Metaplanets Help - 3D Streaming Interactive Animations of our Solar System

[ Home/Help ]

Attention Mac users - our apologies if you are experiencing difficulties. Please use the Get the Plugin link below and then return to metaplanets.com.

You need the free Viewpoint Media Player plugin from Viewpoint Experience Technologies to view the amazing content on Metaplanets. It's worth it! The plugin opens up a whole new world of experience on the web. Fast, safe, easy download.

AOL 7 and above users (on Windows) should already have the plugin installed. Firefox users see instructions below. Netscape 6 users see below before downloading.

Microsoft® Windows® 98, Windows 2000, Windows Millennium Edition, Windows NT® 4.x, or Windows XP
Netscape Navigator® 7.0
Microsoft® Internet Explorer 5.x
AOL® 7.0
64 MB RAM
Pentium® II 300 MHz processor or faster

Apple® Macintosh® Jaguar™ 10.2
Microsoft® Internet Explorer 5.2 or Safari ™ 1.1
256 MB RAM
PowerPC G3®

If you surf with Mozilla Firefox 1.x on Windows, you may (or may not) receive an error message stating that you have an unsupported browser. Download and install the plugin. If after you install you see just a starfield on a planet page, but components are not downloading, click the reset button in the orbit control panel located on the left side of the page. This will prompt the automatic install of components necessary for viewing the site. You should see a progress bar at the bottom of the starfield while the components download. We have not tested with Firefox on Mac.

Unfortunately, the viewer used to interact with the streaming 3D content on Metaplanets may not function in Netscape Navigator 6. If you use Netscape Navigator 4, or Internet Explorer 4 or later, you should have no problems. We recommend upgrading or switching browsers and returning to install the plugin.

On the left side of each planet page you'll see a control panel with buttons as well as instructions on how to use the mouse.

		The stop button halts a planet's rotation.
		The start button resumes a planet's rotation.
		The reset button returns the planet to screen center, helpful if you zoom away from the planet and it disappears.
ZOOM		If you position your mouse over the planet, right-click and drag, you can zoom closer or farther away from the planet. On the Mac, you will need to hold the Ctrl key down as well.
ROTATE		If you position your mouse over the planet, left-click and drag, you can rotate the planet manually. If the planet is rotating, it will continue to rotate when you release the mouse button. On the Mac, you will need to hold the Ctrl key down as well. We hope you've found this helpful. Enjoy Metaplanets!