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General discussion on the upcoming version goes here: viewtopic.php?f=7&t=371
The upcoming version number has been changed from 0.9.8.1 to 0.9.9.0
Full changelog for 0.9.9.0 (20 Nov 2017)
Changes:
- Support of Oculus CV1 and HTC Vive with controllers
- Ability to bind a change of stereobase on keys and gamepad/joystick buttons
- Different mirror modes in VR, with ability to capture video from the main window
- Removed the "Auto velocity" button
- Planet/moon star-like particle is now rendered on the body's crescent rather than in its center
- Joystick/controller bindings are saved to its own config file
- Improvements in scenario scripting system - new commands and tags
- Parsing of SpaceEngine executable's command line parameters - ability to run a script file by double-clicking on it
- Ability to replace model of a certain galaxy or nebula with a custom shader effect using a special script
- Raymarched galaxies and nebulae (WIP)
- Hi-quality (bicubic) upsampling for rendering of volumetrics (galaxies, nebulae, comet tails, aurora)
- New hi-resolution fonts
- New main menu design, the main menu texture no more needed
- New type of object - the waypoint, used in the scripts, works with autopilot
- Built-in tutorials, based on a scenario scripts (WIP)
- Added ambient lighting to planets in the Map mode
- Automatic adjust of the amount of visible object in the Map mode
- Upgraded Solar system chart: comparison of bodies by diameter, mass, density, temperature, and a "2D system map" mode
- Added a button "Goto" to the Solar system browser
- Clouds on gas giants and emission textures on stars cannot be switched of
- Going to the saved location adds it to the journey log
- Updated loading splash window and loading screen
- Quotes on loading splash window
- Click on a planet/star disk selects it
- Improved performance of the envmap rendering
- Mouse cursor is captured in screenshots/video in "record with GUI" mode
- Mouse cursor hides itself after 2 seconds of inactive
- Mouse cursor in VR with VR controllers is only visible over GUI
- Introduced mass of a ship modules and thrust of an engine modules, recalculated total mass and thrust of all default ships
- Updated ship editor
- Updated video capture dialog
- Spline paths for scripted flybys, editor, integration to scripts and video capture system
- Updated close-up noise effect of rings
- Introduced new parameters for the planets scripts: SemiMajorAxisKm, PericenterDistKm, PeriodDays, MassKg
- Complete list of moons of all Solar system's gas giants
- Character '|' in planet name in script replaced with '/' in SpaceEngine's interface (useful for names such as "S/2006 S1")
- Character '&' in planet name in script did not printed in SpaceEngine's interface (useful to solve name conflicts with real objects)
- Opposition effect increases analytic brightness of a moon or planet, thus affects lighting
- The "rings winter" effect for Saturn and procedural planets
- New system for sharing locations: se:// url
- Updated the Locations dialog - options to copy and paste a location code or url to/from the clipboard
- The Player settings dialog has a button to register se:// protocol in your system to be able to open se:// url with SE (administrator right required!)
