Space Engine space simulation program

[KillerBee]

http://en.spaceengine.org/
still beta and may crash and only runs on Windows for now - but :thumbsup:

SpaceEngine - a free space simulation program that lets you explore the universe in three dimensions, from planet Earth to the most distant galaxies. Areas of the known universe are represented using actual astronomical data, while regions uncharted by astronomy are generated procedurally. Millions of galaxies, trillions of stars, countless planets - all available for exploration. You can land any planet, moon or asteroid and watch alien landscapes and celestial phenomena. You can even pilot starships and atmospheric shuttles

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mootV7Iqa34



Moved from OT.

Anandtech Administrator
KeithTalent

 

[wanderer27]

Apparently I picked this up in a Bundle somewhere, although you can grab it for free at their site.

Pretty amazing piece of software I have to agree.

I've barely touched the surface of what can be done with this, but I've seen some pretty good examples of Gravitational Lense effects in certain areas . . .
and leaving the Solar System and coming back in - the Star Coronas are amazing.

Lot's of fun for just putzing around, no real game play but a real good exploratory type program.

As the OP mentioned, this uses actual Astronomical mapping data :

Q: How many real objects are there in SpaceEngine, and how many are generated by the program?

A: The entire Hipparcos catalog of stars, as well as all known extrasolar planets, over ten thousand galaxies, and all of the most prominent objects in our Solar system are included. This adds up to over 130 000 objects. As for procedural objects, there are more galaxies and star systems in SE than exist in reality in all of the observable universe.

If you have any Space Nerd in you, you definitely owe it to yourself to check this one out . . . its' FREE !



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[Red Storm]

Thanks for the heads up, will check this out today!

 

[WiseUp216]

Very cool and worth downloading. Crashed for me after fifteen minutes or so.

 

[wanderer27]

Very cool and worth downloading. Crashed for me after fifteen minutes or so.

It actually locked up on me the first time I ran it, but after that I no issues.

 

[Kalmah]

Is this the one with the wonky controls?

 

[wanderer27]

Is this the one with the wonky controls?

Not sure what you mean here.

It uses the standard wasd keys plus some extra for turning and rotation - as well as Mouse options.
Since you're moving in 3-D space, it may seem a little weird at times, but that's just the nature of things.

There is separate Camera control too, though I haven't messed with that any.

Here's the key layouts :

http://en.spaceengine.org/publ/user_manual/1-1-0-1#appendix3



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[wanderer27]

Looks like there was another update - now version 0.9.7.2

Huge change log :

Major updates:
Oculus Rift support
3D monitor and 3D TV support (anamorphic stereo pair mode, shutter glasses mode)
3D anaglyph glasses support
Full joystick and gamepads support, multiple devices allowed
Animated procedural stellar corona
New star rendering
Night textures on planets: city lights, lava
Thermal lighting of a planet and its clouds based on: tidal heating, solar heating, young age
Volcano with lava flows
Melted lava planets and moons
Updated soundtracks
Ability to change some measurement units: parsec to light year, kilometer to mile, Kelvin to Celsius and Fahrenheit
Hapke BDRF: opposition effect and zero-phase glare on dusty planets, planet script parameters to control the effect
Planetary system chart mode: compare size of planets, moons and stars in the system

Space ships:
Added option for multiple preset cameras for spacecraft
Enabled retro engines
New ship models

Astronomy:
ESI value now uses average planet surface temperature and doesn't change with time
Improved solar spots
Updated textures for many Solar system objects
Added accurate rings to the asteroid/centaur Chariklo
New procedural clouds texture
Updated brown dwarf appearance
New pink atmosphere model for brown dwarves and some planets
New physical model of planetary atmospheres (2-layered: adiabatic troposphere and isothermal stratosphere)
Elevations on gas giants are counted from the atmosphere level with pressure of 1 atmosphere (~1 bar)
Procedural generation of orbital ascending node in the catalog system for planets with unknown ascending node, based on planets with known ascending node
Improved planet temperature calculation: it now takes into account the internal and tidal heating
Glowing hot planets illuminates neighbouring objects
More accurate probabilities for generation of white dwarves, neutron stars, and black holes
Red giants now have 100% probability of hot planets
Icy moons smaller than 400 km and rocky moons smaller than 600 km are classified as asteroids and dwarf moons
Improved ice specular on terras and deserts
Large scale albedo variations on planet surface
Computing snow altitude based on atmosphere model
Increased level of detail of asteroids
New planet script parameter "Panspermia", for specifying that life did not originate on that world
"Life origin" field in the Wiki describes how life originated on that world
Dwarf moon names are changed to a form like "3.D4"
More realistic generation of planets density

Interface:
Improved quality of black hole and warp field distortion effect
Animated Selection pointer
Simple GUI editor (debug feature)
Atmospheric pressure and air temperature at the user's location is displayed in the object's info panel and in the Wiki
Wiki pages update automatically after changing the selected object
Wiki pages don't switch after changing the selected object or Wiki opened/closed
Wiki window is now more compact
Ability to select the screenshot image format in the Player settings menu
Main menu scales to any screen resolution
Filter by planet and star parameters in the Star browser
Updated interface texture
Updated toolbars appearance
Lock button on bottom toolbars now have 3 states: lock, half-hide, and hide
Added Display settings and Main Menu buttons to the left toolbar
Updated ship control panel
View direction altitude in the Fish Eye mode can be configured
Selection now work in the Fish Eye mode
New texture-based mouse cursors
Many visual improvements to the Map Mode
Expanded Display settings menu with controls for projection and 3D mode
Expanded Controls settings menu, with ability to customize all mouse and joysticks axes and all joysticks buttons
Brown dwarves size in a Solar system browser is in a planets size scale, not a stars one

