Ultimate space simulation software

 
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Heaven's Disciples
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Spaceship Fleet

19 Sep 2020 18:38

Is it possible to create a spaceship fleet or NPC spaceships in Space Engine?
 
Mr. Abner
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Spaceship Fleet

21 Sep 2020 03:33

It is possible to make a fleet.
scr02123.jpg
scr02260.jpg
scr02491.jpg
No way yet to have NPC ships going about their own business. Unless you just want them in orbit.
 
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Heaven's Disciples
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Spaceship Fleet

21 Sep 2020 07:28

It is possible to make a fleet.

No way yet to have NPC ships going about their own business. Unless you just want them in orbit.
Nice! That's exactly what I'm looking for. Thanks Mr. Abner.
By orbit, I take it you mean creating a spaceship set as a space station?
 
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Spaceship Fleet

21 Sep 2020 09:21

What ships do you think are best to travel around on the surface of a planet, or in orbit or between star systems or on extragalactic journeys?  I'd like to get really nice portal views with realistic controls.
 
Mr. Abner
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Spaceship Fleet

21 Sep 2020 16:27

It is possible to make a fleet.

No way yet to have NPC ships going about their own business. Unless you just want them in orbit.
Nice! That's exactly what I'm looking for. Thanks Mr. Abner.
By orbit, I take it you mean creating a spaceship set as a space station?
Yes. In 990 you can specify a fixed orbit for a ship or station, but it must be a "catalog" world. It will not work for any procedural planet.

You can, however, leave a ship in orbit, or on the surface, of any world you want, in both 980 and 990, but it just won't stay there very long (if you travel very far away from it, mess with the time speed too much, or even a program crash, and when you come back to it, it will not be where you expected it to be).
What ships do you think are best to travel around on the surface of a planet, or in orbit or between star systems or on extragalactic journeys?  I'd like to get really nice portal views with realistic controls.
As far as I know, there is still only one aerodynamic model, so any ship you choose will be as good as another. You can probably tweak a few parameters in the ship's .sss file, but not an awful lot when it comes to in-atmosphere flight behaviour.

As for a nice view, I don't think there have been too many models made with full cockpits. And lack of transparencies don't help with cockpits, either. But it has been done. I believe the Merlin One has a full cockpit, and two pilots. Even has a hud display, but it has terrible outside visibility from the pilots seat.

There may be more up-to-date models on Discord, I don't know, I really don't like that site, can't remember the last time I was there. Plus 990 crashes very frequently for me these days, so I mostly stick with 980.

As for inter-galactic travel — whatever you like, but I hope you have some time on your hands... :o

One thing I played around with for a bit was using a very large ship for interstellar travel. I added a dock for another ship — I think one of Ettore_Bilvoa's ships — with a tweaked WarpBoostLog (in the ship's .sss file) to travel from the edges of the stellar system to the inner planets and moons, and then that had a shuttle docked to it for planetary travel and exploration.
 
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Spaceship Fleet

21 Sep 2020 19:21

Yes. In 990 you can specify a fixed orbit for a ship or station, but it must be a "catalog" world. It will not work for any procedural planet.
You can, however, leave a ship in orbit, or on the surface, of any world you want, in both 980 and 990, but it just won't stay there very long (if you travel very far away from it, mess with the time speed too much, or even a program crash, and when you come back to it, it will not be where you expected it to be).
I'm guessing the "catalog" worlds include custom worlds in the addons directory.
I created a planetary system in the addons directory for a space opera that I'm working on. I plan on designing 3D models of spaceships, space stations, planetary and lunar habitats, etc.
In terms of distance, I take it you mean distance from the point of origin in 64-bit precision?

To create the planetary system, I decided to use a LibreOffice Calc spreadsheet and Eclipse for Java.
I enter and modify the data for my planetary system in the spreadsheet:
spreadsheet.png
Then I use Java to extract the data from the spreadsheet to create Space Engine files for the planets, moons, dwarf planets, dwarf moons, asteroids, etc.
ecllipse.png
space-engine.png
asteroid-belts.png
I'm now learning how to create space stations and spacecrafts for the different factions within my space opera.
I recently saw a video, I think it was by HarbingerDawn, that showed a Star Trek spaceship with windows that show the interior of the ship. I want to create ships like that for my space opera.

If I can find enough documentation, I might try to create modular parts for spacecrafts and then add Java classes for creating the spacecrafts through the spreadsheet. This way I can just visually add stuff to a color coded spreadsheet and it will create everything that I need for the planetary system when I run the Java program, including spacecrafts, habitats, and hopefully buildings.

I was unable to find a way to create city lights since flat volcanoes show up in the seas, so I'll study how the Earth was created in Space Engine. I'll probably have to create my own textures for the planets instead of relying on the engine for maps. Especially since there's a possibility that the maps could change and I'd have to rename my continents from scratch.
 
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Spaceship Fleet

21 Sep 2020 21:37

I'm guessing the "catalog" worlds include custom worlds in the addons directory.
Yes, any defined world should work. I'm pretty sure it's just the procedural generated worlds are off-limits for space stations or bases. Which I find somewhat disappointing as it is a lot of work creating an entire system from scratch. As you no doubt know already.
In terms of distance, I take it you mean distance from the point of origin in 64-bit precision?
I'm not exactly sure of the criteria, but if I leave a ship in orbit, and go off and explore other systems, when I come back to it it will either be on the surface, or off in deep space. Not always, but frequently.

