Over more than a decade of development, a lot of words have been said here. But they all came down to this.
Users: "We dream, we want beauty, graphics, games, we want nature, dynamics, visuals, processes occurring in time. We want our beautiful dream of space."
Developer: "No, you won't get any of that. I'll write codes, calculate equations, write posts about astrophysical phenomena that you don't need, and excuses about why you don't get what you donate for."

Now we came to this. The forum is dead, even the old-timers left it, "Overview" failed a long time ago, SE in Steam has been in early access for 4 years without changes, online is 100-150 ppl. Enough. Time has spoken. It's painful to look at this dead project.

We need this:
- Sounds
- 3D clouds
- Shadows
- Beautiful water with reflections, waves and possibly tides
- Geysers
- Twinkling stars in the atmosphere
- Red lunar eclipse effect
- Beautiful elaboration of real planets
- Physics of ground transport
- Gas surface of stars
- Proto-discs
- Quasars

I may have forgotten some other items that the community has been asking for over a decade, but all we need are absolutely explicit, visible, beautiful elements.

And all this crаp with codes and calculations of temperatures and parallaxes somewhere deep in the system that will never affect the players in any way, we don’t need any of this. This is all rubbish, we never wanted it and never asked for it.

Your project is already dead. You are years late in meeting your fans' wishes. Throwing away all the unnecessary nonsense and doing what the players need in the shortest possible time is the last chance to try to resurrect your project. Choose: either work on real content for real people who trusted you for more than a decade, or death of the project. The choice is yours. I'm done here.

Over more than a decade of development, a lot of words have been said here. But they all came down to this.
Users: "We dream, we want beauty, graphics, games, we want nature, dynamics, visuals, processes occurring in time. We want our beautiful dream of space."
Developer: "No, you won't get any of that. I'll write codes, calculate equations, write posts about astrophysical phenomena that you don't need, and excuses about why you don't get what you donate for."

Now we came to this. The forum is dead, even the old-timers left it, "Overview" failed a long time ago, SE in Steam has been in early access for 4 years without changes, online is 100-150 ppl. Enough. Time has spoken. It's painful to look at this dead project.

We need this:
- Sounds
- 3D clouds
- Shadows
- Beautiful water with reflections, waves and possibly tides
- Geysers
- Twinkling stars in the atmosphere
- Red lunar eclipse effect
- Beautiful elaboration of real planets
- Physics of ground transport
- Gas surface of stars
- Proto-discs
- Quasars

I may have forgotten some other items that the community has been asking for over a decade, but all we need are absolutely explicit, visible, beautiful elements.

And all this crаp with codes and calculations of temperatures and parallaxes somewhere deep in the system that will never affect the players in any way, we don’t need any of this. This is all rubbish, we never wanted it and never asked for it.

Your project is already dead. You are years late in meeting your fans' wishes. Throwing away all the unnecessary nonsense and doing what the players need in the shortest possible time is the last chance to try to resurrect your project. Choose: either work on real content for real people who trusted you for more than a decade, or death of the project. The choice is yours. I'm done here.

1st, you are a rude person.

2nd, those codes are needed to give a step for the accurate visuals that you ask so much, again, in a rude way.

3rd, yea, I expected at least in this update the shadow update on planets, but take in count is not many developers working on the engine, and I think it'll take more time since Doc has left the project. 

"We need this"

Have you ever signed a contract when you bought Space Engine saying that those features will be implemented? No. It's up to the developers, and they've been listening to the community, but if they've been working on something else it's because those goals were possible to achieve. After all I personally think the goal of Space Engine is not to be used for fun, it's mostly for education. It's an astronomical software, not a game.

Do you have an idea of how big Space Engine actually is? And the developer who have been working on it since its first appearances does not have a computer-science background! He's an astronomer who studied programming just to be able to make his dream program come true (or at least I suppose so!).

And since he haven't done any IT studies before working on Space Engine, imagine how complicated and hard to modify Space Engine's source code is...
Also it was not made using a framework like Unity, Unreal Engine, nope. Pure C++.
The planets to be able to have detail at an astronomical scale (it means that they're as big as an actual realistic planet) must be generated with a shader (or a set of shaders) on the GPU, and you got to see a GPU program how complicated it is...