Engine:
Many optimizations in the engine core
Upgraded memory manager
Some shaders are rewritten to the GLSL 3.3 core profile
Reduced number of planet shaders
Forced HDR mode and Bloom effect
Optimized lens flare code
More precise LOD setting for planets
Implemented the pak file system (zip archives)
Default texture packs and addons are now in pak files
New catalog update/addon system
Significantly improved catalog loading performance
Implemented separate texture sets for RGB and Alpha or higher and lower byte of elevation map for planets
Time stamps printed in the log
Settings for minimum distance for procedural stars and brown dwarves added to the config
Ability to edit a barycenter parameter in the Planet editor
Console variables to control the mouse cursor: "HardwareCursor" and "HideCursor"
Surface color parameters for gas giants and brown dwarves are renamed to colorLayer0 ... colorLayer7
Palettes for gas giants and ice giants are split into 7 ranges according to their temperature class
Palettes for brown dwarves are split into 3 ranges according to their spectral type (L, T, Y)
Swapped neg_z and pos_z faces in the Export Skybox function
Added the entire ship model rotation parameter in the config and in the editor
Improved life panspermia code, new probability parameters in the universe.cfg
GUI windows don't change their positions when SE window resized
Added "ModulateColor" parameter for planet scripts; can modify the color of planet textures and also modify opacity for cloud textures
Script "Exposure" parameters for surface, clouds and ocean are replaced with one global "Brightness" parameter
Script "Exposure" parameter for rings is replaced with the "Brightness" parameter
Added "stable" motion blur (blur length independent of framerate), can be adjusted in config/user.cfg or in the console
Solitary black holes particles are now invisible
Accelerated rendering of star-like particles of planets and ships
Updated SolarSys3000.sc
Removed error message if the local database file did not found
Added console variables for collision detection clamp and near plane clamp, log stamps, motion blur length, and many others (read docs/console.txt for reference)

Bug fixes:
Fixed bug with "islands" on oceanias
Fixed spacecraft and lens flare textures not loading in Immediate loading mode
Fixed a bug where catalog neutron stars could have very low temperatures
Fixed Roche limit calculations
Hacked fix of screen edge artifact of gravity lens effect
Fixed rounding errors in GUI sliders (sticking at certain points when using arrow buttons)
Fixed not saving of mouse axis settings
Fixed a bug with too high speed of clouds on tidally locked planets and moons
Fixed bug with clouds on catalog planets with low atmospheric pressure
Fixed problems with fullscreen if display resolution changed
Fixed a bug with procedural stars with infinite luminosity generated
Fixed mistake in FXAA implementation
Fixed some bugs in the planet editor
Fixed some bugs in the lens flares code
Fixed automatic binding to a planet after controlling a spacecraft
Fixed resetting of the mouse-controlled ailerons/elevator angles after using keyboard controls
Fixed atmosphere scattering models precomputing code
Fixed orbital paths cutting in the Map mode
Fixed "micro debris ring" and asteroids sharing the same orbits with moons
Fixed "square star" bug
Fixed "pink rings" bug
Fixed some bugs with eclipse shadows
Fixed mipmaps generation on planets and ships
Fixed bug with closing the Universe Map
Fixed sun lens flare rendering mode when ship is warping with autopilot
Fixed "negative lens flare" effect when close to a star
Fixed wrong orientation of the star's equator relative to the planetary system plane
Fixed some bugs in the planetary system generator
Fixed hole in red giant stars
Fixed a crash at first-time nebula model generation
Fixed a mistake in the procedural white dwarf class generation
Fixed smoothing of the font
Fixed "Interstellar" mode of ships in some star cluster's planetary systems
Fixed lags caused by ships physics updating
Fixed the "barycenter star in binary system" artifact
Fixed rendering of the Wiki preview for star clusters, galaxies, and nebulae
Fixed Wiki preview disappearing after selecting the barycenter
Fixed rotation parameters for moons
Fixed density of small planets
Fixed dwarf moons density and Roche limit check
Fixed bug with the number of aurora particles sliders in the Planet editor
Fixed bug with DXT1 textures loading and wrong rendering of the modular ships' trusses

http://en.spaceengine.org/news/spaceengine_0972_released/2014-12-26-12



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[wanderer27]

I've been way too distracted lately, and with the whole No Man Sky brouhaha going on . . . here's something a bit in line with what some were hoping for, only this one's free

Missed several versions since the last update, they're up to 0.9.8.0 now.

SpaceEngine - a free space simulation program that lets you explore the universe in three dimensions, from planet Earth to the most distant galaxies. Areas of the known universe are represented using actual astronomical data, while regions uncharted by astronomy are generated procedurally. Millions of galaxies, trillions of stars, countless planets - all available for exploration. You can land any planet, moon or asteroid and watch alien landscapes and celestial phenomena. You can even pilot starships and atmospheric shuttles.

