SpaceEngine 0.990 Stem release

I know I know, there is already a topic on SE but with Steam VR release I think it deserves separate one:




Full change log:
Steam release!
11 JUN @ 12:06PM - SPACEENGINEER
So, SpaceEngine 0.990 has been released today! This is very exciting time for us! Very long development, almost 3 years, lead to enormous size of the changelog. Take a look on it below, and enjoy all new features (about 400!) implemented in this version!

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Major updates:
  • Procedural volumetric raymarched nebulae
  • Improved resolution of planetary terrain rendering up to sand grains level
  • Physically-based rendering of terrain materials and space ships
  • Full VR support: native for Oculus Rift and HTC Vive with controllers, and all Steam-VR compatible HMD
  • New post-processing effects
  • New animated main menu, combined settings menu
  • Built-in tutorials, based on a scenario scripts
  • Unified settings menu
  • New planet classification system
  • Ported to 64 bit
Terrain:
  • Geometry is independent of textures, faster loading of mountain silhouettes
  • Nodes/textures loading priority: closer to camera are loads first
  • Changed terrain error metrics to higher level of detail
  • Meshless terrain rendering (vertex shader texture fetching)
  • Optimized texture transfer to and from GPU
  • Optimized VRAM storage of generated/loaded terrain textures - texture arrays
  • Support of compressed formats for generated/loaded terrain textures
  • All Solar System textures updated to be supported by a new terrain engine
  • Large-scale detail textures - "biome sample textures":
--- Old texture atlas is replaced by sample textures which are stored in the texture array
--- Biome preset system to configure detail textures and palettes, replaces the planet palette system
--- Biome preset editor, embedded into the Planet editor
--- Big collection of sample textures and planet class presets
- Small-scale detail textures - "soil materials":
--- Complex terrain materials, assigned to a surface based on its color and slope
--- Soil preset system to configure materials
--- Soil preset editor, embedded into the Biome preset editor
--- PBR rendering of soil materials
--- Displacement mapping of soil materials
--- Big collection of material textures and material presets
  • New landforms, based on Rodrigo's mod: rivers/canyons, rifts
  • Better continent/sea trench shape function
Planets:
  • Clouds on gas giants and emission textures on stars cannot be switched of
  • Updated close-up noise effect of rings
  • The "rings winter" effect for Saturn and procedural planets
  • Introduced new parameters for the planets scripts: SemiMajorAxisKm, PericenterDistKm, PeriodDays, MassKg
  • Opposition effect increases the analytic brightness of a moon or planet, thus affects lighting
  • Limited tidal heating of moons
  • Thin dust rings around procedural planets like Saturn's E ring
  • Uranus-like narrow rings around procedural planets
  • Number of eclipse shadows per planet increased to 8
  • Separate specular power for water and icy surfaces on planets
  • Probability settings for a very massive moons and binary planets are moved to the config file
  • Planets with a large moons with a mass ratio less than 20 are classified as a binary planets
  • Binary planet and its companion are named "a" and "b"
  • Custom models for asteroids and other planetary bodies
  • Support for 3-axial ellipsoid planetary bodies, new script parameters: Oblateness (x,y,z) and Dimensions (x,y,z)
  • Support for Hapke BRDF for custom planetary body models
  • More realistic moon system generation for gas giants
  • Added parameter "humidity" to control vegetation spread on planets with life
  • Jupiter-like polar cyclones on gas giants, and script/editor parameters to control them
  • Equatorial ridge on airless moons and planets
  • Equatorial ridge on small moons orbiting inside parent planet's rings
  • Generation of hot gas giants on polar and retrograde orbits
  • Life of planets is originated based on their surface volatiles, not the class (so carbonia and ferria can produce organic life, frozen aquaria or terra can produce exotic life, etc)
  • Aerial organic life on some terrestrial planets (planets which have develop a runaway greenhouse as a result of life changing atmosphere composition)
  • Improved density and size distribution of small craters
  • Captured outer moons may not be tidally-locked to their planets
  • Updated exoplanets catalog up to June 4, 2019
New planet classification and chemistry:
  • Bulk composition classes: terra (rocky planet), carbonia (carbon planet), ferria (iron planet), aquaria (water/ice planet), neptune (ice giant) and jupiter (gas giant)
  • Size classes (based on planet mass): micro-, mini-, sub-, (no prefix), super-, mega-
  • Surface volatiles classes: airless, arid, lacustrine, marine, oceanic, superoceanic
  • Wide diversity of a possible ocean composition on planets: water, ammonia, carbon dioxide, sulfur dioxide, hydrocarbons and others; mixtures are also possible
