General suggestions for SpaceEngine

Xoran · 05 Mar 2017 03:38

is it planned to add time dilation effects in black holes? for example, when you are getting closer to a black hole time goes faster, of course, this would be toggleable.

I thinks moons for known extrasolar planets should be procedurally generated.

Didn't see your suggestions in the TODO list, so probably not.

Also, could it be possible to disable the text that says if you are increasing or decreasing velocity (Free mode) or acceleration (Spacecraft and Aircraft modes)

05 Mar 2017 05:36

could it be possible to disable the text that says if you are increasing or decreasing velocity

Why? You need some visual confirmation if you change something.
If the reason is video capturing, you can toggle the info interface with Ctrl + ~

Xoran · 05 Mar 2017 12:04

Why? You need some visual confirmation if you change something.

There is a way to see your velocity and acceleration in the lower-left corner thing, that should not be disabled.
But no, it isn't to make videos, it is to make the game feel more immersive.

Quarior · 06 Mar 2017 04:32

They will be converted to FP32 anyway, with loss of precision.

I think have a solution myself I am not a programmer.
My solution is place a point (no visible in Space Engine) to all 2³² (4294967296) in each direction (X, Y, Z).
Here a schematic in 2D for X and Y with sectors around the Sun :

: Sectors around the Sun

So if I'm not wrong, just for the X-axis positive side (ie [tex]x \geq 0[/tex] and [tex]y = 0[/tex]), I get with this method :
l is the limitatation.
x, y, z are the position in meters (the position we can see for the camera) by rapport to the Solar System.
[tex]l=2^{32}[/tex]
[tex]\frac{x}{l} = l \Leftrightarrow x = l \times l \Leftrightarrow x = l^{2} \Leftrightarrow x = {2^{32}}^{2} = 18446744073709551616[/tex]
So there are in he X-axis positive 18446744073709551616 sectors.
My equatation which defines the sector :
[tex]S\left\{\begin{matrix}X = \frac{x}{l}
\\ Y = \frac{y}{l}
\\ Z = \frac{z}{l}
\end{matrix}\right.[/tex]
And of course in Space Engine in editor mode, we can see the sector the nearest by rapport to the center of the sector (because, we can see in the schematic areas overlap to avoid empty areas) to us as well as the coordinates with respect to the sector.
And in catalogs, the player if specific the sector put in code :

StarBarycenter "Center of the sector 4 -6 0" //Just a test
{
Sector "4 -6 0" //Center of the sector, the name is the position of the sector divided by 2^32, the user can see in edit mode
XYZ(0 0 0) //relative coordinate x y z in relation to the sector that the user can see in edit mode (in meters)
//RA 0 //relative coordinate RA in relation to the sector that the user can see in edit mode (in hours)
//Dec 0 //relative coordinate Dec in relation to the sector that the user can see in edit mode (in degrees)
//Dist 0 //relative coordinate Dist in relation to the sector that the user can see in edit mode (in parsec)
}

Otherwise, is the Sector "0 0 0" are used (the center of the sector is the Solar System of course) by default (the current method).
I hope understand and I've helped you.

06 Mar 2017 11:36

Quarior, this must be handled in other way. Catalog stars must be embedded into galaxy's procedural stars octree (a data structure which is used to store procedural stars). It is already stores stars in a 'sectors' (octree nodes), as you have suggested.

Star catalog must be turned into an octree-based database, with ability to load chunks of data from HDD (as like planet textures). This also allows to use the GAIA catalog in SE, and similarly, full SDSS catalog of galaxies.

Quarior · 06 Mar 2017 14:59

Quarior, this must be handled in other way. Catalog stars must be embedded into galaxy's procedural stars octree (a data structure which is used to store procedural stars). It is already stores stars in a 'sectors' (octree nodes), as you have suggested.

Star catalog must be turned into an octree-based database, with ability to load chunks of data from HDD (as like planet textures). This also allows to use the GAIA catalog in SE, and similarly, full SDSS catalog of galaxies.

OK, I thought I had the solution I had in mind this morning

. I hope there is.
Good luck and continuation.

PlutonianEmpire · 06 Mar 2017 21:18

One thing that might be cool would be to add a "flip", "mirror", and/or rotate feature to the planet editor, where you could click a check box or three, and the surface of a planet would automatically change orientation in relation to the poles as if you had done an equivalent procedure in an image editing software. It would certainly save time (and hard drive space!

) versus having to manually export to cylindrical, rotating it 180 degrees, and plastering it back onto a planet as a lowres (and therefore ugly) cubemap texture.

YouTube · 07 Mar 2017 01:28

Yeah, is not a bad idea, I guess.
Even if I personally never had the necessity to do such a thing, and I don't even know why should anyone do so, but hey

Gnargenox · 08 Mar 2017 03:59

Will we get to see something like this someday in the future?

DoctorOfSpace · 08 Mar 2017 04:55

Gnargenox,what is that?

jasperhb · 08 Mar 2017 07:05

Gnargenox,what is that?

It looks like a planet either being consumed by a black hole or being hit by a massive meteor. If it's the former, I think he wants black holes to consume stuff if things get too close. If it's the latter, I think he wants meteor impacts to get animated into SE. Both seem near-impossible for SE.

Gnargenox · 08 Mar 2017 14:34

Yes I was thinking something similar to the destruction of the planet Vulcan in Star Trek. Not sure of the method though.

jasperhb · 08 Mar 2017 16:33

Yes I was thinking something similar to the destruction of the planet Vulcan in Star Trek. Not sure of the method though.

The destruction of Vulcan was caused by a black hole created from red matter. It detonated the bomb inside the core (hence, why the debris doesn't gravitate towards a point on the surface and why there was that laser drill), which consumed it from the inside. Since it was quickly devoured by the hole, no accretion disk formed.

sizzlingbacon123 · 08 Mar 2017 18:51

Hello, there is something have wanted to be added to the game for a long time now. This idea are rovers. Yes, they seem pretty useless, but, they would be fun aspect to add. We already have things like shuttles and things, so taking space flying objects to the surface would be cool. This would be useful for taking screenshots or some sort of science video/educational video. I you are viewing this thank you

sizzlingbacon123 · 08 Mar 2017 18:53

Hello, there is something have wanted to be added to the game for a long time now. This idea are rovers. Yes, they seem pretty useless, but, they would be fun aspect to add. We already have things like shuttles, so taking space flying objects to the surface would be cool. This would be useful for taking screenshots or some sort of science video/educational video. If you are viewing this thank you.

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