Feature updates:

Capabilities

• All types of celestial objects are represented: galaxies, nebulae, stars and star clusters, planets and moons, comets and asteroids.
• Known celestial objects are represented using data from the catalogs: galaxies (NGC/IC), stars (HIPPARCOS), star clusters, nebulae, planets (our Solar system data and known extrasolar planets).
• Uncharted regions of space feature procedurally generated objects: galaxies, stars, star clusters, nebulae and planetary systems.
• The observer is free to move around the universe. Transition between any celestial body and any scale occurs seamlessly.
• The observer can move around in space using the WASD keys, like in First Person Shooters. Movement with inertia is made possible in Spacecraft mode or Aircraft mode.
• "Select and fly" autopilot: just click on any object with the mouse and hit the 'G' key to automatically go directly to the object.
• Automatic binding of the observer to a moving object and automatic selection of optimum flight speed.
• Search for celestial objects by name. Search for stars in a radius around you. Scalable map of the Universe and a planetary system browser. Saving locations and autopilot's journal.
• Built-in wiki system with descriptions of many known objects and ability to extend by user. Possibility of renaming and describing of any object, including procedural ones.
• The orbital motion of planets and stars is calculated in real time, with the ability to accelerate, decelerate, or reverse the flow of time.
• Display of orbital paths of celestial objects, their rotation and motion vectors, labels and markers, celestial grid, current selection pointer and user velocity vector.
• Volumetric 3D models of galaxies and nebulae with interstellar dust clouds.
• 3D landscapes of planets and stars: for many solar system bodies actual data from space probes is used; for uncharted and procedural planets the surface is generated procedurally on the GPU.
• The exact model of the Earth's atmosphere (code by Eric Bruneton), adapted for the other planets.
• Lighting effects: lens flares, solar eclipses, shadows of planetary rings. Celestial objects cast light and shadows onto each other.
• Controllable space ships (alpha).
• Original background music with context-dependent switching of tracks.
• Localization to many languages, with the ability to add new ones.
• Ability to import user addons: models, textures, catalogs.

Here is an absolutely amazing video clip of the newest version :

Latest changes, features, bug fixes, etc. :

Major updates:

• Many improvements with space ships - new functions and capabilities

• New physically accurate rendering of black holes, neutron stars and white dwarves with accretion disks

• Planemo (rogue planets)

• Massive catalogs of binary and multiple star systems, black holes, brown dwarves

• Chemical composition of planetary atmospheres

• Dithering to fix banding artifacts

• Reversed fp32 z-buffer: no more z-fighting, camera can approach objects up to a distance of a few centimeters

• New addon installation procedure - just drop a single .pak file to the "addons" folder
  
  Space ships:

• Space ships are now rendered in interstellar space and in the Wiki preview

• Implemented docking of ships with each other

• Engines exhaust rendering and sound effects

• Landing on planets: ships become fixed on the surface

• Alcubierre warp drive physics, with HUD, controls and autopilot

• Autopilot:
  • Flying to target using main engines (acceleration-deceleration scheme)
  • Flying to target using warp drive
  • Synchronization of the velocity with target
  • Holding altitude (hovering above a planet)
  • Target can be any celestial body or another ship
  • Physically-based autopilot turns
  • Autopilot commands in the right-click context menu (ability to give orders to remote ships)

• Ability to bind warp drive power control to mouse, keyboard and joystick

• Ship's warp state, autopilot state, reference body and target are saved to the config

• Smooth third-person camera for the ship which is currently controlled

• Newly built ship spawns with the same speed as the currently selected one

• Simple ship editor: changing global parameters, adding/removing effects and modules, saving to the script

• Button "Teleport here" in the Ships manager is available only in cheat mode

• Buttons for "Fly here" and "Hyperjump here" commands are added to the Ships manager

• Restored possibility of selecting the reference body

• Ship is destroyed if reentry or landing speed is too high, or if tidal forces are too high

• Hyperbolic orbits of ships are now displayed

• Updated default ships
  
  Procedural planets and stars:

• New physically accurate rendering of black holes, neutron stars and white dwarves with accretion disks

• Chemical composition of planetary atmospheres

• Updated palettes for titans and iceworlds

• Alien vegetation on titans with terrestrial life

• Reduced too-common impact basins on titans and iceworlds

• Suppressed mountain generation in impact basins

• Random global tint of planets in shades of brown

• Polar caps on cold selenas and iceworlds (Ganymede-like and Pluto-like thin frost deposit)

• Animated surface of neutron stars and white dwarves

• Improved rendering of late M-dwarves and brown dwarves

• Smoother solar spots

• Integrated Klud's mods for selenas and asteroids

• Improved asteroid surface textures

• Improved giant stars surface textures

• Improved craters shape

• New atmosphere models by HarbingerDawn

• New volcanos

• New cyclones on terrestral planets

• New cyclones and textures on gas giants

• Detail-less gas giants like Uranus

• Haze-like cloud layer on cold and hot gas giants

• Faint Jupiter-like rings

• Fixed unrealistic rings in binary planet systems

• Binary planets can have outer moons

• Option to change hue and saturation of atmosphere for each planet, integrated to scripts and editor

• Fixed seams in terrain textures and meshes on procedural planets

• Detail specular bump mapping on planets
  
  Astronomy:

• Massive catalog of binary and multiple star systems by Cirax

• Massive catalog of systems with relativistic objects (black holes, neutron stars and white dwarves) by Cirax

• Massive catalog of systems with brown dwarves by Cirax

• Integrated community catalog of binary and multiple asteroids

• Added moon of Makemake

• Completed Messier catalog

• Updated exoplanets catalog (27 July 2016)

• Added exoplanet names approved by International Astronomical Union

• New textures of Mercury, Ceres, Vesta, Titan, Pluto, Charon, and Saturn rings

• Milky Way's supermassive black hole Sagittarius A* and stars orbiting it

• Integrated nebulae models by Bambusman, Astroniki, and Voekoevaka

• Reduced brightness of some Solar System bodies

• Added ability to replace procedural supermassive black hole with a catalog entry