  • Updated planetary chemistry code generates not only the composition of the atmosphere, but also composition of oceans and surface ices
  • Composition of ocean is in consistence with the temperature atmospheric pressure
  • Supercritical ocean planets (where water vapor is a supercritical fluid) are classified as minineptunes
  • Terrestrial planets with atmospheric pressure greater than 1000 atm are classified as minineptunes
  • Conditions on the ocean bottom is calculated to determine whether it is rocky or covered by ice VI or ice VII; it is used to determine habitability of the planet
Solar System:
  • Complete list of moons of all gas giants
  • New textures for almost all planets and moons
  • Analytical model of orbits of Saturn's trojan moons Helene (trojan of Dione), Calypso and Telesto (trojans of Tethys)
  • Analytical model of orbits of Saturn's co-orbital moons Janus and Epimetheus, swapping orbits every 4 years
  • Analytical fit of the DE-431 model for 8 major planets
  • Increased texture resolution of some planets in default installation (Earth, Mars etc)
Stars:
  • Integrated Cirax's binary stars catalog updates 1 and 2
  • Updated catalog of S stars orbiting Sagittarius A* black hole (ESO)
  • More precise stellar data for all potentially habitable exoplanets
  • Dense and bright corona for Wolf-Rayet stars (imitation of the powerful stellar wind)
  • More realistic distribution of sunspots
  • Experimental black hole jets based on comet tail particle system
  • Updated data for septuple star system Nu Scorpii
  • Procedural open cluster is generated in the center of a procedural diffuse nebula
  • Procedural white dwarf/neutron star/black hole is generated in the center of a procedural planetary/supernova remnant nebula
  • In the HDR mode star surface automatically become darker on approach to reveal details
Ray-marched nebulae:
  • Volumetric nebulae rendering using ray-marching technology
  • Editor for ray-marched nebula
  • Fully customizable shader for ray-marched nebulae: config file describes parameters/uniforms, witch automatically added to the shader, editor and scripts
  • Ability to replace model of a certain galaxy or nebula with a custom shader effect using a special script
  • Presets for procedural volumetric ray-marched nebulae
Sprite nebulae and galaxies:
  • Gamma-corrected rendering of E galaxies
  • Hi-quality (bicubic) upsampling for rendering of volumetrics (galaxies, nebulae, comet tails, aurora)
  • Galaxy/nebula sprite texture atlases are extended to 4x4 tiles
  • More aggressive LOD switching for galaxy and nebula sprite models to save performance in clusters
  • Integrated nebulae addons by BambusDude and Phunnie
  • Integrated galaxies addon by Kexitt
  • Parameters Brightness and Transparency for galaxy and nebula sprite model script
Space ships:
  • Ships are separated from Planetarium and moved into Flight Simulator game mode
  • Introduced mass of a ship modules and thrust of an engine modules, recalculated total mass and thrust of all default ships
  • Updated ship editor
  • Uncontrollable space ships on a pre-defined orbits
  • The "Hold altitude" command while landing starts the starts takeoff sequence
  • Experimental PBR + IBL rendering
  • Added fake aerodynamics model with just a drag force, to use with UFO cheat
  • Added ability to switch off (hide) space ships: a button on the Filters toolbar and a checkbox in the Settings menu, also script commands and console variables
  • Script parameter 'Type' for space ships and custom planetary body models to filter them out in the Ships manager (controllable, real static, game static, custom model)
  • Packed (smaller) formats of *.sm models, console command OptimizeSM to convert between them
  • Support of importing obj saved in 'quads' (no need to convert to 'triangles' anymore)
  • Support of DXT5-YCoCg compressed textures and BC4 compressed normal maps for space ships
  • Camera binding mode is automatically set to "Follow" if ship HUD mode is changed to "Orbital" or "Warp", and to "SyncRot" if changed to "Horizontal" or "Docking"
  • Hold altitude autopilot uses aerodynamics (ailerons and elevator) to keep flight direction horizontal
  • Custom sound file for every engine effect, including warp drive
  • Sound of nearby ships in the atmosphere
Interface:
  • New main menu design with animated background scene
  • New settings menu, combining old player, magnitude, filters, graphics, display, sound and controls settings
  • New hi-resolution fonts
  • Going to the saved location adds it to the journey log
  • Updated loading splash window and loading screen
  • New splash window textures
  • Quotes of famous scientists on loading splash window
  • Click on a planet/star disk selects it
  • Mouse cursor is captured in screenshots/video in "record with GUI" mode
  • Mouse cursor hides itself after 2 seconds of inactive
  • Displaying of orbital resonances with neighbouring bodies in the planet Wiki
  • Added asteroid and KBO types to info table and Wiki
