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enioguedes
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General suggestions for SpaceEngine

03 May 2018 20:50

Some more things that happens in real life... The way stars, planets and moons are seen through a thick atmosphere. For example, the moon appear big seen from horizo, while it appears smaller when high in sky. My suggestion is to put a code or algoritm so that worlds seen from a thick atmosphere will suffer such effect. The more pressurized the air is, the stronger will be that effect of distortion of shape. And another thing, stars seen from an atmosphere shiny, they are not static as they appear in space engine, right? Ah, yes, there's another thing... fog.

The atmosphere code should have another algoritm for fog, independent from the model of the atmosphere.

Let's take Titan for example. In space engine the surface of Titan looks crystal clean, but it's known that the air of Titan is very foggy, in a way that it's difficult to see distant things from the surface. And that may be simple to make, it seems. So instead of having that odd cloud layer, it would have a new fog layer with some few clouds of methane. Because that opaque layer is not really a cloud, but a smog or something like that. The fog doesn't have to be volumetric, only the clouds. The more near the surface, the stronger should be the fog effect, for worlds that have more opaque atmospheres.

Another effect is that related to Venus, the high temperatures distort the shape of land. An algoritm for such effect should be implemented too, for hot planets or moons, specially with dense atmospheres. The higher the value, the stronger the effect, same for the fog effect and for the distortion of shape related to the size of worlds and stars seen from the horizon.

Fata morgana effect is also an advice too, specially for hot desert planets.
 
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Watsisname
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General suggestions for SpaceEngine

03 May 2018 21:07

For example, the moon appear big seen from horizo, while it appears smaller when high in sky
This is purely a psychological effect in the brain.  If you take a photograph of the Moon near the horizon and compare with another taken when it is high in sky, it is the exact same size.

The actual, physical effect of the atmosphere on celestial objects is to dim them and redden the color, which the current code does simulate.  There may also be a squished or distorted shape due to inversion layers in the atmosphere, and the change with density with height, but this is not currently simulated.
 
enioguedes
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General suggestions for SpaceEngine

03 May 2018 23:35

I know this, but Space Engine is supposed to show the universe the way we perceive it, not the way cameras perceve it. If not the way we perceive, then it's not so immersive.
 
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Watsisname
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General suggestions for SpaceEngine

04 May 2018 00:22

If Space Engine showed the universe the way we perceive it, then galaxies and nebulae would look dim, desaturated, and boring.  You would also be blind before you could see the details in the surfaces of hot stars, or in the accretion disks of black holes and white dwarfs.  I think it is also better to show things the way they are, not as how we are tricked by illusions in the brain, or in the above examples, by limitations of our vision. :)
 
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HarbingerDawn
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General suggestions for SpaceEngine

04 May 2018 07:44

I know this, but Space Engine is supposed to show the universe the way we perceive it, not the way cameras perceve it. If not the way we perceive, then it's not so immersive.
No, it's supposed to show the universe the way that it is. If SE showed everything 100% accurately, and we had perfect VR technology, then you would see the moon as looking bigger on the horizon without SE rendering it any differently. Because it's all in your head. Asking that SE replicate psychological effects and illusions makes no sense, because those are not part of the real universe. They exist only in the mind of the observer.

This is SpaceEngine, not PsychologyEngine.
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Dr. Kaii
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General suggestions for SpaceEngine

04 May 2018 10:30

I know this, but Space Engine is supposed to show the universe the way we perceive it, not the way cameras perceve it. If not the way we perceive, then it's not so immersive.
Sorry guys but I am with enioquedes on this. I mean, I think SpaceEngine should eventually do it's best to get the brightness, lighting, and eye exposure as accurate as possible as perceived as us...AS AN OPTION. The current Auto exposure mode is kinda ok at this, except it doesn't have the limits that we have. 
Of course we are only simulating "brightness" with diffraction spikes, but when I play with Space Engine, especially in VR, lots of times I wonder how things really look, rather than how they are being shown to me. Most of the time I can do this, but not always. And obviously I am not talking about going blind, but I do think that things brighter than we can "adjust" to should definitely get completely washed out, and things dimmer than we can perceive should just be black in Auto mode.
As for the things that are illusions in our brain, well yeah, I agree that our brain would also do them in Space Engine if we had great VR and Space Engine was set up right
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Speedademon
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Ship Autopilot Improvements

11 May 2018 12:25

Existing Auropilots in SE is still useful. Though I though they would need many improvements in long term. So I thought about this subject for a while and here's my suggestion.

1. Vertical speed hold
On planetary surface flight, ships with hover engines can use this autopilot to help pilots adjust descent/ascent rate. 
Pilots can control autopilot by setting vertical speed. 
Pilots will set vertical speed by pressing keyboard shortcut or pressing arrow on the display with mouse. Using keyboard shortcut will change vertical speed setting by ±5m/s and doing so while pressing Lalt(or whatever) will change it by ±1m/s.
Another option would be manually input desirable vertical speed with number keys.
Replaces existing hover autopilot(since setting vertical speed to 0m/s will have same effect).

