Space Engine – Free Universe Simulator

[RacerX]

This looks promising http://en.spaceengine.org/forum/21-392-3482-16-1326987277

 

[Hmuda]

C-C-C-COMBO BREAKER!

 

[Hmuda]

It seems the ice needs further breaking.

 

[sitha241]

wow

Wow this looks nice,but if all of things form to-do list is to be done it would need monster computer to run it,anyway if done it would be an impressive simulator and if they develop it to the end I am robing a bank and building myself house and buying food suplies and locking my self to comp to the rest of my life

 

[donatelo200]

Forgive me the lack of modesty, but have you come across Spaceway before?

http://s-way.sourceforge.net

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qVXf59CvSCc

Yes i have i fly around all the time in it. I am itching for the next release.

As for Space engine it is amazing with the level of complexity on the planets though some of the terras and ocean worlds get kinda unrealistic. As some have an average temperature of 220k or even 150k. Witch makes me wonder how cold can water get befor freezing? (obviously i know the freezing point of water is 273K)

 

[jedidia]

Witch makes me wonder how cold can water get befor freezing? (obviously i know the freezing point of water is 273K)

Seems inacurate. water's boiling point moves frantically with atmospheric pressure, but the freezing point remains pretty constant...

Then again, you don't really know what else is in this water. or if it's water at all... might be some other liquid.

Anyways, I haven't really played around with spaceengine yet. The guy sure knows his shaders. Without his magnificent lighting effects, this probably wouldn't look much different from spaceway. Which raises hopes that Spaceway will look similarly fancy at some point in the furure. Spaceway had another focus in the early development, as it's already got complete newtonian flight and many other things that are on the to-do list of SpaceEngine, that development time had to be cut out from somewhere...

As it stands, it looks like we'll have three major engines in the future: Pioneer, which focuses more on a finished game yet is open source, SpaceWay that seems to attempt to be a sandbox for user-generated content much as Orbiter and is open source too, and SpaceEngine, that seems to focus on becoming a game engine, and is not open source. It seems a pitty that the project that would conceptually depend on open source the most isn't. I mean, who wants to write a game in a closed source engine (except maybe for me, since I usually don't understand too complex code anyways... :shifty.

If SpaceWay would be C++, I'd probably be about to abandon Orbiter and focus further projects on spaceway, but I just can't get myself around to learning yet another language...

 

[Artlav]

If SpaceWay would be C++, I'd probably be about to abandon Orbiter and focus further projects on spaceway, but I just can't get myself around to learning yet another language...

C++ bindings for add-ons are not so hard to make.
It's a matter of priorities.

Which raises hopes that Spaceway will look similarly fancy at some point in the furure.

Not necessarily. I don't like lens flares and until recently thought that HDR effects in the games were simply bugs.
I do like SE's star background rendering, but it's too different to just make as a fancy effect.
Once again, it's a matter of priorities.

As some have an average temperature of 220k or even 150k.

Let me remind you of #0*2Abcqc3BOx42a and #0*2AbcAbAdCBOx13a.
I got a hunch we both used the same classic stargen library as a reference.

 

[NovaSilisko]

I think the lens flare would look better if it was subtler, and didn't show up when you were close to a star...

 

[donatelo200]

Let me remind you of #0*2Abcqc3BOx42a and #0*2AbcAbAdCBOx13a.
I got a hunch we both used the same classic stargen library as a reference.

Ah Yes i forgot about them. They are not common at all though like in SE.

 

[jedidia]

until recently thought that HDR effects in the games were simply bugs.

I agree that HDR usually looks a lot better in screenshots than in real-time...

 

[ggrof]

Those graphics look awesome...

 

[FordPrefect]

Vladimir has released high resolution texture files for his SpaceEngine. You can download them via torrents. Already tested it myself and considered absolutely stunning!

Learn more here:

http://en.spaceengine.org/forum/17-496-1

 

[FordPrefect]

Here's one screenshot using above mentioned new hi-res textures

Looking down the coast of Chile (South to the right) from typical ISS (~394 Km) altitude. Just gotta love the graphics of SpaceEngine

---------- Post added at 05:47 PM ---------- Previous post was at 01:16 PM ----------

and another one. Here we see on the left lower corner "Copernicus" crater, to the right of it a smaller one which is called "Eratosthenes", behind it the Appenine Mountains stretcht across the limb to the northeast into lunar night. At the top, the big flat area is "Mare Imbrium".

 

[Donamy]

WOW!!!!:jawdrops:

 

[Scruce]

That is almost like looking at the real thing (not that I'd know what Earth looks like from space for real ). But the Moon....is amazing!

 

[Keatah]

We're gonna need to incorporate Orbiter mechanics into SE.

 

[iamwearingpants]

AFAIK that's going to be in another update. SpaceEngineer is working on flight mechanics and possible modular ship construction as we speak.

 

[Keatah]

I believe that procedurally generated landscapes are the coolest thing. Anyone remember Vistapro?

 

[Pipcard]

The textures won't seem to load fully (the pink loading bar at the bottom keeps cycling between cloud, surface, and bumpmap textures in a very quick fashion)

Trying to increase the velocity won't move my camera anywhere.

This is on my new computer with Windows 7.

 

[SolarLiner]

Do you know Space Engine ?

Space Engine is a free OpenGL based program witch allow you to explore the universe in 3D, in a Celestia style. With it you can choose to see the known world or you can go inside various real or generated galaxies to see procedural stars, planets and moons. Space Engine can generate from galaxies to lands. It has a newton-based (but reallyyy simple) physics engine allowing you to travel like a ship. The 0.96 update adds real spacecraft (by "real" I mean that you can see them, not that they are or were really launched). So, this is a picture from Space Engine:

(you can see what type of "spacecraft" are in this game, and how procedural planets renders)

A new feature came with 0.96 is black hole gravitational lensing, like that:

Space Engine can renders eclipses:

Generated galaxy viewed from the side:

And Milky Way seen from inside the LMC (orbiting a procedural planet) :

And a screen showing the capacity of SpaceEngine to generate terrains:

Quickly, I've started to find some nice planets, and one day ... I found "Temperate Terra with Life" !

This one is a cool oceania, with only land on the night side of the planet:

Returning to the known world, space sunset from the Earth:

Here is the official Space Engine site: http://en.spaceengine.org/
If you want even more pictures, come here: http://en.spaceengine.org/forum/10-432-1
And I'll leave you with a skybox picture and some videos (not made by me) :

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3bH4KleneFM]Space Engine 0.96 Update - kurtijmac[/ame]

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=68YK2FHkFjw]The Size of the Known Universe - JSSJR90[/ame]

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=be9lGAadydY]Billions and billions - pebblegarden[/ame]

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NYGDiZoD1gs&feature=related]Probe-style video - bboyenw[/ame]