  • Added credits screen and donate button to the main menu
  • Colors of orbits, labels and markers could be adjusted in the GUI skin config file
  • Added new soundtracks
  • Large drop-down boxes (as like module selector in the ship editor) could be scrolled with mouse wheel, and are adaptive to the screen resolution
  • Drop-down box behavior changed to the classic one (the box stays opened until left click)
  • Labels are drawn with the big font
  • Changed format of localization files, to support the new planet classification
  • Added "eng-gui.cfg" localization file
  • Added a new overlay - displaying the full phase area of the eclipse shadow
  • Esc button closes currently opened dialog window first, then opens main menu
  • Editor menu with the "palette" of tools
  • Names of axes and buttons of VR controllers in the settings menu
  • Graphics settings menu have options to set up resolution of warp and reflection textures, resolution of render buffer for fish eye and 360° projections
  • Option in user settings to choose between planetary class name sets: terra/aquaria/neptune/jupiter or earth/titan/ice giant/gas giant
  • Word "Catalog" is changed to "Real" in interface ("Catalog stars" -> "Real stars" and so on)
  • Displaying azimuth and height of a celestial object when observing from planet surface (in info table and wiki)
  • Checkboxes/variables to turn on/off accretion disks and jets
  • Magnitude/Camera toolbar have buttons to change FOV and editable values (click and type value using keyboard)
  • All sliders on the Settings dialog have editable values (click and type value using keyboard)
  • Added 'Take screenshot' button to the Camera toolbar
  • Localizations: ability to use custom word order in a planet classification string and make it separated by comma or conjunctive
Updated Universe Map:
  • Added ambient lighting to planets
  • Automatic adjust of the amount of visible object
  • New "Exploration" mode
  • The Universe Map have its own music theme
  • Option to quickly hide procedural objects
  • Smooth zooming of the Map by clicking the Zoom slider
  • Elliptical galaxy haze is not rendered on a scale smaller than the galaxy's radius
Updated System Chart:
  • New comparison modes: by diameter, mass, density, temperature
  • The system architecture mode: 2D map of a system hierarchy
  • Better controls, camera movements are limited
  • The System Chart have its own music theme
  • Smooth animation on changing comparison mode or filters
Updated Solar System Browser:
  • The "Goto" button appears on a planet cell on mouse hovering
  • When the Solar System Browser is opened and user selects a new star system and presses F2, the Solar System Browser updates the planets table instead of closing itself
  • Context menu point "Browse planetary system" opens the Solar System Browser on a currently selected object's hierarchy level
  • New displaying style of binary planets: both components are shown in the same cell
  • F2 opens Solar system browser at selected object's hierarchy level (so if moon is selected, it opens the list of moons); Shift-F2 opens the system root level
  • Displaying of the brief object info when hovering mouse over the table cell
  • Displaying of solitary and binary asteroids/comets, if they were previously selected by some other method
  • Double-click on the cell to enter next hierarchy level
  • If Solar System Browser is opened while planetary/SNR nebula is selected, selection switches to the nebula's core star and SSB opens for it
Updated Star Browser:
  • Planet classes filters are updated for the new planet classification
  • Added new filters: atmosphere and ocean composition, ocean depth
  • A list of a life-bearing bodies is displayed while hovering the mouse cursor over the cell in the "Life" column of the table, as like the "Filter" column
  • Consequential selection of the planets in the match list by left-clicking the "Life" or "Filter" column
  • New options to search only among catalog and/or procedural stars and only catalog planetary systems
Updated Wiki:
  • Displays of the current (osculating) orbital parameters for objects which uses custom ephemerides
  • Planet bulk composition is added to the "Physical" tab
  • New tab to show the ocean data and its composition
  • Displaying of equatorial, polar and mean radius of a planet, info table displays mean radius instead of equatorial
  • Experimental procedural description generator
  • Ability to create custom (mod) local database files for object descriptions
  • New field added to the object descriptions database - Franchise
  • Wiki displays info about object type: real, procedural or object form franchise
  • Characters '–' (en dash, 0x96, Alt-0150) and '—' (am dash, 0x97, Alt-0151) were added to fonts
Updated Locations dialog:
  • New locations browser, turned into load/save menu with locations previews
  • Updated the Locations dialog - options to copy and paste a location code or url to/from the clipboard
  • New system for sharing locations: a protocol for se:// URLs
