New Space Engine 0.981 Trailer
- Thread starter WindWpn
- Start date
Yeah, ED is good, but SE still kicks the Can a bit further down the road...
One is full MMO simulator and another one is stellar browser.
Totally comparable.
Totally comparable.
Yes it is, Space Engine is stunningly beautiful. I often spend hours just perusing the galaxy in it, finding new screenshots for my PC screensaver. I'm looking very forward to the new version.
OK. But if we just compare the galaxy simulation element, which is so often touted as Elite's great strength. Yep, Space Engine, the product of one man, knocks it into a cocked hat.
OK. But if we just compare the galaxy simulation element, which is so often touted as Elite's great strength. Yep, Space Engine, the product of one man, knocks it into a cocked hat.
Because you have gone trough code of both projects and actually know how ED stuff has been made? Like FD actually did build their own galaxy life cycle simulator for Elite sakes! SE concentrates on visual appeal, while FD strives for scientific perfection, visual middle road between realism and "how it should look like". And that's cool. Because SE goals are very different than ED, besides it's not being even a game.
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Or in other words: Add collision detection to SE and watch how all the beauty crumbs away in a slideshow with 2 frames per minute.
You know, I just tried driving the camera through a planet in Space Engine 0.98.0, and the collision detection stopped me. I suppose you're talking about collision detection of many multiple objects, in a real-time multiplayer environment?
(which seems to be what Infinity: Battlescape's having issues with currently according to their newsletters).Take the end results of two simulations, if one produces equivalent or better results from simple equations, than a more complex model, which is better? If one produces those results far faster, or allows for more flexibility or greater scope, which is better? If I painstakingly work out a distribution of masses from first principles, or just plug in a distribution I found from a scientific paper, and both give approximately the same results, are you as end user, going to be able to tell the difference? There's a lot of work done on producing quick running meta-models, from more complex 'accurate' models.
It doesn't matter how accurate you think, or FDev says, Stellar Forge is - look at the end results at present. Space Engine's overall scope (many, many, many galaxies), lighting, variety of planets and objects (asteroids/comets, star clusters) and incidental and atmospheric effects are better than E: Ds. It also doesn't suffer from the 'cubes' of stars of varying sector density near galactic cores, which make E: D's skybox a bit fugly, and probably the opposite of 'realistic'. Down low however, E: D's rocky worlds, textures and terrain can look much better than SE's (plus E: D has geysers
). And E: D's suns do look quite nice close up, but SE also does irregular shaped, and oblate stars. Also love the big, hemispherical storms raging on, and icy backsides to, tidally locked worlds in SE. But rivers in SE often look terrible. And yes, all of this is subjective. You could also argue why would a game, which doesn't need to be accurate, just a facsimile thereof, uses so many resources on an accurate portrayal of the galaxy, when gameplay might have been improved by using a less accurate, but 'more Hollywood'/'more controlled' representation. Take, for example the hand-placed/catalogue imported star clusters in E: D, that line up like arrows pointing back to Sol. Are they 'realistic', in the sense that those stars exist in reality? Yes. Do they look out of place and 'unrealistic', given the density of surrounding stars, and the artifacts of their creation? Yes again. That said, I am impressed by what both Frontier and Vladimir Romanyuk have achieved.
[FWIW, I've gone through the (reverse engineered) code for galaxy generation for Frontier/FFE. Very interesting stuff. http://www.jongware.com/galaxy1.html. Plus SE may eventually become a game - though again I'm not disputing the very different end goals for each bit of software.]
*Edit - I'd also be curious to here from people with more astronomical knowledge as to whether the number of stable, binary pairs (or larger) configurations of planets E: D throws up with alarming regularity, are viable? And some large satellites seem to quite happily breach Roche Limits (based on my shonky A-level physics.
)*Edit 2 - I'll also concede that, in the absence of peer-reviewed expert comments on either Space Engine, or Stellar Forge, I've no basis to suggest either is more accurate than the other. One is prettier, with fewer visual oddities and artifacts, IMHO though.
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Yes it does follow terrain. Mountains and seas can be problematic, especially given the range of speeds the camera in SE can achieve. No I can't provide a video directly
. And my SE install is currently 1.38GB including caches - surely you could squeeze a wafer-thin bit of software in there! Ah good to know, thought it was bigger. That will do I think, thanks.
I still have strong doubts that SE can even remotely compare with some of my close-up images from ED terrain. We will see...