2. Absolute attitude hold
literally. Absolutely keeps ship attitude no matter what situation. Pilots will set desirable attitude by pointing cursor with mouse to target attitude. May replace Killrot autopilot.

3. Relative attitude hold.
When over planetary bodies/orbits, Pilots can keep attitude relative to surface/orbits.
May replace level horizon autopilot.
Pilots will set desirable attitude by controlling Pitch/Roll/Yaw factor by keyboard shortcut.
What makes it different from Absolute attitude hold is that while AAH will never change it's attitude, RAH will change it's attitude. It means that if you are cruising over planetary surface at pitch level 0deg, autopilot will automatically slightly pitch down since planets are round. For orbits, if you set for example +40deg yaw relative to prograde position, ship will keep rotating to keep that relative attitude. This won't happen in AAH.

This means that while AAH will be useful for jobs like docking, interplanetary cruising, RAH will be useful for keeping observing devices towards planet, flying long distance over planetary surface.

Existing Prograde/Retrograde etc orbital position autopilots will be included in RAH as a shortcut icons.

4. Air speed hold.
Useful for long atmospheric flight. Controls main engine thrust to keep airspeed at desirable number. Pilots will control airspeed by using keyboard shortcut; just like any other autopilots.
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FastFourierTransform
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General suggestions for SpaceEngine

20 May 2018 07:25

It looks like Björn Jónsson has created a new high resolution texture for Jupiter combining Cassini images with Juno data from polar regions.

If I'm correct this is currently the largest Jupiter realistic texture available right now So It would be interesting to add this to SE main addons maybe.

The previous texture was created only from Cassini data in 2005 and it's 2880x1440 pixels:

Image



The new one just merged that with 65 km/pixel resolution polar views from Juno and oversampling the rest of the texture to accomodate that. This new image is 14400 x 7200 pixels in size.

Image

More on that here. And to download the loseless new texture click here
 
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SpaceEngineer
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General suggestions for SpaceEngine

20 May 2018 13:12

I already integrated this texture in SE. Also next Overview update will use it. its resolution is much greater, in Overview it has per-pixel quality in Vive and Rift.
scr00173.jpg
 
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FastFourierTransform
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General suggestions for SpaceEngine

21 May 2018 03:47

I already integrateв this texture in SE
Oh sorry. I wasn't sure. Good news :)
 
zhar22
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General suggestions for SpaceEngine

21 May 2018 17:40

I have only two suggestions that for me at least would make SE a lot better:

1: ocean specularity map and texture map, to add algae blooms and variability in light reflection since the ocean from space can look oily at times.

2: Surface object placement according to a map with LOD capabilities, to add forests, stones, rocks. it would be amazing if grass and plants could be populated too.
 
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Julian
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General suggestions for SpaceEngine

27 May 2018 01:44

From what I've been able to observe, context music playing currently works like this: All music files are played in a random order, but if you approach an object whose class matches one in context.cfg, the music player randomly plays one file in the Files () list for that class, then goes back to its original randomly ordered list of all files. I'd like to suggest that SE should play all files in the Files () list for that class in random order as long as you're around that object, then if you approach another object the player will switch to the appropriate class for that object.

There also seems to be a problem with random number generation in the music player right now: if you have multiple files in the list for a specific object, when you fly to that object, the same file will play every time. Perhaps the system clock time needs to be used as a seed?
 
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Julian
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General suggestions for SpaceEngine

28 May 2018 00:59

To follow up on my previous post about contextual music playing, I also wish that context.cfg allowed us to tag files so that they only play during the specified context, and never at any other locations.
 
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FastFourierTransform
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General suggestions for SpaceEngine

02 Jun 2018 12:11

There's a new code for black-hole accretion rendering that might be interesting eventually. The program is able to calculate 100.000 geodesics per second using GPU, generating a high-res image in under a minute (not suitable for SE right now but maybe a gallery of some pre-rendererd samples could). This could add a lot of diversity in black holes.

LINK TO THE RESEARCH PAPER

Image

RAPTOR, a new public code that produces accurate images, animations, and spectra of relativistic plasmasin strong gravity by numerically integrating the equations of motion of light rays and performing time-dependent radiative transfer calculations along the rays. The code is compatible with any analytical or numerical spacetime. It is hardware-agnostic and may be compiled and run both on GPUs and CPUs.
 
Luneshot
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General suggestions for SpaceEngine

03 Jun 2018 21:04

Maybe more of a modding question than a general engine suggestion: is it possible to replace the star "sprite" texture with one of my own?

Something I'd like to see eventually, analogous to the "desaturate dim stars" option, is an option for desaturation for dim nebulae and galaxies, matching our human eyes' terrible color rendition in low light.

And lastly, not a suggestion but just feedback: Space Engine is incredible- I could write pages of praise, from both an astronomers' and general public standpoint, but I'll just say that you have created an amazing and scientifically accurate model of the universe at all scales, with so much detail at every level. Thanks a lot.

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