I love the idea of in-house texture editing. Planet editing may be flexible enough that I can finally fulfill my dream of creating a Gray Homeworld temperate terra around Zet-2 Reticuli then visiting it in VR, maybe I'll even get some city lights on the night side =O

New blog post: http://spaceengine.org/blog171016/

You have no idea how happy we are that you are working on this, I really think it looks stunning and is going to change EVERYTHING for the better 

This means that SE already calculates the parameters of frozen aquarias but they still don't affect planet rendering or info about composition?

Yes

Low-distance details are awesome! It's incredible how detailed is the terrain now, good job, really. Also I love that you can select the single textures on the editor, I use the editor a lot.

On high-distances it looks a bit unnatural though, maybe it's because the transitions between one texture and another are sharper or because they are a mix of high and low scaled textures. We need a professional level designer/3D modeler to understand what's the problem there.

I'm worried about my computer, I have a memory of 8 gb ram and a video card of 650 GTX, is that enough for the new texture system?

Low-distance details are awesome! It's incredible how detailed is the terrain now, good job, really. Also I love that you can select the single textures on the editor, I use the editor a lot.

On high-distances it looks a bit unnatural though, maybe it's because the transitions between one texture and another are sharper or because they are a mix of high and low scaled textures. We need a professional level designer/3D modeler to understand what's the problem there.

My guess is that the lack of proper terrain self-shadowing has at least something to do with the distant terrain looking a bit weird in some screenshots.

Nice work SpaceEngineer, by the way! You mentioned having a method to give pebbles and the like the illusion of volume, but I assume that this couldn't be used for big boulders? Would that require proper 3D models? Having that capability would go a very long way to making planetary surfaces feel lifelike, especially for barren planets.

I assume that this couldn't be used for big boulders? Would that require proper 3D models?

Exactly, otherwise it would look "attached to the terrain" and not an actual "object" like a big rock. 

I'm worried about my computer, I have a memory of 8 gb ram and a video card of 650 GTX, is that enough for the new texture system?

If it is the standard configuration with 1GB VRAM than I think you are right to be worried. But if it is a 2GB configuration, you should be OK at least for LODs<0. As for the main RAM, SE is 32bit app and can not use more than 4 gigs of RAM so you are OK.

VRAM and RAM are independet. SE can use any amount of VRAM, because it is governed by video driver.

SE is 32bit app and can not use more than 4 gigs of RAM so you are OK.

I regularly have SE using upwards of 8GBs of VRAM, so as SpaceEngineer said those RAM limits do not apply.

New blog post: http://spaceengine.org/blog171016/

Oh wow. 9.9.0 for sure. I didn't know people could throw in their own textures. The pixelation fix is something to really look forward to, too. Thanks for working so hard!

SE is 32bit app and can not use more than 4 gigs of RAM so you are OK.

I regularly have SE using upwards of 8GBs of VRAM, so as SpaceEngineer said those RAM limits do not apply.

VRAM and RAM are independet. SE can use any amount of VRAM, because it is governed by video driver.

gamadh:I'm worried about my computer, I have a memory of 8 gb ram and a video card of 650 GTX, is that enough for the new texture system?

If it is the standard configuration with 1GB VRAM than I think you are right to be worried. But if it is a 2GB configuration, you should be OK at least for LODs<0. As for the main RAM, SE is 32bit app and can not use more than 4 gigs of RAM so you are OK.

I too have also noticed that Space Engine uses as much vram as possible. It used all 4gb's on my R9 290 and uses all 6gb's of my GTX 1060. My question is how SE handles cpu cores as I noticed very different situations with different platforms, for example my i5 7500 crushes SE and never drops FPS even when flying through globular clusters which my last CPU (FX 8350) hated and would drop frames quiet a bit in those areas but in contrast I found that Space Engine crashed a lot less with the 8 threads the FX 8350 provided. 

About ground textures, could we have a picture of a ship on ground (with it's size) so we can grasp it a little bit better? I mean, the astronaut was a fine comparison, but it would be nice to have one of ships, since we we use them so much.

This is some early screenshot: