Space Engine – Free Universe Simulator

[vinny5000]

Hi, MattBaker!

Great! I'll give it a try! Thanks!

Cheers,
Vincent

 

[SolarLiner]

Some news here: Donations permitted the buying of the Oculus Rift support, which is now fully implemented in the planetarium. He took as well the opportunity to support others 3D technologies: Side-by-side; Top-Bottom; Analyph; Page-flipping (shutter type) will come along. In the wait, here is some of the screenshots SpaceEngineer released with the different types of 3D:
Oculus Rift:

Top-Bottom:

Side-by-Side:

Interlaced Horizontal:

Interlaced vertical (same image as above)

But to me, the most exiting feature is the procedural corona generation on the GPU:

Changelog for 0.9.7.2 (last update: 17 October 2014)
Changes and additions:

• Oculus Rift support
• 3D support
• New texture-based mouse cursors
• Animated procedural stellar corona
• Forced HDR mode and Bloom effect (counteracts NVidia's bugs with newer GPU driver updates) (updated 07/16/2014)
• Ability to change measurement units
• Swapped neg_z and pos_z face on Skybox Export
• Some shaders are rewritten to the OpenGL 3.3 core profile
• Optimizations on engine core
• New stars (and motion blur) shader (Updated 10/17/2014)

Bug fixes:

• Mouse axis settings not saving
• Inverted bindings of ship CW/CCW rotation in atmosphere
• Cloud speed too high on clouds of tidally locked planets
• Problems with fullscreen id display resolution changed
• Procedurals stars with inifinte luminosity generated
• Mistake in FXAA implementation
• Bugs in the Planet Editor
• Bugs in shader compilation with newer NVidia GPU drivers (Updated 07/16/2014)

 

[SolarLiner]

Hey,
Pust passing through from a long journey
I released a little tool that you may find useful if you're into tuning palettes for planets: http://en.spaceengine.org/forum/17-2217-1

(Unrelated note: I also updated changelog above)

 

[SolarLiner]

Little neat feature: New stars shaders !
This is taken from Chris Lauren's Celestia star shader; and it's pretty neat !

But it gets really jaw dropping when you up the magnitude limit:

0.9.7.2 is going to be more amazing than ever before !

Link to post

 

[SolarLiner]

Russian user Razum fixed the Space Engine binaries for them to be compatible with the last Nvidia driver versions.

http://en.spaceengine.org/forum/4-2500-1

 

[SolarLiner]

Space Engine 0.9.7.2 trailer by Solaris:

Jaw dropping. Can't wait to get my hands on it.

 

[Izack]

Shots from recent voyages:

I've also found a planet inside of its host star:

 

[SolarLiner]

HEAVY BREATHING
This is so cool, merry christmas just a bit late everyone!

http://en.spaceengine.org/load/core/spaceengine0972/2-1-0-19

 

[jroly]

Busy last two weeks in Space simulator land.

KSP version .90 Beta release
Orbiter 2015 Beta release
Space engine .972 release

None of the SpaceEngine download links are working, think the services have been overwelmed.

---------- Post added at 04:52 AM ---------- Previous post was at 04:31 AM ----------

I am downloading it from the Yandex link, if you sign up you can then save the file to the online drive and then download it.

 

[Wally]

The .torrent (and magnet) links are working fine.

 

[Marg]

I just tried SE only 3 months ago, as only new PC allowed me to do it...
What is shocking for me - eclipses in binary system, when gas giant satellite is also eclipsing it`s satellite, many shadows - umbras, penumbras from different directions - very impressive! So real...
I regularly came to that space engine website, waiting for 0.9.7.2 release, this time I came here to look at Orbiter status, but noticed this thread and that it is released...

 

[Ripley]

Ugh!!
I have this error with 0.9.7.2 in XP. It complains about a "missing entry point":

 

[Keatah]

This is really a fantastic visualizer for the layperson.

 

[orb]

I have this error with 0.9.7.2 in XP. It complains about a "missing entry point":

InitializeCriticalSectionEx - Minimum supported client: Windows Vista

 

[HarbingerDawn]

Issues with Win XP have been reported by a few people now. This issue actually cropped up during development, and he fixed it, but somehow it got broken again. Hopefully there will be a patch soon. For now, unfortunately, Vista or later is required, as orb said.

 

[Ripley]

InitializeCriticalSectionEx - Minimum supported client: Windows Vista

Ok, one day I'll upgrade, I promise...But under system requirements the minimum OS is listed as XP...

 

[SolarLiner]

Ok, one day I'll upgrade, I promise...But under system requirements the minimum OS is listed as XP...

Because it was accidental. XP support is still wanted, so hopefully there will be a patch for it soon.

 

[Linguofreak]

Ok, one day I'll upgrade, I promise...But under system requirements the minimum OS is listed as XP...

You could also try running it under Wine on Linux. I'm finding that that works relatively well.

