Beyond our worlds: Space Engine screenshots gallery

[billybob579]

I finally got around to downloading Space Engine this morning, and... Wow. I started off in a binary system with two planets locked in geosynchronous barycentric orbit around one another, and each was inhabited by multicellular life. One was remarkably like earth, and the other -- pictured below -- was mostly desert with rings and dozens of asteroids around it. That image was taken from the poles so I could get a good shot of both suns, the aurora, and the rings. It's now found a home as my desktop background.

Unfortunately, I didn't know you could mark areas for return and clicked away, so I only have a few other pictures from that system. Here's one from the earth-like that was behind me in that image. Not quite so awe-inspiring, but neat nonetheless.

[RogueMason]

I'm reviving this thread; Space Engine just started working for me today

The planet I spawned over had multicellular life...

...and a 'Cool Selena' moon.

I may just have to try a ship mod or two. I've seen the USS Enterprise somewhere

[RogueMason]

I, err... I have a lot more pictures, but I won't post every single one of them. Instead, the best of the latest!

I had a very random exploration session in which I went pretty far from my start point. These were some of the best shots I got along the way:

Then I returned to my start planet, only to notice an aurora on the moon which is now named Erebus:

I then set about charting almost the entire starting system, and found a world that looked like Duna with purple rings (it actually orbited another cold desert with rings of the same colour). The planet is now called Athabasca:

That concluded the charting of the system (a binary now called Phoenix). Next stop; Sol. But I won't post those pictures just yet.

[MarkusA380]

I love Space Engine... I wish KSP had this quality...

[mordin86]

ARM in Space Engine

[Tangle]

One of the only planets I've found that is near habitable by my standards. No life, but it's a safe terra.

[Tery215]

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Kinda looks nice. Neutron one is horribly ugly in my opinion.

May continually add to this album.

Edited April 27, 2014 by Tery215

[Hello moto]

This... This game is the reason I'm trying to get a better PC. It is beautiful. Everytime I fly through the stars I just imagine how many 'MOAR BOOSTERS' I'd need to get a capture this far out.

If I could mix two games it's be this and ksp. Imagine that!

I'll post my very best when I get home from the footy.

[Hello moto]

https://imgur.com/a/IkUVT

[lajoswinkler]

Try to land on Atlas and then watch the Sun. It's almost divine.

[RogueMason]

Cut of the crop from lately:

Saturn and one of its Shepard moons, the name of which I can't recall at the moment.

Neptune's dark rings.

A small rocky moon of Neptune looking out over a thin blue crescent.

ALL THE BLUE!

Cold, blue desert. Pretty.

That star is practically screaming 'POWEERRRRR!"

I did find a very beautiful planet orbiting said star, though.

Took a day trip to the LMC, then decided that I wanted to visit the galactic core of the Milky Way before I did any really exploration of our largest satellite galaxy.

Stunning green gas giant in a system very near to the core. Lots of star clusters were visible here.

[Overfloater]

I've been picking for temperate terras inside one of those star clusters. 'Cause that's where the funkiest skies are ;^)

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LOL this is so Laythe... x^D (orbiting a gas giant)

I also wanted a good planet from where there's a nice HUGE view of a galaxy.

This is also a temperate terra, near Andromeda:

[RogueMason]

Ok, I think this thread needs resurrecting:

A view of Andromeda from one of its satellite galaxies.

I call this one 'The Ultimate Sci-Fi Space Scene of Epic', taken from within Triangulum.

[W1ntermute]

When it says "proceedurally generated", does that mean that certain parts are fundamentally random?

For example, if I load the map and find a little blue star some 300 LY from Earth. And around that star I find a little planet with water on it. And on that planet I find a cool crescent-shaped impact crater or something. Can I get the coordinates, send them to a friend, have him open up his Space Engine, and find the exact same crater? Or will his universe be generated differently?

Basically I'm wondering how the generated worlds "persists" or not.

No not random, the worlds are created using a mathematical formula rather than it being a pre-rendered, pre-textured object created in Maya or similar such program. Each world created retains its shape and properties and is rendered on the fly. The great thing is that texture maps, lighting, planets and their orbits, even entire galaxies can be created quickly and with little processing power through this method.

Google up "David Braben's TED talk" where he explains it in more detail, it's fascinating stuff

[Thomas988]

http://imgur.com/a/bVtqZ

Kinda looks nice. Neutron one is horribly ugly in my opinion.

May continually add to this album.

Hey, those planets are great! Do you have any additional planet palettes installed?

[Stratzenblitz75]

First off, let me just say that Space Engine has to be one of my favorite "games" ever. I've sunk countless hours into flying around the universe, landing on all the different planets and takings screenshots of all the crazy and unique scenes I've stumbled across. Heck, even after all this time and over 1000 screenshots, I'm STILL finding new things to gawk at!

Anyways, here are some of my latest Space Engine screenshots:

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[NovaSilisko]

Seen some of the most recent SE development pictures?

[Thomas988]

Even with dozens of planet palettes installed I still can't find anything cool or interesting.

[Vaporo]

Picture from a Cold Titan far from its parent star, I think.

[SolarLiner]

Latest development photos: Lava flows

[lunait]

Holy Jeb! I'm so going to try this out when I get home.

[colmo]

Staggering stuff. I think that's the engine for KSP 2 sorted. Looking forward to see what games use this engine.

Considering how much landscape rendering packages cost, it seems unreal that this, which renders a whole universe, is free.

[Vaporo]

I'm surprised that I haven't seen any black hole shots yet.

Plus pretty sunrise.

[moogoob]

Thanks for introducing me to this game/sandbox/thing. What a time-waster! (By that I mean I'll have some of my own screenshots soon.)

[Camacha]

Is it me or is this program heavy on the CPU, or better, a single thread of the CPU? I noticed performance was a bit choppy, so I turned the resolution way down. I still had less than ideal performance at higher speeds near planets. This normally means the CPU cannot keep up. I have a pretty steady ~28% load on the CPU, which is consistent with a single thread being loaded.

I have a fairly beefy processor, but I can imagine all the procedural stuff being hard on the thing.