• Added ability to specify star mass, radius and temperature in the star script

• Implemented planemo (rogue planets)

• Implemented Y spectral class for brown dwarfs

• Implemented procedural Wolf-Rayet, Carbon and Circonium stars

• Implemented correct orientation of extrasolar systems (RefPlane "Extrasolar" for inclination and ascending node)

• Added ability to specify locked position of a body relative to parent body with simplified script syntax (RefPlane "Static" and "Fixed")

• Reduced luminosity of procedural star clusters

• Updated open clusters size and star statistics

• Some planets and moons can be in spin-orbital resonance (not only 1:1)

• Added limit to mass of a catalog exoplanets to fix absurdly high densities

• Added alternate designations for some nebulae and clusters, removed duplicates

• Added rotational parameters of the Sun
  
  Interface:

• Improved ship manager with "Pack" and "Faction" filters for ships

• Smooth switching of many display options and objects (labels, orbits, eclipse shadows, clouds etc)

• Smooth lighting animation in the Chart mode

• Updated Solar system browser:
  • Fictional barycenter of planetary system is not displayed
  • Ability to display a barycenters of binary planets
  • Active navigation buttons with number of satellites counter
  • Added ambient lighting for a rogue planet or solitary black hole systems

• Updated Star browser:
  • New options in spectral class drop-down lists for new star classes provided
  • Option to hide planemo from the search result
  • Option to show only systems with 100% match with the filter in the search result

• Updated Wiki:
  • Finished description editor, supported standard shortcuts like Ctrl-Left, Ctrl-Shift-PgDn etc, text selection and copy/paste
  • Increased length of the first column in the data tables
  • User and default descriptions are saved to separate files
  • Added information about exosphere temperature, chemical composition of atmosphere, etc
  • Updated articles

• Updated Player settings menu:
  • Added option to display full and abbreviated names of constellations
  • Added option to display radius instead of diameter for the selected object
  • Added option to choose pressure unit

• Updated Graphics settings menu:
  • VSync switch is moved here from the Display menu
  • Added quality switch for MSAA
  • Added quality switches for aurora, black holes and ship warp field effect
  • Added "Loading speed" slider to control planet loading speed vs framerate
  • Maximum planet LOD is limited to +1, with the ability to set +2 in the console
  • Removed "Atmo from sea level" and "Atmo extinction" switches

• Updated Export skybox menu:
  • Added image format selection
  • Swapped pos_z and neg_z faces
  • After pressing "Save", engine wait for loading/generation completeness before saving files

• Updated Planet editor:
  • Localized interface of the Planet editor
  • On click for edit, too large/too small values are converted to the scientific notation (like 1.23e4)

• Blinking cursor in the text edit boxes

• Hints allows viewing of table cell contents if the cell is too small

• Planet shine is disabled on previews in Solar System browser and Wiki

• Displaying of spin-orbital resonance and solar day length of a planet

• Button "Start" on Video capture dialog changes to "Stop" when video capture is in process

• Planet SurfStyle can be updated in the Planet editor

• Right side toolbar do not overlap the selected object's info table

• Localized parent names in the Search menu

• Changed colors of orbits, labels and markers of barycenters, suns and comets

• Customizable colors of GUI and fonts (via skins system)

• New GUI skins

• Added Norwegian localization (by username6)

• Updated localizations
  
  Controls:

• Swapped default rotate CW/CCW keys

• Camera motion mode or controlled ship is restored after closing of the Map Mode

• Added ability to cancel autopilot "Warp to" and "Fly to" commands

• Smooth camera rotations in Free mode, adjustable in user.cfg

• Camera in spacecraft/aircraft mode is stopped after using "Go to" autopilot
  
  Catalogs and file system:

• Accelerated pak files loading

• Changed directory structure - "data" and "addons" folders are provided, which have identical internal structure (textures, models etc subfolders) and work in parallel

• "addons" folder can have custom subfolders inside, which also work in parallel to "data" and "addons" folders

• New addons/mods installation procedure - just drop a single .pak file to the "addons" folder or to the any custom subfolder inside it

• Duplicate entry of any object in a catalog file updates/patches the older entry (entry in older file) - no need to edit default catalog files to install a patch or mod

• Automatic search for catalog files through default directories - no need to edit the universe.cfg to install a catalog patch, mod or addon

• Automatic search for galaxy/nebula model scripts through default directories - no need to edit the models.cfg to install a model patch, mod or addon

• Automatic search for atmosphere model scripts through default directories - no need to edit the atmospheres.cfg to install a model patch, mod or addon

• Shaders, music and sounds are moved into the "data" folder; overriding by corresponding file in the "addons" folder is possible

• csv file format for galaxy catalog

• Local group galaxies are moved into separate catalog file, others are converted to csv

• Added Lum and Luminosity parameters for the nebulae, clusters and galaxies script

• Added AlbedoBond and AlbedoGeom parameters for planet scripts

• Advanced catalog error logging: typing file name and line number where error was detected, ability to change behaviour globally or per catalog file

• Improved star solver: calculating missing parameters for catalog star using the provided ones, now works for multiple stars

• Automatic creation of directories to save config/script file if they don't exist

• Changed config file structure and behavior: user settings are not overwritten by new patches
  
  Engine:

• All shaders are moved to OpenGL 3.3+ core profile

• Implemented multi-sampling anti-aliasing (MSAA)