That's the reason why Space Engine takes so long to improve, and they've been working on 3D clouds for years and, since they have not been released yet, it means like they're not ready to be so. Why? Because it's complicated. Because there are so many technical limitations that prevent them to be fully functional, that too much code had to be rewritten for them to be implemented.

I also hope that 3D water and 3D clouds and vegetation will eventually be implemented, but honestly, as programmer, I realize how much complicated that must be.

P.S: Actually Space Engine's community is not dead. The forum probably is, but on Reddit I keep finding stuff about Space Engine.

Spartan, I have already addressed your questions as much clearly as I could in another thread but the way you list your demands here is something that I have rarely seen in my experience on the net. I wonder since when you have known this forum, it certainly doesn't seem you have read much of previous conversations. It is enough indeed.

Besides, only one person will decide if and when this project will be dead, and it's not you my friend. And developers, believe me, do decide where their project go. They will always lend a ear to their public, of course, but they don't change targets in commercial ventures because of people "demanding" their dreams fulfilled. they are alredy following their own dream. If you want, you can sit tight and experience the trip, if you find it boring then read some books. Or you can leave the train at the next station, like others did. No problem.

Spartan, I have already addressed your questions as much clearly as I could in another thread but the way you list your demands here is something that I have rarely seen in my experience on the net. I wonder since when you have known this forum, it certainly doesn't seem you have read much of previous conversations. It is enough indeed.

Besides, only one person will decide if and when this project will be dead, and it's not you my friend. And developers, believe me, do decide where their project go. They will always lend a ear to their public, of course, but they don't change targets in commercial ventures because of people "demanding" their dreams fulfilled. they are alredy following their own dream. If you want, you can sit tight and experience the trip, if you find it boring then read some books. Or you can leave the train at the next station, like others did. No problem.

I completely agree with your point of view. No one has spoken up to clarify that this project is over, so it is not necessarily over. Let's wait and see how it goes.

Spartan, I have already addressed your questions as much clearly as I could in another thread but the way you list your demands here is something that I have rarely seen in my experience on the net. I wonder since when you have known this forum, it certainly doesn't seem you have read much of previous conversations. It is enough indeed.

Besides, only one person will decide if and when this project will be dead, and it's not you my friend. And developers, believe me, do decide where their project go. They will always lend a ear to their public, of course, but they don't change targets in commercial ventures because of people "demanding" their dreams fulfilled. they are alredy following their own dream. If you want, you can sit tight and experience the trip, if you find it boring then read some books. Or you can leave the train at the next station, like others did. No problem.

I completely agree with your point of view. No one has spoken up to clarify that this project is over, so it is not necessarily over. Let's wait and see how it goes.

As far as I know, this is taking a lot of time because they are moving to a new code 

Space Engine is certainly not a dead project, but I think we have to admit that at the moment it is not a project with clear objectives...
Or rather, I think that since Cosmographic Software was born they have had a clear project, but it is quite in contrast with what SE had shown it could be over the years.
Over the years, and there are many in which I have followed its development with curiosity, it has evolved while maintaining scientific rigor on the one hand, but also by inserting gameplay elements or allowing lively modding that has made it known to many users interested in the more videogame side as well as the scientific one. Indeed, fascinated by the possibility of seeing these two souls coupled and maybe seeing a game one day, even a simple one, but truly realistic and simulative!
It has really been a long time since we saw improvements or adaptations in this sense, that we have not even talked about projects in this sense. what happened to this part of the project? is it still in the minds of those who are developing SE today?
Vladimir's project was crazy because it was so big, and yet he managed to create a work of art all by himself, probably because it was very naive after all.
The feeling, mine, but I think also of others, is that since SE arrived on the market they preferred to work to adapt to a specific niche that is only a distant relative of that slightly crazy and perhaps truly unrealizable project, but that at least gave a lively and compelling direction...
Spaceengineer has always said it will be ready when it is ready, and slowly it has created such an incredible software that it is appreciated by: nerds, space lovers, inveterate gamers, crazy dreamers and fussy cataloguers.
Who is today's SpaceEngine aimed at? still at all these figures? I don't think I'm the only one to suspect that this is no longer the case...