SpaceEngine

Do you think the entire evolution of the Solar System as the Sun goes through its entire life cycle from protostar to white dwarf could be made into an addon pack? The addon pack would depict the Sun as either a protostar, a main sequence star, a red giant, or a white dwarf, while the planets are born, grown, live, and die with it. Special mention goes to the Earth, which will even show continental drift as it goes from a hot, microbial-only planet, to one thriving with animals and plants as it evolves, and then returns to that same hot, microbial-only planet again before finally being scorched lifeless and even completely engulfed by a warming and expanding Sun as it ages.

I must say that you have set a rather big goal. I don't think it will be easier than the space engine itself. In fact, our understanding of the solar system and biological evolution is not comprehensive. It is very difficult to achieve the goal you said.

It'll be much easier to depict each of the Solar System's life stages as separate mods, such as entire collection of continental drift maps for Earth, The Earth before and after its collision with Theia, leading to the formation of the Moon, and what the entire Solar System will look like when the Sun finally becomes a red giant.

It'll be much easier to depict each of the Solar System's life stages as separate mods, such as entire collection of continental drift maps for Earth, The Earth before and after its collision with Theia, leading to the formation of the Moon, and what the entire Solar System will look like when the Sun finally becomes a red giant.

This is not a trivial ask. This would take a lot of work.

This is not a trivial ask. This would take a lot of work.

It seems as if some of that work has already been done, if you look hard enough

The evolution of the Sun (a typical MS star) itself isn't too hard to model, and there are multiple, mutually consistent, scientific models on it - see my post here. The bigger issue is, of course, the evolution of the planetary system itself, which we don't know too much about beyond very broad generalities (and even then, it would require computing exact solutions to some complex stuff, like the n-body problem - which is generally chaotic for n>2 - computations better done on a super-computer than on your home desktop...)

Stay tuned, I am trying my best to work on something like this, part 1 is on the steam workshop. I just need textures of Earth throughout time, anyone able to help?

I just need textures of Earth throughout time, anyone able to help?

You can refer to these paleogeographic maps on Wikimedia Commons, or edit screenshots from this History of the Earth video. NASA's G.Projector software can convert from Mollweide to equirectangular projections.

Oh shoot i'll take a look at that, thank you so much!!!!

I don't know anything about making custom textures, would I like need to trace off the paleographic maps or something and make biomes for it? I want to try and make textures of Earth without water like in vanilla SE.

You'd need to have a lot of experience in Photoshop or a similar image editing software. Making custom bump maps for each era would be a big challenge.

hmm, maybe I can find help...