• Rendering in equirectangular spherical projection

• Optimized and updated GUI rendering and skins system

• Optimized labels and markers rendering

• Label rendering for selected object is independent of distance and brightness

• Markers rendering in correct order: markers of closer objects can be visible in front of farther objects

• Labels and markers for ships

• Implemented custom defines for glsl shaders, some similar shaders are merged into a single file

• Separate shader cache folders for each driver version

• Separate files for saving default and user locations

• Changed format of locations config

• Added cvars for planets lighting dimming magnitude and secondary lighting limit magnitude

• Added StereoIPD parameter to the config

• Stars and planets does not disappear when galaxies are switch off

• Exposure doesn't affect labels

• Exposure doesn't affect GUI in Oculus Rift mode

• New object selection method for Oculus Rift

• Updated to Oculus 0.8 runtime

• Separate buffers for left and right pass in stereo modes

• Improved quality of elliptical galaxies rendering

• Internal time representation is changed to 64.64 fixed point type

• Improved quality and performance of the logarithmic z-buffer

• Implemented reversed floating point z-buffer:
  • Rendering orbital paths with proper order with planets and ships
  • Fixed z-fighting issues on water and clouds
  • Allows placing the camera up to few centimeters from a planetary surface or space ship
  • Support via GL_ARB_clip_control for OpenGL 4.5+ drivers (including Intel HD 4600+)

• ClipHeight is moved to main.cfg and changed automatically based on reversed depth buffer support at first launch

• Improved stability at 4k+ screen resolution

• Atmosphere models are managed by the memory manager

• Music player working in a separate thread

• Faster reloading of terrain generator shaders by Ctrl-F5 (only for selected planet's class)

• Improved terrain tiles culling algorithm - slightly less VRAM is needed to load a planet

• Added limit for size of a non-loaded planetary systems (optimization for Sun neighbourhood)

• Fixed colorizing of the stars lens flares by orbital path lines (only in reversed/logarithmic depth buffer mode)

• Switch between impostor and fullscreen FBO is occurred at matched resolution
  
  Bugfixes:

• Fixed planetary rings brightness in the "real planet brightness" mode

• Fixed holes in planetary surface where lava flows should be

• Fixed wrong terrain LOD calculation on small screens

• Fixed Pluto system orientation

• Fixed some bugs in planet script exporting

• Fixed black stain artifact on a planet surface

• Reduced cyclone cutting probability

• Fixed lags when changing FOV

• Fixed changing of a planet particle size when changing FOV

• Fixed climate smoothing on planets with a thick atmosphere

• Fixed clouds lighting in thin atmospheres

• Fixed too many cloud layers on planets with thin atmosphere

• Fixed bug with sun shining through the ocean

• Fixed change of the display mode and refresh rate at SE startup

• Fixed a lot of stars with wrong/error stellar class in the star catalogs

• Fixed over 400 duplicated galaxy names in the galaxy catalogs

• Fixed camera velocity indicator

• Fixed star motion blur when changing distance with left + right mouse drag

• Fixed star motion blur for ships in hyperspace

• Fixed some bugs with automatic ships hyperjump

• Wiki descriptions now correctly display tabulations

• Fixed specular spot on ships

• Fixed specular spot on Oceanias

• Fixed visual artifacts with atmosphere and water on Oceanias

• Fixed atmosphere height on tidally heated worlds

• Fixed too small atmospheres height on gas giants

• Fixed sudden stopping of ship rotation when changing orbital orientation mode

• Fixed blinking LOD of a planet when Wiki is opened

• Fixed Overbright slider initialization in the Magnitude/brightness settings menu

• Fixed blurring of slider handle texture

• Fixed bug with invisible velocity pointer text

• Fixed crash on opening Chart mode for the not currently visible system

• Fixed wrong animation of the currently followed planet in the Chart mode

• Fixed localization change in the Chart Mode

• Fixed camera offset in the Chart mode while animation is in progress

• Fixed camera collision detection with moons in Chart mode

• Fixed incorrect saving of rendering options when exit program while Chart Mode is opened

• Fixed continuous execution of ship's autopilot command "Retrograde"

• Fixed render of orbits in the Map mode

• Fixed bug with infinite radius of black holes, neutron stars and white dwarves

• Fixed artifacts with black hole and ship warp effect in stereo modes

• Fixed wrong camera positioning at program startup

• Fixed pushing camera up while loading location on a planetary surface

• Fixed camera pushing when landing on planet with Left+Right mouse drag

• Fixed wrong calculation of orbital period of catalog binary stars

• Fixed crash on building a ship in interstellar space

• Fixed sprites rendering order in nebulae

• Fixed extreme apparent magnitude of a comet nucleus if camera or ship is close to it

• Fixed throttle and correction engines controls by joystick

• Fixed switching ship's behind camera when planet is selected

• Fixed smooth fade in of the selection pointer

• Fixed orientation of the ship's orbit relative to moons

• Fixed ship's orbital position calculation

• Fixed ship's "Horizon" orientation command

• Fixed bug with phase calculation for planets and ships

• Fixed inability to change ship's hyperfactor if engines are off

• Fixed autopilot warp to star systems

• Fixed ship's gravity acceleration display

• Fixed procedural stars generation in dwarf galaxies

• Fixed rings blending with clouds and atmosphere

• Fixed seam artifact in rings

• Fixed star sprite in barycenters

• Fixed star density in Milky Way

• Fixed various rendering bugs in the Map Mode

• Fixed planet particles rendering in front of water/clouds

• Fixed foreground labels rendering in front of planets

• Fixed instability in orbit solver for hyperbolic orbits

• Fixed bug with sudden camera rotation when collide with terrain

• Fixed star counter in galaxies

• Fixed always off VSync in main menu

• Fixed bug with clouds height of catalog stars

• Fixed bug with broken Milky Way model

• Fixed bug with wrong ships positions after program start

• Fixed brown dwarf illumination by other stars in a system

• Fixed comet tail cutoff

• Fixed object name text goes outside preview area in Wiki

• Fixed bug with wrong generation of a star rotation period in multiple catalog systems