- Uncontrollable space ships on a pre-defined orbits
- Displaying of orbital resonances with neighbouring bodies in the planet Wiki
- Catalog planet bulk density is considered when assigning a class to it (if both mass and radius are known)
- Updated exoplanet catalog, planets with mass > 13 Mj are treated as brown dwarfs
- Some brown dwarfs in the catalog were re-classified as a planemo (rogue planets)
- Planemo could have a dwarf-like spectral class (M9.5P, L7P, etc)
- Introduced bolometric luminosity for catalog stars, this fixed temperature on known exoplanets
- Fixed discontinuities in the fish eye/cylindrical/cubemap projection
- Completed hight-dynamic range rendering with autoexposure
- Proper surface brightness of all space objects
- New bloom effect
- Tone-correct resolving of MSAA buffers (fixed MSAA on bright edges)
- Limited tidal heating of moons
- Parameter RadiusInfo added to planet scrips, similar to OblatenessInfo for objects with a global shape defined by elevation map data
- New settings menu, combining old player, magnitude, filters, graphics, display, and sound settings
- Advanced configurable post-processing effects
- Pseudo lens flare post-effect
- Optimized lens flare rendering performance
- Lens flares are disappearing smoothly below horizon or behind occluders
- New textures for Moon (Klud) and Phobos (HarbingerDawn)
- Camera clips at ocean surface if moved faster than 1 km/s, diving is possible at lower speeds
- Better controls in the Chart mode
- Reduced texture aliasing on stars
- Added asteroid and KBO types for info table and Wiki
- Ships are separated from Planetarium and moved into Single player game mode
- New locations browser, turned into load/save menu with locations previews
- Hold altitude command while landing starts takeoff sequence
- Thin dust rings around procedural planets like Saturn's E ring
- Uranus-like narrow rings around procedural planets
- Updated impostors system for galaxy/nebula rendering
- Editor for raymarched nebula
- Fully customizable shader for raymarched nebulae: config file describes parameters/uniforms, witch automatically added to the shader, editor and scripts
- When the Solar System Browser is opened and user selects a new star system and presses F2, the Solar System Browser updates the planets table instead of closing itself
- Context menu point "Browse planetary system" opens the Solar System Browser on a currently selected object's hierarchy level
- Number of eclipse shadows per planet increased to 8
- Updated textures and elevation maps for Phobos and Deimos
- Added credits screen and donate button to the main menu
- Colors of orbits, labels and markers could be adjusted in the GUI skin config file
- Added new soundtracks
- Large drop-down boxes (as like module selector in the ship editor) could be scrolled with mouse wheel, and are adaptive to the screen resolution
- Drop-down box behaviour changed to classic (stays opened until left click)
- Labels are drawn with the big font
- Variables to control labels and marker size
- All variables can be animated using script command Interpolate
- Changed terrain error metrics to higher level of detail
- CPU/GPU performance counters, better debug screen
- Asynchronous downloading of generated textures from GPU back to CPU
- New planet classification, based on their bulk composition: terra, carbonia, ferria are rocky, carbon and iron planets, aquaria is a water/ice planet, neptune and jupiter are ice and gas giant
- A size prefix is added to the planet class based on its mass: mini-, sub-, (no prefix), super- (subneptune, superterra etc)
- A surface volatiles word is added to the planet class string: airless, desertic, lacustrine, marine, oceanic
- Changed format of localization files, to support the new planet classification
- Added "eng-gui.cfg" localization file
- Added displaying, generation and usage of metallicity data for stars
- Separate specular power for water and icy surfaces on planets
- New displaying style of binary planets in the Solar System browser: both components are rendered into the table cell
- Probability settings for a very massive moons and binary planets are moved to the config file
- Planets with a large moons with a mass ratio <20 are classified as a binary planets
- Binary planet and its companion are named "a" and "b"
- Optimized orbital paths rendering
- Implemented ephemerides for planets and moons: JPL (DE-xxx), VSOP87, MARS1.0, L1.2 TASS1.7, GUST86
- Implemented IAU rotational model for planets and moons, and JPL (DE-xxx) lunar libration model
- Support of all JPL ephemeris binary files up to DE436 from this site ftp://ssd.jpl.nasa.gov/pub/eph/planets/Linux/
- Wiki displays current (osculating) orbital parameters for objects using custom ephemeris
