often crashes my computer

Because that method relies on graphics hardware capability of your computer, so people with more VRAM and better GPU can afford better resolutions.
What you, and others as well, are suggesting it's a headless rendering mode to overcome those limits. It would be fabulous. I remember an old program (MS-DOS days) using these modes with fractals. Apparently there are some solutions for OpenGL, but seeing how SE use GPU more than CPU for rendering I fear this could need a substantial rewrite of the current engine. One reason is that those rendering methods involve data exchange from VRAM to RAM so, unless it doesn't use some sort of tiling mechanism to write the image on disk while rendered, the limit of your capability will be your PC RAM, not your graphic card. Plus, I'm not sure about the degree of support of OpenGL extensions to those rendering modes.

I have a GTX 980 so it should be able to handle it.

Some other things I thought of;

1. It seems extremely rare to find featureless gas/ice giants similar to Uranus/neptune - perhaps this could be tweaked

2. The game seems to only show you the average temperature of a body no matter what part of the planet you are on. Maybe this is complicated to calculate but it would be nice to get an idea of temperature differences from sea level to mountain peaks, or day and night sides.

it would be nice to get an idea of temperature differences from sea level to mountain peaks

SE already calibrates temperature based on camera altitude.

it would be nice to get an idea of temperature differences from sea level to mountain peaks

SE already calibrates temperature based on camera altitude.

Hmm could sworn I tested that, will try again. Still would like night side vs day side temps though.

it would be nice to get an idea of temperature differences from sea level to mountain peaks

SE already calibrates temperature based on camera altitude.

Hmm could sworn I tested that, will try again. Still would like night side vs day side temps though.

Absolutely happens with altitude of camera, but I'm sure I've seen temperature change of the planet change with time. One can only assume that is temperature changes with orbital eccentricity. Am i the only one to see this?

SE already calibrates temperature based on camera altitude.

Hmm could sworn I tested that, will try again. Still would like night side vs day side temps though.

Absolutely happens with altitude of camera, but I'm sure I've seen temperature change of the planet change with time. One can only assume that is temperature changes with orbital eccentricity. Am i the only one to see this?

Yes, currently the only variability of the planetaty average temp is the changing istance from the star, i.e. eccentricity indeed. But if the player's POV enters an atmosphere, a second bracket-enclosed temp will appear in the upper-left infodump, which is the temp at the player's height.
other than twose two, I am aware of no other currently implemented temp variations.

[quote="HarbingerDawn"][quote="Kevin Bank"]I'd really like to see an android version of SE, or at least the possibility to stream SE from my PC to my phone and experience it in VR via google cardboard for example. I think people could do amazing stuff with it this way. People have already done something similar so you can at least watch videos of SE in VR so it is possible. This being implemented as a regular feature would surely increase the value of the program.
Here are some examples:
[/quote]
Streaming to your device might be possible, but a mobile port of SE isn't. Mobile devices to not have the processing power to run SE.[/quote]
I really doubt that mobile devices like phones, tablets or iPads could even have the memory storage capacity to run Space Engine. A game like Angry Birds Epic is one thing, but an enormously large and complex simulator program like Space Engine is another entirely different entity. Space Engine already requires so much megabytes or gigabytes of memory, that it could overwhelm the limited memory capacity of an iPad or Android phone.
I already have trouble handling large game apps on my iPad and trying to keep them from spontaneously crashing. I already filled up one mobile phone to capacity. A simulator as large and complex as Space Engine would make those software storage problems worse for a mobile device.

Anyhow, we might be able to put the full processing power and memory storage capacity of today's desktop or laptop sized gaming computers into a small mobile device like a smartphone. However, Space Engine requires a different operating system than what smartphones like Android phones are built with. Porting a program like Space engine from Microsoft Windows to Android or iOS basically requires rewriting the program from the ground up. 

I already have trouble handling large game apps on my iPad and trying to keep them from spontaneously crashing. I already filled up one mobile phone to capacity. A simulator as large and complex as Space Engine would make those software storage problems worse for a mobile device.

You seem to be conflating memory and storage. The highest-end mobile devices arguably have enough memory to run SE, and most mobile devices have enough storage. The biggest limiting factor for mobile devices is simply processing power.

Is it planned to be able to record executable scripts at a fixed frame rate? I think this would be a nice way to make videos of space engine with every frame 100% loaded and high quality.

Yes, this is already works.

-Possibility of moons having moons since it's theoretically possible if the object is in the Hill Sphere of the moon and far enough from the planet they are orbiting. I know Elite Dangerous has this type of configuration and it looks very cool and still is realistic.

You're wrong, moons of moons are not theoretically possible. Even for lightweight planet and very far moon, like our Earth's Moon, its satellite could exist just few years.

-A simple thing which has always been something a bit bothering; prograde/retrograde etc. manoeuvres are always rotating the ship in a certain position BEFORE orienting the ship in the right direction which makes the manoeuvre slower and can disorient when not looking at the ship (in orbit camera f.e.). This simple change would certainly make a difference for people using ships because it becomes quite boring after a while.

I really don't understand that you are asking.

-Lastly, the biggest suggestion I have: a fuel unit (in gallons/liters) telling you how much fuel you have consumed since your ship has spawned. This could give a primitive gameplay element leading to some roleplay travels during which a certain amount must not be exceeded. To go even further, maybe being able to set this limit in-game making, as a consequence, when exceeded, engines useless.

Fuel system is a large work, not has been started yet.

Quite late but this article kind of suggests that it can actually happen:
http://www.science20.com/robert_invento ... ngs-154917
Could be interesting to have binary moons aroung gas giants or moonlets around distant moons.

Been away so long I had to recreate my account lol. I see things have come a LONG way since I last bopped around the virtual cosmos, and the next version looks pretty impressive. SpaceEngineer, HarbingerDawn, long time so see mis amigos! I do still have two suggestions, though...

1: Procedural life. For starters, just some tree sprites that could optionally render within an adjustable range of the camera over certain textures (like grass textures) as done in many 3D games, the impact on PC resources wouldn't be too detrimental if they spawned and rendered procedurally when enabled, and for those with weaker computers they could be disabled. Also it wouldn't take much programming. But eventually, (way down the road) have flora and fauna rendered in 3D with procedurally calculated evolution based on the conditions of the planet. (for example, on a planet with lower light, fauna might have larger eyes and flora may have larger leaves, possible bioluminescence, and on a planet with less gravity life forms could be taller and thinner, etc.)

2: an API or some way to retrieve data from SE, like current g-force, location, speed, etc., for use in other programs or scripts that could run outside of SE, like control software for a motion simulator, or gauges and data screens, for those of us ubergeeks who want SE to run a space simulator or something.

This is a new forum compared to "so long" ago, it's probably why you needed to recreate your account. Everybody had to.

1. Suggestions to you: read the [url=http://forum.spaceengine.org/viewtopic.php?t=72]TODO list[/url]. Do you really thing that this wouldn't be on the TODO list already?

2. Not what you want, but there is a [url=http://spaceengine.org/manual/making-ad ... o-scripts/]begining[/url] of that sort of thing, but for now, it's only internal to SE, and not yet for interactive control.

[quote="Nahor"]This is a new forum compared to "so long" ago, it's probably why you needed to recreate your account. Everybody had to.

1. Suggestions to you: read the [url=http://forum.spaceengine.org/viewtopic.php?t=72]TODO list[/url]. Do you really thing that this wouldn't be on the TODO list already?

2. Not what you want, but there is a [url=http://spaceengine.org/manual/making-ad ... o-scripts/]begining[/url] of that sort of thing, but for now, it's only internal to SE, and not yet for interactive control.[/quote]

Ha, I did not see it in the todo list! Must have overlooked it, now I feel like a moron lol. My apologies. Wish I had the spare time right now I would volunteer to start working on coding that. And yes, I read about the scripting, but there was currently no way to retrieve live data from SE to use in another program, which is why I mentioned it.

I do see that procedural life is "Uncertain if possible", if I may make a suggestion, I would suggest using linear scaled morph targets. Think like in a videogame, you have a character creator system where you can drag a slider left or right to change how fat the cheeks are, how big the nose is, etc. Now picture a system that takes data from the planets and uses it to determine where to set "virtual sliders" in the program to adjust between one extreme or another of how different environmental constraints may effect biological evolution. For example, a slider dependent on the planet's gravity will morph between tall and skinny or short and muscular, another uses the abundance of water and sets a slider between smooth skin or sharp, hard, scales. Have maybe a dozen or so "base lifeforms" (base 3d models), the program determines which base would be best suited for each planet with life, then morphs the base lifeform according to the planet's specifics. The real challenge would be the procedural civilization aspect, though. We'll get in to that another time lol.

This is my first post here, but I'll try to be brief and get right to it. I have skimmed the forum and I have not seen the suggestions I want to make, but I cannot be sure that I haven't missed them, so please forgive me if I'm repeating what others have already wrote.

I've been using the program since version 0.9.7.3 and I admire the scope and the detail. With a new version on the way, I wanted to point out a few things that I'd love to see implemented/improved.

First of all, stars and galaxies very often hit certain size limits. For stars, it's the 300 solar masses, for galaxies, the 100 kiloparsecs diameter (and very often the 3.5 trillion stars number pops up for spirals). I think more variation could be achieved, and while there is no problem with upper limits that would prevent stars/galaxies to be rendered at impossibly large values, I suggest a second order of randomization of say 10-20% around the already determined size could result in a much more realistic universe.

Secondly, the cube shape of the universe seems to me somewhat odd. Would it not be possible (until an infinite or torus solution is implemented) to at least have a sphere with the radius of 46.5 billion ly (the generally accepted size of the observable universe)?

Thirdly, I was hoping Space Engine could be made more didactic in nature by allowing some leeway over what's rendered.

For starters, would it be feasible to input absolute magnitude cutoffs for stars/galaxies? For instance only stars between Mag 4 and Mag 10 would rendered, with the user being able (like it is now) to increase apparent magnitude limits in order to see those further away.

In the same vein and in conjunction with the above, distance cutoffs would be great. It would allow users to only render stars/galaxies up to a certain distance, so that they could simply explore a region of space with no regard for the rest. Rendering could be done continuously as you move through space (a sort of comoving distance), or only once from the point of the camera, and then stay fixed for you to fly around it and explore.

As such, there should also be an option to limit the number of stars/galaxies rendered, so that the user could prevent an overload and a crash of the program, with certain rules determining what's shown in case the number of objects meeting the selection criteria is larger than the number of objects that the user allows to be shown at the same time.

And finally, in the same 'didactic' category, SpaceEngineer explained that galaxies are rendered in filaments. Does the program know which galaxy belongs to which filament? If so, would it be possible to have only the certain filament rendered at once? As it stands, the macro structure of the universe is lost on us.

That's about it for now. I'm very curious to see opinions on these suggestions.