Has Frontier Ever Seen "Space Engine"? WOW

Colonel Kenney

Colonel Kenney
I recently downloaded it and all I can say is WOW. If Elite can come anywhere close to the level of detail and smoothness that they did we are in for a treat. The bar has been set very very high. I hope Frontier can emulate and even surpass this level of detail. Exploring the vast universe in this is astounding. I just wish I could plug in Elite's commerce and flight into this game!

I am almost brought to tears how totally amazing and realistic this simulation is.

I'm not advertising for it or anything but it is mainly my hope that they emulate a few of the processes that Space Engine uses. Especially the lighting!

When you move through a solar system you can see the balls of light that make up planetary bodies as they reflect light from its star. You can jump to a system map, and scroll all the way back to a galactic map and then you can even see multiple galaxies.

You can go to any star, any galaxy any globular cluster and see MILLIONS of stars.

You can click on any star get information about it and even go to it.

Then you can land on any surface and it generates the terrain almost seamlessly. Moons, asteroids, planets. Its absolutely amazing. I discovered all sorts of interesting planets with their data readily available. Last night I found an earth like planet entirely full of water with no land masses. Amazing!

http://en.spaceengine.org/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mootV7Iqa34#t=269


Check it out while we wait for them to finish Elite!
 

gazzareth

G
I would imagine that they are aware of it, after a bit of tweaking it can certainly look pretty good !! Probably need to explore further in it myself..

G
 

Tinman

Tinman
gazzareth said:
I would imagine that they are aware of it, after a bit of tweaking it can certainly look pretty good !! Probably need to explore further in it myself..

G
Click to expand...

I don't see how the FD devs could possibly NOT be aware of it since we are mentioning it over and over again on this forum (me included). ;)

That David himself hadn't heard about it when Scott Manely asked about it was a bit of a surprise though, but since he isn't really "down in the trenches" nowadays that is understandable I guess. The actual programmers/artists working on the planet tech is most likely well aware if it. :)
 

Colonel Kenney

Colonel Kenney
Tinman said:
I don't see how the FD devs could possibly NOT be aware of it since we are mentioning it over and over again on this forum (me included). ;)

That David himself hadn't heard about it when Scott Manely asked about it was a bit of a surprise though, but since he isn't really "down in the trenches" nowadays that is understandable I guess. The actual programmers/artists working on the planet tech is most likely well aware if it. :)
Click to expand...

That is astounding that DB has never heard of it.

I didn't hear of it either but its so similar to what they are doing you'd think they'd want to see what its doing and find some common elements and tricks since its already ahead of them in development. Not to "copy" but to "emulate" some of their good stuff.

I mean the feeling of "depth" when you fly around and how all the objects are represented through lighting and everything makes it so real it makes things so immeasurable that its amazing they could even make such a thing.

Also I've been playing "pioneer" and realized that the old elite games actually have external views, they have autopilots, they have destinations visible in the night sky if you want them etc. I thought pulling off what ED is doing would be very difficult but i'm seeing older software already doing it in spades including their own software years ago.

So I'm expecting some grand things from Elite Dangerous! Their level of detail will be beyond any of these. The Coriolis station is evidence of that. I just hope the galaxy and the UI gets the same level of attention!
 

Crux

Crux
It's pretty fancy stuff eh?
Definitely the highest quality planets I've ever seen, in anything. The procedural terrain is OFF DA HOOK!!!

Yeah I've been following SE for a while now. The next version will have animated coronas and such.

You know it's just one guy? And it's all done in OpenGL I think too.

Boggles the mind. He's currently looking for funding to turn it into an Elite style game, but to be honest, I don't know if it will happen.

Definitely agree that ED needs to at the absolute least, match the quality and ideally surpass it. Considering a lone Russian dude can do it with no funding or team, I would certainly hope the fully funded dev team at FD can do this!!

Below are some shots I've taken in SE over time. They're from a few different releases, so the quality might not be consistent across all the images.

p42uuwV.jpg


W62XNdc.jpg


NwqMvbg.jpg


9dx4KJl.jpg


rV8mp6q.png


2W3SaLO.jpg


ofKZigI.jpg


zdfYpLT.jpg
 

Colonel Kenney

Colonel Kenney
Holy crap awesome screen shots.

I mean I was able to install this in minutes and start exploring the galaxy. And yes one guy made all of this. Amazing!

I keep finding all sorts of awesome stuff every time I explore.

Of course we won't be able to explore as easily in Elite due to the limitations of our ships. But I'm hoping we'll be able to have similar style exploration in Elite where we can pull up all the data we need etc click around and explore the galaxy as we want with probes and whatnot reporting back all the data for us to collect.

Imagine we send a probe that hyperspaces out to a star system for us, returns to us with a fully mapped system with screen shots to look at of each planetary body and a map. We can go to explore it ourselves in more detail to map out its resources or just sell the data packet on that system on the market.

Would be fun!
 

SuperG

S
Well impresive a competitor of Celestia.
Its more a astronomical focused space simulator. More for making CGI done in cosmos documentary but then real time.

In Celestia I dd put some Goa'uld Alkash in for fun.
But its not a game.

COuld be abused as game.

But it not its focus.

I don't compare this with ED I compare full PCG space game sims with it not this.

Unless I missed the fullfledge game features of this.

My Observation made by that youtube clip.

My impression the sim would be more of serrious game of education of astronomaly.
Exploring space like documentary.

Some moders could fork and build in a game focused part.

I see galacy's this is even bigger then Elite but no game focus Yet.
 

nickq

N
This has to be the perfect software to demonstrate the magnitude of the universe. Zooming out of the milky way and then seeing that each dot is another galaxy really captures it.
 

Colonel Kenney

Colonel Kenney
What is most impressive about this is not necessarily the graphics but the actual fluidity of it all. It runs flawlessly at extremely high frame rates and simulates more objects than your mind could comprehend ... ALL of which you could simple click on and get information and instantly explore.

SuperG no this isn't a comparison like I said. This is just what is possible with our hardware and the hard work of one man. I just hope Frontier hasn't lived in a bubble and is fully aware of all the other software packages out there and what they are capable of.

Like the one stand out thing is that the lighting is perfect for objects depending on their mass and size you will see them as you travel. You don't see anything in Elite unless you are close enough.
 
Last edited:

Ratio

Ratio
Hi All,

If I remember correctly .... Did Drew Wagar not use Space Engine to model Prism..? and did Frontier not take his planet file data to plug into their Stellar Forge? to make it effectively the same?

So that sounds to me like its known and understood :)
 

Crux

Crux
Colonel Kenney said:
Holy crap awesome screen shots.

I mean I was able to install this in minutes and start exploring the galaxy. And yes one guy made all of this. Amazing!

I keep finding all sorts of awesome stuff every time I explore.
Click to expand...

I went looking for the area from the PB today...

Made a video today taking off from the first moon of the brown dwarf in Theta Bootis. This may or may not be the equivalent of Maher, I'm not sure my brain started to hurt after an hour studying star catalogues :S

This is probably like watching paint dry for some people I'm sure! But I like it :D

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ITVnmWzqzNU
 

drew

drew
Ratio said:
Hi All,

If I remember correctly .... Did Drew Wagar not use Space Engine to model Prism..? and did Frontier not take his planet file data to plug into their Stellar Forge? to make it effectively the same?

So that sounds to me like its known and understood :)
Click to expand...

Frontier are very much aware of SE, and yes, I used it to model my solar system and Frontier took all that orbital and environment data for the 'Stellar Forge'.

Cheers,

Drew.
 

Crux

Crux
drew said:
Frontier are very much aware of SE, and yes, I used it to model my solar system and Frontier took all that orbital and environment data for the 'Stellar Forge'.

Cheers,

Drew.
Click to expand...

Excellent,

That's good to hear. Thanks Drew!
 

Colonel Kenney

Colonel Kenney
Crux said:
I went looking for the area from the PB today...

Made a video today taking off from the first moon of the brown dwarf in Theta Bootis. This may or may not be the equivalent of Maher, I'm not sure my brain started to hurt after an hour studying star catalogues :S

This is probably like watching paint dry for some people I'm sure! But I like it :D

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ITVnmWzqzNU
Click to expand...

That video go to 15 mins in and see how you can see the pinpricks that are the moons etc?

We don't have that in ED yet. In supercruise the planets are invisible until you get really close.

That has been my main complaint from day one. There is no reflection of the light off the moons and planets AT ALL.
 

Tinman

Tinman
Colonel Kenney said:
That video go to 15 mins in and see how you can see the pinpricks that are the moons etc?

We don't have that in ED yet. In supercruise the planets are invisible until you get really close.

That has been my main complaint from day one. There is no reflection of the light off the moons and planets AT ALL.
Click to expand...

You think THAT is annoying?

How about the fact that there is no point of light representing the other stars in the systems with multiple stars? You DO see the flare/glare
from them but no point of light! Seeing every other star in the night sky however is no problem at all even if they are way way further away! Grrrr :mad:

Yeah...hopefully they'll fix that. Not that hard to do really so I guess it's just not the number one priority right now. :p:D
 

Crux

Crux
Yeah the points of light thing is really nice in SpaceEngine, I like increasing the speed and watching moons whir around planets like moths.

And I've also noticed the issue with multiple stars in-system, Tinman.

I'm hoping that, considering supercruise was a relatively late addition, it's really only in it's infancy. As it currently exists it seems to be to be a separate entity to the rest of space, if you get me. As in we are loading into a different "map" which contains only the planets and suns - nothing else exists, no matter how close you get to a station in cruise, it won't appear until you load back into normal space. I really hope the final release is far more seamless.
I would like to be able to, regardless of how inordinately long it might take me, or how impractical or silly it would be to do so, leave from an orbital station and travel the interplanetary distance to another orbital station at a different planet in normal flight.
 
Last edited:

Dante80

Dante80
Crux said:
I would like to be able to, regardless of how inordinately long it might take me, or how impractical or silly it would be to do so, leave from an orbital station and travel the interplanetary distance to another orbital station at a different planet in normal flight.
Click to expand...

There is nothing that stops you from doing that, other than the fact you will probably not reach it in your lifetime. The star system map is seamless, players have done a lot of tests on that even as early as alpha2.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom