Space Engine

[Jasel]

Anybody hear or play this game yet?

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.

[rtxoff]

looks good, downloading right now... THX

[AbortButton]

I have it on my computer but I never figured out the controls.

[Stratzenblitz75]

Space Engine has to be one of my favorite "games" ever. There's just so much to see and explore... And it looks incredible too!

Here is just a few of the many, many, many sights I've seen in Space Engine:

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[rtxoff]

Ok, and how i build a rocket in it?

[Jasel]

It seems cool, but without "challenges" it seems to be a very, very, good looking Eye of the Solar System. I think I would label this "game" as Space Pron. Especially with that sound track.

[Kulebron]

Looks incredible. Reminds me of Terragen render engine I played with 10 years ago. Still hard to believe this is all generated live on a usual PC.

[Camacha]

Hurray, SpaceEngine 0.9.7.2 is out and performance seems beta than ever!

[mordin86]

0.9.7.2 is out and it looks stunning. works better too on my PC - I will post some pics later

[mordin86]

Few pics from the new version:

[Thomas988]

*begins to hyperventilate* YES! I PLAY SPACE ENGINE! I LOVE IT!!!

Ok, simmer down. Yes, I think Space Engine is one of the best softwares ever created, period. My jaw has dropped at what this thing can create in just seconds! It's revolutionary! I started in the last version, 0.9.7.1, and was simply ecstatic when the latest update came out. I've already spent many hours aimlessly flying around seeing everything I can find. Brilliant!

[Vaporo]

Space engine is simply incredible. My laptop can generate a photorealistic alien landscape is seconds (maybe a minute, if I really want to see high quality) and then lets me fly around in it at four or five fps (which is a simply incredible frame rate with the quality of rendering I am seeing). And there is still more to be added...

[Deadpangod3]

whats different in the new version?

[gmpd2000]

whats different in the new version?

Major updates:

Mayor:

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)

And lots of bug fixing.

[Robotengineer]

I've been trying to get this to run on Mac for months, has anybody had any success? (Using Wine)

[sal_vager]

SpaceEngine 0.9.7.1 loads on Linux with Wine 1.7.33, so should work on OSX as well

I'll test 0.9.7.2 when it finishes downloading.

Update:

0.9.7.2 installed successfully, "compiling shaders"

Uplate:

It works!

Edited January 5, 2015 by sal_vager

[Robotengineer]

Thanks for checking, should have mentioned it's an openGL issue, wine apps can't use greater than 3.1 because XQuartz and X11 haven't been updated.

[Deadpangod3]

Moderator comment - Too much text to quote.

*stares at the clock trying to force it to go faster with his mind so he can get out of school and get the update faster*

Edited January 6, 2015 by sal_vager

[MartGonzo]

Space engine is impressive but I am not too keen on the guy who made it after posting on his forum that it worked better when set the executable to use the large address aware flag, only to get a very snotty response from the maker about how it was unnecessary and wouldn't make any difference.

only to notice that a couple of months later he released an update and made a big deal about it now using the LAA flag to use more memory

[Tery215]

Space engine is impressive but I am not too keen on the guy who made it after posting on his forum that it worked better when set the executable to use the large address aware flag, only to get a very snotty response from the maker about how it was unnecessary and wouldn't make any difference.

only to notice that a couple of months later he released an update and made a big deal about it now using the LAA flag to use more memory

The person who makes it is russian, he probably sounds snotty because he's using a translator/not very good at speaking english.

[MartGonzo]

The person who makes it is russian, he probably sounds snotty because he's using a translator/not very good at speaking english.

Judge for yourself

http://en.spaceengine.org/forum/26-421-1

this was the next version

note the first line in the changelog

http://en.spaceengine.org/forum/26-853-1?lX_z_E

Edited January 6, 2015 by MartGonzo

[Robotengineer]

Got this working on linux, a good space desktop picture generator.

[LordFerret]

Not sure, so don't quote me on it, but I think the individual was previously from / involved with the Celestia community. This appears to be the current Celestia replacement, being Celestia.sci still isn't out. From what I'm looking at so far, nice, pretty cool, but wondering about its accuracy... on par with Celestia or what? It is not a "game" though.

[Thomas988]

Not sure, so don't quote me on it, but I think the individual was previously from / involved with the Celestia community. This appears to be the current Celestia replacement, being Celestia.sci still isn't out. From what I'm looking at so far, nice, pretty cool, but wondering about its accuracy... on par with Celestia or what? It is not a "game" though.

I personally prefer Space Engine way over Celestia. As for realism, that is the software's goal. I find it's pretty good at it too, but of course being in development there will be glitches and bugs. Now whether the realism in Space Engine is better than Celestia I'm not too sure. Really, the graphics are so good you can't ask for more.

Anyhow, here are some good screenshots I've taken lately!

[LordFerret]

I'm not questioning the 'realism' of its visuals display (even though our actual limit of knowledge is well stepped-beyond in its representations), it's an amazing dynamic fractal engine. What I am questioning is its astrometric accuracy ... the motions are based on what ephemerides, VSOP87, SPICE, etc.