Close up - possibly not in every instance, but a good atmosphere (with aurora
) can hide many sins. From low orbit, with lighting from multiple suns, SE is utterly gorgeous. And check out SE's Sag. A.Don't let Eagleboy fool you, both Space Engine and Elite's Stellar Forge create their galaxies via similar methods: simulating materials and "biomes" to make up their planet surfaces in realistic and scientific ways, and using height maps to generate terrain meshes while procedually placing features like canyons, mountains, and craters. Neither model is "simple", and SE strives for realistic and scientific galaxies just like Elite does, it's model is not simply a "visual" one. Space Engine just does a far better job of it, that's all, by utilizing varying colors for materials and combining a much wider variety of simulated biomes to create a much more diverse and interesting galaxy than the Stellar Forge is even remotely capable of currently. SE also has a FAR better (and more accurate) lighting system, supporting multiple concurrent light sources, ring shadows on both the planets and the rings themselves, and procedural nebulae instead of the fixed asset nebulae that Elite has.
Elite is a game with other mechanics and AI and things to simulate while Space Engine is a pure galaxy simulation, so the difference is one of focus and priority. I fully believe that Elite's Stellar Forge could be much closer to the level of Space Engine, Frontier just hasn't made doing so a priority, so it isn't. We've had the beigefication now for almost a year, something like that would never have even been released by Vladimir because he values accuracy over everything else, while Frontier places a higher priority on things like weapon balancing and multicrew and engineers. Vladimir would have caught the beigefication and stopped it before going live, while Frontier never even noticed it until explorers brought it to their attention. That in a nutshell is the reason why Space Engine does a much better job than Elite does simulating the galaxy.
It's not a difference of methods or realism, it's a difference of priority. Sure Elite has other things going on too because it is a game with a wide scope and many aspects to it, but Frontier has a team of people dedicated to the Stellar Forge compared to Vladimir Romanyuk who is just one astronomer programming in his spare time. Elite should be winning at this aspect of it's game, or at the very least doing a far, FAR better job of competing! But it isn't, and the difference isn't manpower or skill, it's just one of priority and compromises.
Excuses can be made until the cows come home, but in the end after direct comparison there is only one conclusion to be drawn: Space Engine does a far better job of simulating the galaxy in a visually realistic way than Elite does. Irregardless of the reasons, that is simply a fact as of 8-5-2017.
I always fly the cargo, its relaxing..
No, SE does not have galaxy *lifecycle* simulation. It is nice looking, very solid space browser, but that's it at this point.
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No, it is opinion, built on your interpretation, not facts.
First, no one disputes SE is better looking. However it's accuracy is not really there. It has some things going for it better than ED, but not all of it really.
As for simulation, what I meant is galaxy life cycle simulation. It is not the same as just make systems scientifically plausable...it is way more than that. FD run their own simulation from start to finish to get seed of galaxy.
Also really stop with beige...i know you guys go crazy over this but programming wise it matters way less and is way complext to solve than that. Again, if you want just nice galaxy to look at - cool - just stop selling as it is something way superior. It's not.
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What do you mean by " galaxy life cycle simulation"? And I`m pretty sure I spent few hours last week flying space ship in SE so its pretty comparable. And SE simulates orbital mechanics, gravity of different worlds, its all there for ppl to put game in it - and this is a intention of the dev, he hope SE will be foundation for many games.
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Yes, planets are physical objects, you can crash (pretty detailed collision on the terrain too) . Also, you can make orbital transfers between planets, they have different gravity, flight model is there - if thats not a game then I guess For me SE is already beyond "only virtual planetarium" because I can do stuff in there with different ships.
As far as terrain goes, its not amazing in closeup but I think they will work on some PG rocks and details in the future. On foot exploration also been mentioned.
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I love how SE has been amazing since forever, and they still are on version 0.x.
Well when you are making a simulation, and not a game, there's a fixed amount of features you want in, and then when you reach that, well, that's it, simulators that aren't games, rarely need anything but bug fixes afterwards.
It matters less to you maybe, but NOT to everyone. And I'll stop with the beige talk when it's fixed, but not before. I want to enjoy exploring again and the greasy wheel gets the grease, deal with it!
As for your statement that Space Engine is not superior to the Stellar Forge, with regards to creating a visual simulation of the galaxy it just is superior. Yes agreed that Elite is doing much more under the hood than Space Engine so it has reasons why it's the lesser galaxy simulation, but on the topic of how their galaxies visually LOOK Space Engine is just doing a better job at that one aspect.
Find me vistas like these anywhere in Elite today:
