[WIP] Kerbal Space Engine - bring Space Engine to KSP

[darkside]

I made a program, or rather a script because it is written in Perl, that takes a solar system of your choice from Space Engine and tries it's best to build a solar system based on it that can be played in KSP. The only requirement is Real Solar System, it does all the heavy lifting here. Planet Factory is strongly recommended although not 100% required. I haven't come up with a good name so I am calling it Kerbal Space Engine for now, going to change that as it may be confusing.

Single and binary solar systems are supported, binary are not done quite right because the sun always wants to be in the center, but I think they are still good enough. Planet Factory is required for binary systems.

I was adding the ability to auto import planet textures by the means of a plugin called Texture Replacer, but it didn't work as good as I'd like it to, especially if you try to land on a modified planet. And then (just yesterday) I discovered Planet Factory CE, that seems to be just perfect for the task, so I'll be rewriting my program to work with that and should release soon.

Using the program in it's current state is a little complicated so I was going to release it as a web tool, source code of course would be released too. But right now I am looking at rewriting a significant portion of it and also developing a web frontend, so before proceeding with all that I want to make sure that someone is actually interested in such tool. As of right now it is good enough for my personal use but certainly not in shape for public release. So tell me what do you think.

And here is an example of it's work and a few pictures.

Example RealSolarSystem.cfg includes a system handpicked in Space Engine by me and converted using this tool I am talking about, no editing was done so if you look inside you'll probably see many horrible things.

Make sure you have Real Solar System installed, download RealSolarSystem.cfg and put in in your GameData\RealSolarSystem. Back up the original file before overwriting.

This particular system requires Planet Factory. Make a new save!

RealSolarSystem by NathanKell

PlanetFactory by Kragrathea

RealSolarSystem.cfg - real scale system - an example of converted system you can try right now

RealSolarSystem.cfg - same system in 1/10 scale (WARNING: small scale is broken in many ways and physically incorrect even for KSP, not recommended)

In case it is not clear enough, first 5 images are side to side comparisons between SE and KSP, those are SE screenshots overlayed on top of KSP screenshots.

Javascript is disabled. View full album

[Daemoria]

I've not played around with space engine in a while, but don't binary star systems have a Barycenter? Can't you load that for the 'sun' as an empty node, and load the two suns as orbiting that point?

Altho now that I remembering back to how SE handles binary stars, some of the systems have essentially 2 separate orbital paths/separate solar systems orbiting their relative stars... That might be a bit tougher to calculate the SOIs if the planets get too close to each other.

My rambling observations aside, this looks awesome. I'll try it out as soon as I get some free time.

[Space_Kraken]

Space Engine uses an N-body physics system, while Kerbal uses straight Newtonian physics. Hopefully everything will work out there.

[darkside]

I've not played around with space engine in a while, but don't binary star systems have a Barycenter? Can't you load that for the 'sun' as an empty node, and load the two suns as orbiting that point?

So far I didn't find a way to make center empty, sun demands to be there and if something is not to it's liking then bad things happen. But keeping it in place just making it 'empty' I didn't think of, possibly it is a good idea.

Altho now that I remembering back to how SE handles binary stars, some of the systems have essentially 2 separate orbital paths/separate solar systems orbiting their relative stars... That might be a bit tougher to calculate the SOIs if the planets get too close to each other.

Unfortunately for me it is not 'some of the systems' but actually most of them. Currently I am treating binary stars as secondary star orbiting the sun. In SE binary stars are usually in orbital resonance so even if their orbits are close to each other at some point, the two stars never come close to one another. With the way I have it in KSP there are surely a potential for planets crashing into one another but I tried dozens of systems and it still didn't happen. Anyway, safe distance is very easy to calculate, all required data is there. Also I am switching to Planet Factory CE now and it has makeshift barycenters so it is going to be easier.

Space Engine uses an N-body physics system, while Kerbal uses straight Newtonian physics. Hopefully everything will work out there.

Yes, with some workarounds it works, not always exactly like it should but close enough.

[Camacha]

I was hoping this was a terrain improving mod, although this could be nice too

[_Augustus_]

Could you make a download for this? Sorry for necro.

[Whirligig Girl]

I was actually thinking of holding a contest on the SpaceEngine forums for people to find the best 16-body system and I would make a RSS config of that system for them. A script to do that instead would be better for everyone.

- - - Updated - - -

Could you make a download for this? Sorry for necro.

He means a download for the program, not just the config.

[Spanier]

Would it be possible to even merge Space Engine and KSP, so you can fly through a procedural universe with high level of detail.

[Whirligig Girl]

Would it be possible to even merge Space Engine and KSP, so you can fly through a procedural universe with high level of detail.

No. Although, if KSP 2 is announced after Space Engine is complete, then KSP 2 might use Space Engine instead of Unity as it's game engine.

[nubeees]

Are you never going to release this script? It seems great!