  • The Player settings dialog has a button to register se:// protocol in your system to be able to open se:// url with SE (administrator right required!)
  • When loading location, its preview is shown on the loading screen with the scanline effect
Updated planet editor:
  • Parameter RotationOffset for the Clouds
  • Option to link change of orbital period and semimajor axis (automatic re-computation if another were changed)
  • Editing comet tail parameters
  • Editing procedural planetary rings parameters
  • Editing surface and clouds glow map color and brightness
  • Editing aurora colors
  • Surface or clouds parameter TempMapMaxTemp to define which temperature in Kelvins corresponding to white pixels in the temperature map
  • Preserving NO_DATA values of sliders (fix of exporting weird values like -1.#IND)
  • Sliders displays NO_DATA values, slider handle is invisible in that case
  • To set NO_DATA value to the parameter, type anything but a number into the slider's input field
  • Preserving zero values of logarithmic sliders (fix of exporting weird values like -1.#IND)
  • Logarithmic sliders displays log(0) value if attached parameter is zero, slider handle is invisible in that case
  • To set 0 value to the parameter of the logarithmic slider, type 0 into slider's input field
  • Button to toggle the ship editor from the planet editor for the "fake host planet" of a static ship
  • Button to toggle the planet editor from the ship editor for the "fake host planet" of a static ship
Controls:
  • Ability to bind a change of stereobase on keys and gamepad/joystick buttons
  • Removed the "Auto velocity" button
  • Joystick/controller bindings are saved to its own config file
  • Camera clips at ocean surface if moved faster than 1 km/s, diving is possible at lower speeds
  • Switch to a shooter-like rotation controls near surface of a planet (fixed vertical axis)
  • Configurable sensitivity of analog actions for keyboard and controller: turns, change of velocity, stereobase, time speed, exposure and interface scrolling
  • Configurable controller axis dead zone (in the controller config file)
  • Proper names of buttons and axes of XBox360-compatible game controllers
  • Default config file for XBox360-compatible game controllers
  • Separate keys binding tab in the settings menu for the Map and Chart modes, hotkeys for some of Map and Chart functions
Engine:
  • High-dynamic range rendering with autoexposure
  • Proper surface brightness of all space objects
  • New smooth bloom effect
  • Pseudo lens flare post-effect with several preset configs
  • Configurable post-processing effects: sharpness, brightness, contrast, saturation, gamma, controls in the setting menu
  • Separate brightness, contrast, saturation, gamma controls for galaxies and nebulae (config/console only)
  • Optimized lens flare rendering performance
  • Lens flares are disappearing smoothly below horizon or behind occluders
  • Tone-correct resolving of MSAA buffers (fixes MSAA on bright edges)
  • Different mirror modes in VR, with ability to capture video from the main window
  • Planet/moon star-like particle is now rendered on the body's crescent rather than in its center
  • Improved performance of the envmap rendering
  • Updated impostors system for galaxy/nebula rendering
  • CPU/GPU performance counters, better debug screen
  • Optimized orbital paths rendering
  • More realistic eclipse shadow "darkness" and gamma
  • Changed the nearest planetary system search algorithm, so now star will not blink during approaching to it
  • All auto-generated rendering shaders are changed to the uber-shaders with custom defines
  • Compiled shader binary in the cache is updated automatically if shader's glsl source code were modified in runtime
  • Smooth appearance of generated stars and galaxies while moving at large speed
  • Reduced aliasing of thin atmosphere crescent when planet is far away
  • Option to link stars particles size with resolution of SE window/screen
  • Hotkey to minimize SE from the fullscreen mode
Scripting:
  • Introduced scenario scripting system
  • Built-in tutorials, based on a scenario scripts
  • Parsing executable's command line parameters - ability to run a script file by double-clicking on it
  • Command line argument to launch SE in a specified 3D/VR mode (for Steam launch options)
  • New type of object - the waypoint, used in the scripts, works with autopilot
  • Variables to control labels and marker size
  • All variables can be animated using script command Interpolate
  • Customizable main menu, all buttons and actions are described in a special script script data/scripts/MainMenu.cfg
  • Ability to create a custom menu with script-running buttons
  • Each button in the main menu can launch a custom scenario script
  • GUI skin scripts have a link to a main menu script, so each skin can use its own menu layout
  • New BB code [LOC]text[/loc], used to translate a text enclosed in it; supported in Wiki, scripts and main menu
  • Localizations have the "Custom" section to work with the [LOC] code
  • Any text displayed in scenario scripts can be translated by the locale config (implicit use of the [LOC] code)
  • Fine-tuning parameters of the Goto script command: acceleration, drift and deceleration duration, acceleration and deceleration exponent power
  • Ability to change keys, mouse and joysticks bindings by a script command
  • Ability to show/hide for every single constellation by a script command
  • Command to switch the audio output device
  • Command to load custom image and put it on top of screen as overlay
  • Command to Screenshot: options to set the file name pattern, format and GUI capture
  • Command PrintTranslations "script.se" types to the log all strings which have/require localization (used in ShowMessage and WaitMessage commands)
Astronomical catalogs:
  • Character '|' in planet name in script replaced with '/' in SpaceEngine's interface (useful for names such as "S/2006 S1")
  • Character '&' in planet name in script did not printed in SpaceEngine's interface (useful to solve name conflicts with real objects)
  • Catalog planet bulk density is taken into account when assigning a class for it (if both mass and radius were known)
  • Updated exoplanet catalog, planets with mass > 13 Mj are treated as brown dwarfs
  • Some brown dwarfs in the catalog were re-classified as a planemo (rogue planets)
  • Planemo could have a dwarf-like spectral class (M9.5P, L7P, etc)
  • Added displaying, generation and usage of metallicity data for stars
  • Implemented ephemerides for planets and moons: JPL (DE-xxx), VSOP87, MARS1.0, L1.2 TASS1.7, GUST86
  • Implemented IAU rotational model for planets and moons, and JPL (DE-xxx) lunar libration model
  • Support of all JPL ephemeris binary files up to DE436 from this site ftp:/ssd.jpl.nasa.gov/pub/eph/planets/Linux/
  • Parameter RotationOffset in the Clouds {} tag in planet scripts
  • Parameters to configure procedural rings in planet scripts
  • Surface and clouds parameter TempMapMaxTemp to define which temperature in Kelvins corresponding to white pixels in the temperature map
  • Alpha component of ModulateColor parameter in the Clouds {} tag is separated to its own parameter - Opacity
  • Added more error checks during the catalogs loading
  • New parameters for Star and StarBarycenter in the star catalog:[/h1]
-- ForceSystemLum - force star particle to have lum/appmag provided in the star catalog, ignoring combined lum of components
-- Hidden - hide star particle and ignore attempts to select the system except from the scripts
  • Parameter Parallax for star catalogs
  • Parameter LuminosityBol for star catalogs to specify bolometric luminosity, this fixes temperature on known exoplanets
  • Parameter RadiusInfo for planet catalogs, similar to OblatenessInfo for objects with a global shape defined by elevation map data
  • Displaying the file path and line number of any catalog object in the debug mode
  • Reduced model radius of asteroids to make them more or less fit the mean radius specified in UI/catalogs
  • Parameters venusMagn and venusFreq of the Surface tag controls global shape of asteroids
  • Parameters DistLy and RadiusLy to define distance to object and its radius in light-years units
  • Parameter NoModel for nebula catalogs (to add named nebulae which are parts of a larger models)
  • Parameter GenerateStars for nebula catalogs (to generate procedural open cluster in the center of a catalog nebula)
Virtual reality:
  • Full VR support: native for Oculus Rift and HTC Vive with controllers, and all Steam-VR compatible HMD
  • Controller gesture to change the scene stereo depth (the "God eye mode")
  • Gaze controls of the interface in VR
  • Mouse cursor in VR with VR controllers is only visible over GUI
  • VR controller ray is limited by the GUI plane
  • Added "depth" effect to the lens flares and ghosts in VR, controlled by a parameter in the flare/ghost config file
  • SE is exiting to main menu if VR helmet is taken off from user head
  • Added ability to use super-resolution in VR (VRRenderScaleMax in the config file)
  • Separate MSAA settings for VR
Planetarium capabilities:
  • New orbital lines rendering, settings menu have options to control thickness of lines for major and minor bodies separately
  • Constellation lines, boundaries and names
  • Rendering of various celestial coordinate grids: equatorial, ecliptic, galactic
  • Displaying geographic coordinate grid on planets
  • Ability to change position of labels near planetary and deep space objects (stars, galaxies)
  • Separate switches for planet vectors (polar axis, prime meridian, velocity and direction to parent object)
  • Added "Hide/show object" option to the right-click menu
Advanced capabilities:
  • Updated video capture dialog
  • Spline paths for scripted flybys, editor, integration to scripts and video capture system
  • More responsive texture export dialog (no hanging while doing job)
  • Implemented exporting skyboxes directly to dds cubemap format
  • Support of export of 16-bit skybox textures (in png and tiff formats)
  • Support of export of 32-bit floating-point skybox textures (in dds and tiff formats)
  • Lens flares are rendered in Fish eye, Cylindrical and Cube map modes
  • Anisotropic mipmapping for Fish eye, Cylindrical and Cube map modes (improves quality)
  • Various frame formats for 360 cubemap output
  • Checkerboard pattern for the Fish eye and cylindrical projection modes
  • Optimized fish eye rendering: faces are cropped according to used lens FOV
  • Checkbox for saving screenshot transparency on the Player settings tab
  • Checkbox for saving video frame transparency on the Video capture settings dialog
System:
  • Ported to 64-bit
  • Implemented Steam DLC system
  • Implemented SpaceEngine PRO DLC with some exclusive features
  • Last used variables can be changed by Ctrl-Shift-Arrows keys in the debug mode
  • Implemented graphics quality/performance presets: low, medium, high, ultra and custom
  • Automatic VSync uses actual refresh rate of the current display
  • Support of encrypted pak files
  • Change of SE versioning scheme: 0.990.15.1451 (major, minor, build, revision)
  • Automatic cache wiping if current SE version differs from one read from the log file of the previous launch
  • Loading splash window is per-monitor DPI-aware (scales itself according to DPI settings)
  • Configurable/moddable splash window layout
  • SE main window is per-monitor DPI-aware (uses screen-native resolution)
Bugfixes:
  • Fixed discontinuities in the fish eye/cylindrical/cubemap projection
  • Fixed texture aliasing and cube edges effect on star surface
  • Fixed bug with not initialized user name in the user settings menu at startup
  • Fixed flipped sign of declination labels on the equatorial grid
  • Fixed issues in main menu in 3D modes
  • Fixed bug with inability to open a toolbar
  • Fixed incorrect initializing of orbital point markers mode
  • Fixed too bright planets/moons in a previews in the Solar System browser
  • Fixed some errors in catalogs
  • Fixed "blackout" bug
  • Fixed disappearing of a planet when camera is in it's shadow and planet is unselected
  • Fixed bug with wrong calculating of barycenter mass of Sagittarius A* and other supermassive black hole systems
  • Fixed bug with cached shader caches when disabling detail textures
  • Fixed non-initialized object info in the Journey log
  • Fixed a bug with disappearing of lens flares near a surface of a planet
  • Fixed discontinuity in lighting on asteroids
  • Fixed bug with lighting of a night side of tidally locked planets with opaque clouds
  • Fixed z-fighting of clouds on gas giants
  • Fixed redundant lines in stars motion blur
  • Fixed some errors in the planet script exporting
  • Fixed issues with camera rotation on a window resolutions larger than screen resolution
  • Fixed inclinations of procedural outer moons of gas giants
  • Fixed a crash when rendering a ship module with a detail diffuse texture, but without a main diffuse texture
  • Fixed saving of a ship's cfg file into '#' folder
  • If music player was stopped, it will not resume after entering the main menu or minimizing and restoring of the SE window
  • Fixed incorrect orientation of a planet rotation axis defined by PoleRA/PoleDec
  • Fixed incorrect rotation of the Sun
  • Fixed Wiki database import function
  • Fixed depth of labels in VR mode
  • Fixed some bugs in the script parser
  • Fixed hot titans/iceworlds bug
  • Fixed shifting of the solar eclipse shadow on sky and water on oblate planets
  • Fixed inability to specify more than 2048 Mb of the VRAM in the config
  • Fixed "horizon" command on oblate planets
  • Fixed behavior on the mouse cursor then closing a window beneath it
  • Fixed noticeable blocky look of the star surface
  • Fixed positions and/or names of 21 star systems in the binary stars catalog
  • Fixed vertical seam line in the cylindrical/360 projection
  • Fixed "nimbus-like" aurora on planets with thick atmospheres
  • Fixed bug with incorrect working of exotic life biome filter in the star browser
  • Fixed many artifacts with ocean rendering
  • Fixed fading out deep space objects in Wiki preview when using it from surface of planet with atmosphere
  • Fixed inaccuracies in aurora ring placement by longitude and latitude
  • Fixed wrong final orientation of camera when switching between ship's behind cameras when ship is rotating
  • Fixed accretion disk temperature in catalog binary systems
  • Fixed incorrect reading of some stellar classes from catalog
  • Fixed setting FOV to 90° when leaving the Fish eye mode
  • Fixed crash on exporting 8k screenshots/video frames
  • Fixed graphical artifacts in giant elliptical galaxies
  • Fixed disappearing of near galaxies (like Magellanic clouds) when they are out of the field of view for a few seconds
  • Fixed some bugs in generation of a massive binary stars
  • Fixed offsetting of the Map mode sphere in VR while zooming/rotating it
  • Fixed bug with undocking of all ships if Simulator mode was never used in some of previous launches
 