I suppose you are familiar with the online spacecraft editor? A modular approach to building ships.  And Ettore_Bilbo has released some modules for our use.

The trouble with the modular approach to building ships is that it is the very same method I used to build the convoy fleets in those screenshots posted above. Start with one ship, then add other ships as modules to the .sss file of that ship. You then control the whole mess as one ship. And the whole thing rotates as one unit, so perhaps not terribly realistic maneuvers for a fleet or convoy. But it does make for some good screenshots. :)

I look forward to the day we can designate a ship as the flagship and then join other ships to it in-game, and thus control them all by flying the flagship. (Perhaps Vlad can figure out a way to nest .sss files.)
Look forward to seeing your progress.

-Alex
 
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Heaven's Disciples
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Spaceship Fleet

22 Sep 2020 00:47

Yes, any defined world should work. I'm pretty sure it's just the procedural generated worlds are off-limits for space stations or bases. Which I find somewhat disappointing as it is a lot of work creating an entire system from scratch. As you no doubt know already.
It really is a lot of work. It would have taken me months or years to build the planetary system I have now. Not to mention editing all of the object; that would be an impossible task. Just testing the sliders and settings in the Planet Editor takes a long time to create the biomes that I'm looking for, let alone to do the research. So, in order to see what does what, before I created my planetary system I started work on a Java program that creates a planetary system that has 1 planet for each setting. Each moon will have a different value for that single setting. So if I enter 10, for 10 moons/permutations, for the planet named after the Oblateness setting, it will create an estimated 10 moons using 10 different Oblateness values from the minimum to the maximum values, with all of the values of equal distance from each other. I say estimated because the program includes the minimum and maximum value, and sometimes the maximum value is a duplicate.

With this, I end up with over 100 planets in the system and many moons. I just travel to the moons and see what changes are made to the landscape, terrain, etc. In the future, I hope to create a publicly available Java program that will allow users to create a planetary system with just the UI only.
world-engine.png
I'm not exactly sure of the criteria, but if I leave a ship in orbit, and go off and explore other systems, when I come back to it it will either be on the surface, or off in deep space. Not always, but frequently.
I didn't realize that. I'm still learning how to use spaceships.
I suppose you are familiar with the online spacecraft editor? A modular approach to building ships.  And Ettore_Bilbo has released some modules for our use.

The trouble with the modular approach to building ships is that it is the very same method I used to build the convoy fleets in those screenshots posted above. Start with one ship, then add other ships as modules to the .sss file of that ship. You then control the whole mess as one ship. And the whole thing rotates as one unit, so perhaps not terribly realistic maneuvers for a fleet or convoy. But it does make for some good screenshots. :)

I look forward to the day we can designate a ship as the flagship and then join other ships to it in-game, and thus control them all by flying the flagship. (Perhaps Vlad can figure out a way to nest .sss files.)
Look forward to seeing your progress.

-Alex
I am familiar with the online and offline spacecraft editors, but I am not familiar with Ettore Bilbo's modules. They look very useful-- thanks for sharing! I'll definitely check them out today.

Creating the convoy as spaceship modules is a really good idea. I'll definitely look into that. It does make for some nice screenshots. Haha.

I want to find out how the fleet in this YT video was created They show the spacecrafts moving individually:

[youtube]YFwO7x2Ul_0[/youtube]
 
Mr. Abner
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Spaceship Fleet

22 Sep 2020 02:35

I want to find out how the fleet in this YT video was created They show the spacecrafts moving individually:
Well, I hate to break it to you, but I don't think any of those ships were rendered in Space Engine.

Yeah, I don't mind muckin' about with ships, tweaking parameters, adding modules, changing paint jobs/textures, etc., but building entire systems is just too much work for me. :)  Especially since Space Engineer has already given me an entire universe to explore.
 
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Heaven's Disciples
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Spaceship Fleet

22 Sep 2020 08:29

Well, I hate to break it to you, but I don't think any of those ships were rendered in Space Engine.

Yeah, I don't mind muckin' about with ships, tweaking parameters, adding modules, changing paint jobs/textures, etc., but building entire systems is just too much work for me. :)  Especially since Space Engineer has already given me an entire universe to explore.
They used "Lightwave 3D 2015.3" and "SpaceEngine 0.990 Beta." 
It's possible they used a green screen with the ship animations and put Space Engine into the background.

It is interesting experimenting with the parameters and textures. I'm going to take a look at more mods that were created.
 
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Spaceship Fleet

22 Sep 2020 11:53

Wow I love that planetary system and those ships.  What is "Lightwave" is it another simulator or is it a 3D graphics editor?
 
Mr. Abner
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Spaceship Fleet

22 Sep 2020 17:17

It's possible they used a green screen with the ship animations and put Space Engine into the background.
Sounds about right.
What is "Lightwave" is it another simulator or is it a 3D graphics editor?
I believe it is a 3D modeller/renderer with animation capabilities.
 
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Spaceship Fleet

22 Sep 2020 22:00

Heaven's Disciples, Mr. Abner, Abner is correc, those ships have self shadowing which SE does not have. 
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Spaceship Fleet

23 Sep 2020 01:26

Heaven's Disciples, Mr. Abner, Abner is correc, those ships have self shadowing which SE does not have. 
Okay. Thanks for explaining. I was searching online to see if it was possible to control objects, like spaceships, using scenario scripts.
 
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Spaceship Fleet

23 Sep 2020 13:06

Heaven's Disciples, not yet but it is planned for the future.
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