• Fixed bug with catalog stars not being properly overwritten by new entries

• Fixed bug with wrong galaxy sysmodel loading after cache cleaning

• Fixed bug with no procedural nebulae generated in Irr galaxies

• Fixed sudden appear/disappear of nebula model when distance changed

• Fixed camera motion direction after using of tracking

• Fixed offset between terrain texture and mesh, gaps in terrain on small bodies

• Completely fixed seams in the terrain textures and mesh

• Fixed transparency of the interface in Fish eye mode

• Fixed bug with name of barycenter of binary planet

• Fixed bug with ability to select "invisible" stars and planets in the star clusters

• Fixed comet tail and star corona brightness in the autoexposure mode

• Fixed bug with not loading of some planet's shaders (missing previews in the Solar System Browser, transparent planets etc)

• Fixes some ship models

• Fixed asteroids terrain

• Fixed rayed craters

• Restored narrow features on gas giant's clouds

• Fixed missing procedural red giant stars

• Fixed behaviour of the engines thrust sliders when time flow is reversed

• Fixed bug with ship's real speed in interstellar flight is 2 times faster than expected

• Fixed ships flight state (interstellar/interplanetary) in catalog star clusters

• Fixed too big oblateness of some supergiant stars

• Fixed bug with rendering of galaxies with ModelBright different from 1

• Fixed crashes on AMD/ATI cards at startup

• Fixed broken textures/mipmaps on AMD/ATI cards

• Fixed ship models non-loading in Interleaved mode

• Fixed non-loading of textures of rings, lens flares, ships and galaxies at program startup or at high load

• Fixed inability to select a procedural planet if catalog planets are disabled

• Fixed freezes on Earth and other real planets with huge texture packs

• Fixed flipped saving of png images

• Fixed incorrect shader code generation for warm and hot oceania

• Fixed bug in atmosphere scattering precomputing code (broken atmosphere models)

• Fixed bug with reading coordinates of Mintaka and other stars in DMS format with D between -1 and 0

• Fixed ' character typed in the console when it opened

• Fixed changing of the camera velocity then typing + or - character into any edit box

• Fixed bug with solar eclipses not affecting planet brightness in "Super" Planet shine

• Fixed bug with loading/generating of incorrect galaxy sprite model

• Fixed seams in nebula skybox

• Fixed a bug with rendering of a black squares instead of star sprites on Intel HD in stars style mode "points"

• Fixed blinking of ship star-like particles

• Fixed bug with Map mode if camera tracked some object before entering the Map Mode

• Fixed disappearing of the value labels near sliders in the Planet editor

• Fixed a bug with incorrect star/planet counter in the Star browser table

• Fixed scorched asteroid moon bug

• Fixed missing OpenGL version check and crash on initialization on systems with no graphics driver (generic Windows driver)

• Fixed artifacts (precision issues) with zero-phase glare, detail textures and water specular then camera is close to the planet surface

• Fixed brightening of the planet surface then camera is close to it

• Fixed autoexposure then sun is occluded by a planet

• Fixed star spectral class initialization in the Planet editor

• Fixed crash on entering Planetarium if no catalogs was loaded

• Fixed object filter checkboxes if no catalogs were loaded (fully procedural Universe is possible)

• Fixed precision issues with eclipse shadows

• Fixed too high mass of procedural brown dwarves and supergiant stars

• Fixed colliding binary stars

• Fixed a bug with not showing a planet if system's center wasn't in the field of view at least once

• Fixed a bug with file system data not being updated when a pak file is renamed, deleted, or added

• Fixed swapped palettes of cool, cold and frozen gas giants

You can grab it here :

http://en.spaceengine.org/





.

 

[wanderer27]

Had some questions so here are a few more updates.

In progress 0.9.8.1 (incomplete and ongoing):

Changes:
- Added support of Oculus CV1 (native) and HTC Vive (SteamVR) (WIP)
- New main menu - static picture in 2D/3D modes and skybox in VR and Fish eye modes (WIP)

Bugfixes:
- Fixed bug with not initialized user name in the user settings menu at startup
- Fixed flipped Dec labels on the equatorial grid
- Fixed issues with main menu in 3D modes

Roadmap (http://en.spaceengine.org/forum/21-11-1) :

Engine:

• Deferred shading
  
• Shadow maps
  
• Ambient occlusion
  
• Global illumination
  
• Reverse depth buffer
  
• Environment map lighting, reflections, refractions
  
• On-screen motion blur
  
• Loading of models with animations (spaceships)
  
• Networking
  
• Camera control and physics (including the orbital motion of bodies) in a parallel thread
  
• Recording of flight, its editing and smoothing
  
• Displays the names of objects on the planetary surface (sea, mountains, craters, etc.)
  
