Using Remote Desktop

Your software license may allow you to run SolarFarmer on a separate PC and connect using a remote desktop connection.

There are a couple of issues to this that you need to be aware of:

• Reconnecting to the remote desktop may crash SolarFarmer
  If you start SolarFarmer on the remote desktop machine, but then close the remote desktop connection, when you reconnect there is a high chance of SolarFarmer crashing. You will be presented with an error dialog saying "Object reference not set to an instance of an object" and it will save the exception to the log file.

  This is a known issue with the WPF framework that we use for the user interface. It is on our backlog to fix.

  The only workaround is to keep the remote desktop connection open while SolarFarmer is running. It only crashes when you reconnect, so if you start a long calculation, leave it running and only reconnect once you think that it has finished. The results should be saved (if you chose to save the result files - see Setup Yield Calculation).

• 3D view may not work, or be slow
  Using the remote desktop connection uses the 'Microsoft Remote Display Adapter' rather than the usual graphics card display adapter that comes in the PC.

  Depending on what drivers are currently installed with your version of Microsoft Windows, when you change the map display to 3D you may find that an error dialog appears and the application crashes. If this happens, see if you can update the device driver for the Remote Display Adapter on the machine.

  Even if it does work you may find that it is slower than using the machine directly. This is because the Remote Display Adapter is usually run in software, rather than using the PC's graphics card.