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Space Engine: Space Porn Is Real

Whisky

The Solution
Joined
Feb 22, 2012
Messages
8,555
Location
Banjoville, British Columbia
Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera
Anyone else play this once in awhile?

It's a space simulation game that allows you to explore the Virgo Supercluster and nearly every celestial body within it. There are also lots of procedurally generated planets and such to fill in the undiscovered gaps.

It's not much of a game, but it is very relaxing and nice to look at. You can land on any planet you see and they usually all look pretty nice despite there being trillions of objects in the game.

sUAci.jpg


jZWdC.jpg


mnAvD.jpg


It can be downloaded here

In order to get planets to load properly, you have to set LOD to 0, otherwise it will crash a lot. With the right graphics settings it will only crash occasionally.

Otherwise, it's a very relaxing thing to play especially with some nice music playing. Or, if you're hardcore, you can play this while playing it. Be warned, I've heard some people get nervous or even scared while playing Space Engine because of the sheer scope of it, especially if they head out so far away from the supercluster that they can't see any stars, or if they suddenly run into a black hole.
 

Peter

Arcane
Joined
Jun 11, 2009
Messages
1,570
Yeah, I quite enjoy dicking about in Space Engine, but I'm one of those people who find it a bit scary at times. Mostly because it's difficult to get down on a planet's surface to get a good view without clipping through it into a black void. Sounds stupid, I know.
 

Peter

Arcane
Joined
Jun 11, 2009
Messages
1,570
Hmm, maybe saying I find it "a bit" scary was an understatement. Just tried playing it again and shivers went down my spine the moment I looked upward and a planet was covering 75% of my monitor.

This is one to play in windowed mode and with music on for me.
 

Renegen

Arcane
Joined
Jun 5, 2011
Messages
4,062
I am from time to time but really only looking at the solar system. Mars really is beautiful, the best view ever? From Phobos.
 
Self-Ejected

Ulminati

Kamelåså!
Patron
Joined
Jun 18, 2010
Messages
20,317
Location
DiNMRK
Ok, saturn is kind of creepy. Haven't touched space engine myself. I prefer my space with Kerbals in it.
k_smiley.gif
 

Burning Bridges

Enviado de meu SM-G3502T usando Tapatalk
Joined
Apr 21, 2006
Messages
27,562
Location
Tampon Bay
I like it but it didn't look so good on my computer. Seems very choosy (read: problematic) with graphic cards :(
 

Whisky

The Solution
Joined
Feb 22, 2012
Messages
8,555
Location
Banjoville, British Columbia
Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera
Never did trust Jupiter:



But Saturn is far scarier:


Please tell me it's a fake.


It's real. Naturally, the human ear can't hear it without equipment of course, but it is real.

Have fun sleeping tonight.

And yes, it's still quite prone to crashing for me. I've kind of grudgingly accepted this as a fact of life, but I really wish I could just explore without having to worry about losing the location of the cool planet I'm on. On the plus side, I no longer fear black holes as much, I fear crashes.
 

MetalCraze

Arcane
Joined
Jul 3, 2007
Messages
21,104
Location
Urkanistan

Azazel

Arbiter
Joined
Dec 4, 2012
Messages
481
So I downloaded Space Engine last night, and it blew my fucking mind. Much like many other sims in development cough Elite cough, it renders existing star catalogues as physical entities at 1:1 scale and fills in the gaps with procedural generation to create a seamless and effectively endless galaxy. You can also build your own colony ship (with a totally Soviet style) out of components, GalCiv/Kerbal style. That's about it for "gameplay" right now, you basically cruise around and play Pokemon Snap: Celestial Objects Edition

The engine currently creates stuff like this:




It's being developed by a single dev in Russia of all places, so pace is slow, but with some shader and texture mods it's pretty damn stunning. While it's basically a tech demo right now, he eventually plans to turn it into the game that Infinity: The Quest for Earth / Noctis V would have been, had the respective developers not turned out to be more cripplingly autistic than Toady.

The next update, which should drop this summer, adds Oculus support and will make the engine exponentially prettier.

So yeah, Space Engine:

l1MA45U.jpg
 
Last edited:

Konjad

Patron
Joined
Nov 3, 2007
Messages
3,930
Location
Strap Yourselves In Codex Year of the Donut Codex+ Now Streaming! Torment: Tides of Numenera Wasteland 2 Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag.
Looks amazing, but since it's more like galaxy generator, not a game, I won't really bother.
 

Azazel

Arbiter
Joined
Dec 4, 2012
Messages
481
Yeah, the game elements are at least a year away at this point. It's oddly fun to experience the true vastness of of the universe without being shackled to actual gameplay at this moment, though.
 

Alchemist

Arcane
Joined
Jun 3, 2013
Messages
1,439
This looks incredible and like a dream game I've always wanted. Downloading tonight to give it a spin. Even without gameplay I'm sure I'll spend countless hours exploring the universe.

Thanks for posting about it!
 

Perkel

Arcane
Joined
Mar 28, 2014
Messages
15,805
So i am currently trying to do something else than play DOS because i apperently have like 110 hours in 11 days...
I browsed web and i found this little gem.

It isn't really a game but holy shit this is relaxing.

Basically it is space exploration like "game" where all stars and planets are procedurally generated. Latest games like No mans Sky and Elite are trying to do the same. Here is completely free thing which you can download and see for yourself what is this all about.

http://en.spaceengine.org/

Apperently it is done by some russian dude and lately even had some crowdfunding campaign and got money to develop this program/game full year as his main job (it was his pet project). All things move in it. Galaxies move, planets move, stars move. Blackholes, supergiants, neutron stars, asteroids and so on.

It really is amazing for spacefag dude like me.

Ok bullshit aside. Here are some screens i've made:


iE4fdXCpuAgTq.jpg

iblStdgUMpd3SC.jpg

ibv0MZ4qJm7Yk5.jpg

iKROxAa3WC7SX.jpg

ib2nKCnrQjo6pC.jpg

iLnpOMiAx3e4P.jpg

iRbhNVpC2JblT.jpg

iKE66T1Ip4d6C.jpg




Few things for people who want to get shots like that. Enable in graphic options :

Auto exposure , Real star brightness, Real planet brightness and LOD setting to 2 (mind you that the closer to 2 the more demanding for your CPU and GPU space engine is).
 

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