• Unicode fonts
  
• Empowering the planetarium (the constellation - the figures, boundaries and names, astronomical coordinate grid, control of the telescope)
  
• Multi-monitor support, customizable "warper" to create video walls (including fish eye view)
  
• Network synchronization for distributed videowall rendering
  
• In the editor: importing of textures, catalogs and models, exporting of procedural textures, catalogs and models (content sharing with other programs and games)
  
• Eliminating the crashes
  
• Anti-aliasing
  
• Proper auto exposure, the real brightness of the surface of planets and stars
  
• Scripts for the autopilot
  
• The galactic map, star map, map of the planetary system, a map of the planet
  
• Built-in editor of planets, galaxies, etc.
  
• Improved interface and control system (control panel, prompts, Bind keys, etc.)
  
• Different materials on the same models / textures (metal, glass, etc.)
  
• Loading/generating resources in a parallel thread
  
• Localization to other languages

Galaxies:

• Unique procedural model for each galaxy
  
• Models of irregular and colliding galaxies
  
• Complex rendering of spiral galaxies (bulge as precomputed texture + disk as sprites)
  
• A closed universe or a universe with a domain structure
  
• Embedding of giant nebulae sprite models into the galaxy disc sprite model
  
• Adaptive level of detail of galaxy sprite model
  
• Render the galaxy by ray tracing
  
• Correct blending of dust with the stars (ray tracing or multipass)
  
• Animation or simulation of galaxy rotation
  
• Simulation of collision of galaxies
  
• Modeling the evolution of galaxies
  
• Correct rendering of dust sprites (extinction effect)
  
• Procedural large-scale distribution of galaxies (clusters, filaments, walls and voids)

Nebulae:

• Unique procedural model for each nebula
  
• Animation of accretion disks and jets
  
• Complex rendering (subsystems with independent LODs)
  
• Lighting from any number of stars
  
• Animation of light wave (light echo)
  
• Animation of expanding shells of supernova and planetary nebulae
  
• Render the nebula by ray tracing
  
• Correct blending with the galaxy (ray tracing)
  
• Correct blending with the stars (ray tracing or multipass)
  
• Modeling of evolution of diffuse nebulae: its collapse and the formation of star clusters
  
• Correct rendering of dust sprites (extinction effect)

Stars:

• Tidal distortion of shape, filling the Roche limit (taking into account the ellipticity of orbits)
  
• Animation of flowing substance, accretion disks and jets
  
• Quasars with accretion disk
  
• Neutron stars and pulsars with the animated jets, embedding it into the nebula model
  
• Stars velocities in the galaxy (needed for ship's hyperflight physics)
  
• Animation of surface
  
• Semi-transparent red giants and protostars with animation
  
• Magnetic activity
  
• Catalog of binary and multiple stars
  
• Binary file format for star catalog with built-in octree
  
• Compilation of a text script catalog into a binary catalog
  
• Embedding a star catalog in the galactic procedural stars octree
  
• Dynamic loading of stars catalog from the disk (supporting of unlimited number of stars)
  
• Variable stars, supernovae
  
• Catalog of variable stars
  
• The stars floating in the intergalactic space
  
• Prominences, flares, clouds (in the form of magnetic field lines)
  
• Motion of stars in the galaxy
  
• Modeling of evolution of stars
  
• Correct dynamic lens flare effect
  
• Black holes with the effect of the distortion of light rays, Kerr black holes
  
• Super-massive black holes in galactic center, modeling or animation of motion of nearby stars
  
• Triple and multiple systems
  
• Distortion of the shape of the fast rotating stars, gravity darkening effect
  
• Procedural animated stellar coronae

Planets:

• Decrease of loading/generation time
  
• Improving the level of detail, reaching of 1 mm per pixel detail
  
• Lighting of planets with quasar, galactic core, clusters and nebulae
  
• Distortion function for elevation map (terraces, horizontal shift)
  
• Modeling of continents
  
• Illumination of planets with globular clusters, galactic core, close nebulae, supernovae
  
• Self-shadowing of the terrain, ambient occlusion, global illumination
  
• Animation of clouds, cyclones
  
• Clouds shadows on the landscape
  
• 3D clouds with lighting and self-shadowing
  
• God-Rays from the landscapes and clouds in the atmosphere
  
• 3D water with waves animation, simulation of the tides
  
• Refraction and reflection on the water surface
  
• More types of atmospheres, generation of models at run-time, binding to astrophysics
  
• Volcanoes, volcanic eruption, animation of explosions and ash clouds
  
• Glowing lava flow animation
  
• Magnetic field modelling
  
• Lighting of the planetary surface with aurora
  
• Dust and the asteroid belts around stars and planets (rings), animation, or simulation of the motion
  
• The shadows of the satellites and other planets on rings and vice versa; volumetric shadows inside the dust rings and self-shadowing of the rings
  
• Illumination of a planet and satellites by the rings
  
• Improving gas giant atmospheres
  
• Surface components (stones, plants, roads, buildings)
  
• Terramorphing
  
• Landscape with water and thermal erosion
  
• Tectonic plates
  
• Modeling of asteroids collisions with lighting, explosion and the formation of the crater
  
• Animation of meteorites and meteor rains
  
• Holes in the surface (caves, mines)
  
• Right cone of the shadow of the eclipse from moons and rings in the atmosphere
  
• Refraction in the atmosphere (up to the "bow-tie world")
  
• Weather conditions (rain, snow, fog, lightning, rainbow)
  
• Seasonal changes (snow cover and polar caps, dust storms, evaporation or freezing of the seas and the atmosphere)
  
