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SpaceEngineer
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General suggestions for SpaceEngine

28 Dec 2017 06:46

Could we have a RotationOffset for Clouds tags because if we edit the RotationOffset of the planet, clouds layers don't follow the surface layer and for my mods is problematic because I create the texture of the clouds with paint.NET for that the cloud is precisely at this point and in Space Engine, it is unpacked. The only way for now would be that I change the RotationOffset of the planet but it would be more "synchronized" with the UTC time of the Earth (because in my case, the UTC time of the planet follows Earth's also has a 24-hour sidereal day).
Whoops, it is indeed missed from the script loading function, although it is implemented in engine.
Fixed, added to the scripts and editor.
Can a button be made for toggling spacecraft visibility on the right side panel?
Indeed, I am completely missing this feature. It's logical to have a switch for space ships, as long as we have them for planets, stars and other objects.
 
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SpaceEngineer
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General suggestions for SpaceEngine

28 Dec 2017 09:23

Now that we have interstellar planets wouln't interstellar comets and asteroids be an interesting addition?
I know its quite useless (since probable would make the engine slower when loading and since you woulnd't really have the tools to search for them in the first place right now). In principle this is like that, pointless. But let me convince you with some arguments.

Realism argument:
Interstellar minor bodies exist (weonly have observed one but we know that they have to exist). According to this research paper there has to be around 1 trillion comets per cubic parsec in interstellar space. And accordign to this one there could be 10 times more density of interstellar comets. So SpaceEngine, having realism as a central idea, should have this feature one day.
The answer is simple: computing power. Handling 1 trillion objects requires octree of a depth 10, per each cubic parsec. As long as luminosity of comets is near zero, it will be traversed mostly by the intersection with a camera (ie max draw distance ~ 0, unlike stars). So CPU will select 10 nested octree nodes, in which camera currently is, and then it must do a linear search of the nearest objects in that nodes. The object count in each node will be ~10,000, so such search is not fast. For stars and galaxies octree, which have similar numbers, SE performs such search not each frame, but each 50-100 frames. This results in not instant appearance of the closer star system or a galaxy (you may notice that Magellanic clouds sometimes disappear and appear on screen after few seconds).
So we have to have a 10-level octree in each cubic parsec, there must also be additional levels to merge it with a galactic star octree, which has smallest node size of 1-10 parsec. An all this just to find a single comet which is within visibility range of the camera! (ie larger than 1 pixel). Occasional encounter with such a tiny thing in a vast space is impossible, the only way to find it is using some search tool.
Note also that octree is not designed for a moving objects, so all these comets will stay at rest.
Planemos are implemented as a zero-luminosity star systems, which are generated in the last star octree nodes, together with the dimmest brown dwarfs and neutron stars. They does not increases load very much, because number of planemos is expected to be 1-2 times the number of stars, so they just doubles count of objects in the last octree nodes (upper octree nodes contain just ~25% stars of the galaxy).
You may see, that although interstellar comets are possible to implement, but using a deterministic generator such as octree is overhead. Maybe some fully random generator can be used instead of this (aka dust "star streaks" in space games), so user will not be able visit the same comet in the next session nor sharing its coordinates. Or maybe some pseudorandom hash to make them deterministic, I dunno.
"They are here" argument:
Not only we now know that these objects can be crossing stellar systems (maybe I could go to Sirius and see an interstellar asteroid traversing between the planets), but also there is now an estimate of the density of objects like the one detected currently in our Solar System. 300.000 interstellar asteroids could be right now inside the orbit of V774104 (~100 AU from the Sun). These objects could be illuminated in Space Engine because they are travelling through the Solar System as any other object but with random and extreme trajectories.
This is way too beyond computational possibilities of SE. Even stationary comets would require some implementation on GPU to calculate illumination (visual magnitude), and still need octree-like structure on CPU to search the closest comet to camera to render its mesh. But we do not want a static objects in the solar system, right?
Historic landmark argument:
Now that we know about an interstellar visitor to the Solar System it would be awesome to have part of it's path represented in SE (maybe some thousand years in the past and future) so as to reenact the historic flyby. Also there are ideas to chase it so why not make people try it with space probes in SE?. As a planetarium we should include things like this for educational purposes.
You can easily add it to SE! SE supports hyperbolic orbits with e > 1, so no problem! The only limitation is that hyperbolic orbits rendering is limited in space (I mean the orbital path line), and that object will follow this trajectory forever, as if there are no other stars and galaxies (this must be obviously, SE is not an N-body gravity simulator, and such computations will be overhead for this purpose).
 
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tornadotodd
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General suggestions for SpaceEngine

28 Dec 2017 12:47

Dust devils, sand storms, and electrical storms of different sizes based on planets mass and atmosphere. Also maybe an option to limit and keep track of fuel supply for certain ships. I like the idea of land vehicles or rovers as well. I am sure somebody has mentioned these things with so many minds. I would like to see moving cloud maps for Earth too. Even if it was only a slow motion of the existing cloud maps. 
 