- Added a new overlay - displaying the full phase area of the eclipse shadow
- More realistic eclipse shadow "darkness" and gamma
- Changed the nearest planetary system search algorithm, so now star will not blink during approaching to it
- Wide diversity of a possible ocean composition on planets: water, ammonia, carbon dioxide, sulfur dioxide, hydrocarbons and others; mixtures are also possible
- Updated planetary chemistry code generates not only the composition of the atmosphere, but also composition of oceans and surface ices
- Composition of ocean is in consistence with the temperature atmospheric pressure
- Supercritical ocean planets (where water vapor is a supercritical fluid) are classified as minineptunes
- Terrestrial planets with atmospheric pressure greater than 1000 atm are classified as minineptunes
- Planet bulk composition is added to the "Physical" tab of the Wiki
- New tab in the Wiki to show the ocean data and its composition
- Conditions on the ocean bottom is calculated to determine whether it is rocky or covered by ice VI or ice VII; it is used to determine habitability of the planet
- Updated Star Browser:
--- Planet classes filters are updated for the new planet classification
--- Added new filters: atmosphere and ocean composition, ocean depth
--- A list of a life-bearing bodies is displayed while hovering the mouse cursor over the cell in the "Life" column of the table, as like the "Filter" column
--- Consequential selection of the planets in the match list by clicking on the "Life" and "Filter" column
- All auto-generated rendering shaders are changed to the uber-shaders with custom defines: planet.glsl, water.glsl, sky.glsl, rings.glsl, ships.glsl
- Wiki displays equatorial, polar and mean radius of a planet, info table displays mean radius instead of equatorial
- New hi-resolution terrain textures on procedural planets:
--- Detail textures atlas is replaced with individual textures
--- Biome presets system to configure detail textures and palettes, replaces the planet palette system
--- Biome preset editor, embedded into the Planet editor
--- Updated procedural terrain generation shaders to support new system
- Updated terrain engine:
--- Geometry is independent of textures, faster loading of mountain silhouettes
--- Nodes/textures loading priority: closer to camera are loads first
- Support of export of 16-bit skybox textures (in png and tiff formats)
- More responsive texture export dialog (no hanging while doing job)
- Support of encrypted pak files
- Added "depth" effect to the lens flares and ghosts in VR, controlled by a parameter in the flare/ghost config file
- New landforms, based on Rodrigo's mod: rivers/canyons, rifts
Bugfixes:
- Fixed bug with not initialized user name in the user settings menu at startup
- Fixed flipped sign of declination labels on the equatorial grid
- Fixed issues in main menu in 3D modes
- Fixed back with inability to open a toolbar
- Fixed incorrect initializing of orbital point markers mode
- Fixed too bright planets/moons on a previews in the Solar System browser
- Fixed some errors in catalogs
- Fixed "blackout" bug
- Fixed disappearing of a planet when camera is in it's shadow and planet is unselected
- Fixed bug with wrong calculating of barycenter mass of Sagittarius A* and other supermassive black hole systems
- Fixed bug with cached shader caches when disabling detail textures
- Fixed bug with saving the rebuilt atlas.cfg to incorrect folder
- Fixed non-initialized object info in the Journey log
- Fixed a bug with disappearing of lens flares near a surface of a planet
- Fixed discontinuity in lighting on asteroids
- Fixed bug with lighting of a night side of tidally locked planets with opaque clouds
- Fixed z-fighting of clouds on gas giants
- Fixed redundant lines in stars motion blur
- Fixed some errors in the planet script exporting
- Fixed issues with camera rotation on a window resolutions larger than screen resolution
- Fixed inclinations of procedural outer moons of gas giants
- Fixed a crash when rendering a ship module with a detail diffuse texture, but without a main diffuse texture
- Fixed saving of a ship's cfg file into '#' folder
- If music player was stopped, it will not resume after entering the main menu or minimizing and restoring of the SE window
- Fixed incorrect orientation of a planet rotation axis defined by PoleRA/PoleDec
- Fixed incorrect rotation of the Sun
- Fixed Wiki database import function
- Fixed depth of labels in VR mode
- Fixed some bugs in the script parser
- Fixed hot titans/iceworlds bug
- Fixed shifting of the solar eclipse shadow on sky and water on oblate planets
- Fixed inability to specify more than 2048 Mb of the VRAM in the config