Microsoft Research Worldwide Telescope deployment and custom proxy settings

Microsoft Research really have done a great job of creating an amazing research and educational tool in Microsoft Research Worldwide Telescope  (WWT), but where they have fallen down is the network installation and settings deployment for this application. Regardless of deployment deficiencies, staff see this as a "must have" for their classrooms, so we need to find a way to make it work.

Unfortunately while WWT is available in a MSI format, you have to jump through a number of hoops to get it to deploy successfully via SCCM or computer startup scripts. Not to mention that it doesn't "ask" internet explorer for the system proxy settings, it just does its own thing, so proxy settings also need to be specified in deployment process.




The Process

1. Create a folder for your SCCM package named "microsoft_worldwide_telescope_Penumbra"
and create another folder named "WWT" inside it.

2. Extract the contents of the WWT installer into the WWT folder you just created.



3. Next we need to do some modifications to the WWTExplorer.exe.config file, this is where all the proxy and banner suppression magic happens. If you want to change the proxy settings, change the below values.

            <setting name="ProxyServer" serializeAs="String">
                <value>YOURPROXYHERE</value>
            </setting>
            <setting name="ProxyPort" serializeAs="String">
                <value>8080</value>
            </setting>

and setting the following two settings will ensure no upgrade or banner messages appear when you start the program.

            <setting name="ShowNavHelp" serializeAs="String">
                <value>False</value>
            </setting>
            <setting name="UpgradeNeeded" serializeAs="String">
                <value>False</value>
            </setting>

You can just copy and paste the above sections over the top of the corresponding sections of your WWTExplorer.exe.config file.


4. Next we will create our installation batch file, go back to the "microsoft_worldwide_telescope_Penumbra" directory and create a file called "install.cmd", into that file put the following code.

xcopy /Y /E WWT c:\windows\WWT\
start /wait msiexec /x c:\windows\WWT\WWTSetupPenumbra.msi /quiet
start /wait c:\windows\WWT\dxsetup.exe /silent
start /wait msiexec /i c:\windows\WWT\install.msi /quiet /norestart

This will first uninstall any previous installation you might have (that might have a bad configuration), then install Direct X 11 and finally installs WWT itself. You might wonder why I am copying the installation folder to the local file system before I install it, good question! Every time a different user launches WWT, it calls upon the original MSI and briefly reruns the MSI install (the user doesn't need administrative privileges to do this). This means if you deploy the package from a network location it will fail to launch if the end user doesn't have access to that same network location and original MSI. You could (if you have an SCCM environment in place) use the SCCM package "Windows Installer" functionality.

If you already have DirectX 9.0C installed (which  my Windows 7 clients didn't), you can simply remove the dxsetup.exe line from the installation.

5. Stick all that in a SCCM package, running install.cmd as the program and advertise it to the appropriate machines. There is no reason you couldn't deploy it with a group policy based computer start-up script either.



Network Based Cache Location Issues

Unfortunately you can't successfully change the cache location (funnily called the cahce location in the configuration file) to a shared network location, which is a shame as it could significantly increase content access speeds and lower bandwidth usage.

If multiple users are viewing the same "already downloaded" content it works flawlessly, but when multiple users try to download the same content at the same time both instances of the program fail and throw error messages.

The only situation where this could work is if you pre-download ALL of the WWT content to ensure no user is ever downloading to this shared location. I have instead opted to leave the cache location as default, which is %userprofile%\AppData\Local\Microsoft\WorldWideTelescope" to avoid any potential drama.