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An'shur
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General suggestions for SpaceEngine

30 Dec 2017 04:52

I don't know if it is planned or if somebody else has already suggested this, but I think that protoplanetary discs and zodiacal light would be nice addition.
 
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FastFourierTransform
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General suggestions for SpaceEngine

30 Dec 2017 14:16

 protoplanetary discs and zodiacal light would be nice addition.
SpaceEngineer is working with Duke to make protoplanetary disks right now as you can see here.
For Zodiacal light I found this in the old forum:
First time it was suggested
Second time (with SpaceEngineer response at the moment)
Third time (I suggested it also)
:)
 
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Quarior
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General suggestions for SpaceEngine

30 Dec 2017 15:45

Could we have a RotationOffset for Clouds tags because if we edit the RotationOffset of the planet, clouds layers don't follow the surface layer and for my mods is problematic because I create the texture of the clouds with paint.NET for that the cloud is precisely at this point and in Space Engine, it is unpacked. The only way for now would be that I change the RotationOffset of the planet but it would be more "synchronized" with the UTC time of the Earth (because in my case, the UTC time of the planet follows Earth's also has a 24-hour sidereal day).
Whoops, it is indeed missed from the script loading function, although it is implemented in engine.
Fixed, added to the scripts and editor.
Thanks and good continuation.
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greenhand
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General suggestions for SpaceEngine

31 Dec 2017 00:04

[quote="Xoran"][quote="Universal_Explorer"][post]5225[/post] so Im not saying i want creatures on a planet but what about creatures in the Info panel or will that be too much?[/quote]
You have to consider that Earth is home to maybe billions of creatures, which would mean that such a tab would probably fill many millions of pages at best.[/quote]
or you could just display the most common ones, and leave it to a short list of maybe 20.
 
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greenhand
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General suggestions for SpaceEngine

31 Dec 2017 00:38

I found this paper on how to generate hydrolic channels of erosion using node trees.
http://arches.liris.cnrs.fr/publications/SIG2013.html  perhaps this is faster than simulating water physics on billions of displacement maps.
 
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PlutonianEmpire
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General suggestions for SpaceEngine

05 Jan 2018 15:43

One thing that will help sci fi and sci fantasy modders would be a surface gravity parameter, such as "surfGrav", measured in G's, so as to enable similation of artificial gravity on smaller bodies, without having to add fake mass and potentially triggering a "Uranium Planet" situation. :)
Specs: STGAubron desktop PC; NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060/PCIe/SSE2 12 GB Vram, Intel Core i7-8700 3.2 GHz, 12 cpus; 32 GB RAM; Windows 11 x64
 
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Quarior
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General suggestions for SpaceEngine

05 Jan 2018 16:09

One thing that will help sci fi and sci fantasy modders would be a surface gravity parameter, such as "surfGrav", measured in G's, so as to enable similation of artificial gravity on smaller bodies, without having to add fake mass and potentially triggering a "Uranium Planet" situation. :)
Before I see on old script a setting Gravity but don’t work.
But yes for this or reintruce this setting, is can helpful if the data is just the radius and gravity (yes we can manually calculate the mass but with decimal infinity the around can change the gravity less or more we want).
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Sion
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General suggestions for SpaceEngine

06 Jan 2018 14:01

I was always thinking of this: what if you could compare two different planets from two different systems?
 
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aFinapple
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General suggestions for SpaceEngine

06 Jan 2018 19:52

It would be really cool to see real time aging, like the age counter go up and the sun get bigger, luminosity increases, temp changes, etc. 
"You're capable of such beautiful dreams, and such horrible nightmares. You feel so lost, so cut off, so alone, only you're not. See, in all our searching, the only thing we've found that makes the emptiness bearable, is each other.”- Carl Sagan
 
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SpaceEngineer
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General suggestions for SpaceEngine

07 Jan 2018 03:55

I was always thinking of this: what if you could compare two different planets from two different systems?
SE's Wiki was designed with this feature in mind. I haven't chance to implement this though. Could be done like goods comparison on online store websites: you click "add to compare" button, then open Wiki and saw planets previews next to each other, and properties list in for of a table.
It would be really cool to see real time aging, like the age counter go up and the sun get bigger, luminosity increases, temp changes, etc. 
SE simulates time only in a limited range, +/- 1 million years. This is too short for a Sun-like stars.
Also, simulating of stellar evolution is a very complex task. Let me implement seasonal changes on planets first...
 
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spaceguy
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General suggestions for SpaceEngine

07 Jan 2018 04:48

Let me implement seasonal changes on planets first...
Ayy sounds good!
 
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greenhand
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General suggestions for SpaceEngine

08 Jan 2018 02:05

http://www.fracterra.com/FunWithWilburVol1/index.html


Space engine could really use an erosion filter for more complex, accurate terrain :D
I found this erosion technique, maybe it's faster than simulating water flow.
http://arches.liris.cnrs.fr/publications/SIG2013.html 

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