• Climate and surface generation of "lying on its side" planets (like Uranus)
  
• The planets floating in the interstellar space (planemo)
  
• Modeling of 2D gas dynamics of the atmosphere on the GPU
  
• Modeling the tectonics and evolution of planets
  
• Simulation of the collision, tidal or artificial destruction of the planets, formation of the asteroid belt and the dust disk around the sun, its further evolution
  
• Modeling the evolution of the planetary system when the sun goes in the red giant phase
  
• Simulation of destruction of the planetary system in a supernova explosion
  
• Improved modeling of the structure of the planetary system, taking into account migration of the planets, resonances, high ellipticity and inclination of orbits
  
• Different types of clouds, multiple layers
  
• New classes of planets, binding to astrophysics, geology and geochemistry
  
• New classes of surfaces
  
• Linear and radial structures (rivers, grooves, scarps)
  
• Checking of collisions with the surface
  
• Fixing of bugs with ellipsoidal planets
  
• Asteroid belts and comet clouds
  
• Underwater World
  
• Different types of hydrosphere (water, methane, lava sea, etc.)
  
• Different types of terrain in different places
  
• Animated aurora
  
• Asteroids
  
• Comets with an animated tail
  
• Evaporating planets with an animated tail
  
• Planets, tidal locked to their suns
  
• Ocean worlds
  
• Ice worlds with hydrocarbons oceans (titans)
  
• Brown dwarfs
  
• Lights of the night side (hot planets, lava, cities)

Gameplay:

• Server database (work in progress)
  
• Network system
  
• Spaceship builder with physical testing of construction
  
• Cockpit devices: orbital transfer calculator, hyperflight calculator, programmable autopilot, etc.
  
• Docking system, remote control of units
  
• Economics, harvesting of resources, refueling, building, etc
  
• Weapons, combat system
  
• Giant alien astroengineering constructions
  
• Destruction of spaceships and buildings (modelling of thousands of fragments on the GPU), animation of explosions (gas dynamics simulation on GPU(?))
  
• Advanced physics: jet propulsion, aerodynamics and hydrodynamics
  
• Procedural life
  
• Procedural civilizations
  
• Local database
  
• Loading of models (spaceships, buildings, etc.)
  
• Internal structure of ships and buildings (indoor-engine)
  
• Physics: collision detection, newtonian mechanics
  
• Space physics: gravity forces, orbital flight, hyperdrive

The Roadmap link actually color codes the items as to what's done, in-progress, planned, an so forth - I can't link the color formatting so you'll have to look at the link if you want to see that status.


Found another video of a guy demoing 0.9.8.0. , this shows some of the features, one of the ships and a Warp Bubble as it's currently implemented.
He's a bit clunky on the controls, forgetting to unpause time at one point and then over doing it at another . . . also not sure he's using the Warp and navigating correctly :

 

[Anubis]

so this looks pretty but what is the actual gameplay?

 

[wanderer27]

so this looks pretty but what is the actual gameplay?

For now, you can fly around the Universe and sight see or discover stuff (uses actual Astronomical database when available), you can fly various space ships, land & fly around on planets and so forth.

There is a Gameplay roadmap at the end of the last Roadmap quote above if you expand it you can see the current plans.


Meant to note that the last video the guy was looking for life on land, when you could see it was tagged a Marine in the stats . . . plus it was uni-cellular


EDIT:

Actually, the Warp Bubble may be in another video, but the one above does show one of the ships.

 

[wanderer27]

Just a bump since the Solar Eclipse is coming up for some this next week :

19 Aug 2017
Patch 0.9.8.0e

For those who will be unable to see the full solar eclipse on August 21, I made this small patch for SpaceEngine 0.9.8.0. It adds planet ephemerides to SE, so you can watch the eclipse there. It is based on a slightly updated 0.9.8.0 source code with some earliest bug fixes and beginning of implementation of the new UI (thus changed main menu background). I had no time to test this patch carefully, so it may contain new unexpected bugs.

It would be logical to call it 0.9.8.1, but this could make a confusion. So I called it SE 0.9.8.0e – “ephemeris edition” or “eclipse edition”.

Download (107 MB, CRC: E3A0A878)
Mirror 1 (SpaceEngine)
Mirror 2 (SpaceEngine)
Mirror 3 (Yandex disk)
Mirror 4 (Google drive)

Install
Unpack the archive to the SE 0.9.8.0 folder. This patch is designed only for 0.9.8.0! It’s recommended to make a new separate installation of 0.9.8.0, and then apply the patch to it.



= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =




Here's just a rehash of the upcoming Gameplay aspects in case they were missed (easily done):

Gameplay:

• Server database (work in progress)
  
• Network system
  
• Spaceship builder with physical testing of construction
  
• Cockpit devices: orbital transfer calculator, hyperflight calculator, programmable autopilot, etc.
  
• Docking system, remote control of units
  
• Economics, harvesting of resources, refueling, building, etc
  
• Weapons, combat system
  
• Giant alien astroengineering constructions
  
• Destruction of spaceships and buildings (modelling of thousands of fragments on the GPU), animation of explosions (gas dynamics simulation on GPU(?))
  
• Advanced physics: jet propulsion, aerodynamics and hydrodynamics
  
• Procedural life
  
• Procedural civilizations
  
• Local database
  
• Loading of models (spaceships, buildings, etc.)
  
• Internal structure of ships and buildings (indoor-engine)
  
• Physics: collision detection, newtonian mechanics
  
• Space physics: gravity forces, orbital flight, hyperdrive

.