 

[jroly]

There is an update for .972 -> .973, 93 MB download.

Major updates:

Fixed Windows XP compatibility issue
Oculus Rift DK2 support: positional tracking and Direct mode
Shadows on the rings from other planets and moons
Fixed texture tiling on planets
Updated exoplanets catalog, unconfirmed Kepler candidates are included in a separate file (more than 5000 planets total)
Added many binary and multiple star systems, including all with discovered exoplanets
Interface skin system with the switch option in the Player menu

Astronomy:

Added moons of asteroid (87) Sylvia
Asteroid moons classified as dwarf moons to avoid tidal heating bug
Catalog planets with no mass and radius specified got generated mass and radius
Automatic calculation of the orbital period in a binary system (star or planet) if only masses and SMA provided in the catalog
Automatic tidal braking and locking in a binary star systems
Generation of missing planet orbital inclination and ascending node are worked based on a binary star data
Reduced rings probability of tidal locked planets and moons
Updated textures of Mars and moons of Saturn

Interface:

Updated Find object menu: third column with the object type, scrollbar, more clear controls (keyboard and mouse wheel to scroll), case sensitivity
Updated localizations
Options "Compress textures" and "Super" diffraction spikes are removed from the graphics settings menu
Anti-aliased selection pointer
Map mode marks and cursor textures are moved into interface texture
Menu for video capture settings: switch between set of screenshots mode and avi mode, choosing screenshot format and codec settings
[F9] key brings up the Video capture menu, [Ctrl]-[F9] starts and stops the video recording with the chosen settings
Removed default key binding [N] to enable/disable night side lights and emissive textures
New planet filters in the Star browser
Solar eclipses are not rendered in the system browser
Orbital path rendering is disabled together with disabling of planet rendering
New music added
Smooth switch on/off of orbits, coordinate grid, vectors, selection pointer
Object's into table is smoothly disappearing after a while in Oculus mode

Enigne:

Hardware auto VSync is used if supported
Galaxy and nebula rendering are moved to OpenGL 3.3 standard
Returned back skybox for nebulae, so performance inside a nebula is improved
Removed useless gal_part.png and aurora_part.png textures
Built with Oculus SDK 0.4.4
New video memory limiting system
Washing out of planets which are small on the screen
Texture of deposit layers on steep rock slopes
More realistic sand dunes
Conical shaped volcanoes
Window resolution can be set in the Display settings menu to the maximum resolution supported by hardware
Added frame output (screenshot sequence) video capture mode
Video capture files are saved in the screenshots/capture/ folder
Selena is a world with atmosphere pressure < 1 mbar
Better rendering of low-pressure atmosphere models (thin haze on Selenas and Ice Worlds)
Added details and dynamics to aurora
Improved comet tail performance
Atmosphere brightness is calculated based on air density
Upper limit for atmosphere brightness is risen to 20

Bug fixes:

Fixed almost all Intel HD compatibility issues
Fixed crash on entering Display menu
Fixed bug with extremely hot asteroid moons
Fixed button sound in the main menu and autopilot scripts folder location
Fixed the text "(null)" in the critical error message box
Fixed crash on ATI in Oculus Rift mode
Fixed too long landscape generation time on ATI and Intel
Fixed skybox edge artifact near center of the galaxy or nebula
Fixed axial tilt of 57 degrees of every solitary star in the Wiki
Fixed a bug in the life panspermia code
Fixed glitches in the Find object menu: selection line position, auto scrolling, missing parent name for some objects
Fixed the physical VRAM size detection on ATI
Fixed a bug with only one planetary nebula model being used per galaxy
Fixed nebula model cut in the impostor rendering
Fixed a bug with stars scale did not applied at program start
Fixed changing of the lens flare color in the "norm" mode
Fixed disappearing of a star-like particle of dim brown dwarves illuminated with a main star
Fixed disappearing of a star-like particle of hot asteroids and dwarf moons
Bigger ClipZNear to reduce z-fighting
Fixed bug with Dactyl tidal heating
Fixed disappeared canyons and rivers
Fixed ignorance of Temperature/Teff parameter in the star script
Fixed bug with selection and go-to of planets/stars with the same name (planet b and star B in the same system)
Fixed extreme heating of planets of cold (T type) brown dwarves
Fixed wrong comet tail orientation of binary planets
Fixed body selecting in a binary planet system
Fixed reset of the rotation period to 1 day of the catalog stars with the "Static" orbit
Fixed bug with white dwarves color and temperature

 

[BerZerK]

The Space Engine is awesome!

Hope it gets implemented (somehow) in future Games and/or Simulators.
Although i dont know it this is technically possible or a pure standalone technique.

Interstellar - A Space Engine Film

What i also like about it: Its no just some fancy graphics but also quite some Realism.
Real Star-Constellations (only seen from Solars System of course) and lots of real Objects in Space (stellar and interstellar alike)

SpaceEngine : Oort Cloud World and Rings Around a Centaur