as spreadsheets or other astrology programs.

Enhanced Dynamic Reports – it is now possible to view dynamic events of one person’s chart in relation to another person’s radix planets, to merge multiple reports into a single listing, and to include a greater range of extra dynamic points, such as fixed stars and asteroids.

Enhanced Graphic Ephemeris – you can now see an ephemeris of declination or latitude, and also include extra dynamic points such as planetary midpoints.

Enhanced Atlas – greatly expanded with more time zone information, and more forgiving automatic lookup facilities. Default place may now have an automatic timezone lookup on startup, thus allowing automatic adjustment for daylight savings periods. Also the user may select a list of favorite places for quick and easy default location changes.

Enhanced Wheel Designs – Chart wheels may now have multiple house and zodiac rings, so that both the tropical and sidereal zodiac can be displayed on the same chart, for example. Different chart rings in a wheel may retain their own house cusps instead of always anchoring on the inner chart’s house cusps. A ring of user-defined additional points may also be displayed with a planets ring, including points such as asteroids, stars, arabic parts etc.

Enhanced Reports – new Planetary Differences report, new Midpoint Weighting Analysis (MWA) report, Adjusted Calculation Date (ACD), Chart Hylegs, star parans displayed in local times, etc.