Yeah, this needs closer attention as it has native VR support. If the controls are intuitive and I can roleplay flying with the ships, hell, I might get into space 'gaming' again. :)
 
Think I’ve just found my new VR Superperson simulator!

Sounds like the creator is going to implement some basic walking around controls for when you “land” somewhere, fairly soon. I think I’ll be buying this later today.
 
This may take longer than I thought...
In VR many controls are not mapped to either HOTAS or Touch, and the list of Kb controls makes ED look like a 4 button clicker game!
But, the bit I've seen is pretty impressive, although I have yet to actually get in and 'fly' a ship.

More when I've gotten around the controls scheme :)

@CMDR Karrde Sun - graphically speaking this may be everything we wished ED could be, judging by the bits I've seen so far. Now off to try to find a spaceship...
 
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I’ve not managed to figure out the spaceship part, but just Supermanning it around is pretty impressive. Chose any star in view, click on it then whizz toward it in 3d space. Very nice.

If someone would be so kind as to mod Frontier Elite 2 into it, I’ll just be rooting out the stillsuit in preparation :)
 
It says its going to support workshop mods and shipskins. It would be awesome to get some of your fav elite ships to just fly around and truely explore and take in vistas when you want to chill and don't really want a game to hamper the experience.

If I read correctly a long time ago this thing had certain fundraising goals the creator had to make some kind of game out of it that he didnt reach. Either way it is amazing and I plan on supporting this with a buy in. I believe its completely free also, at least before it went onto steam.
 
So what's the ship mode in this like? Is there an actual gameplay, or it's just like...looking at the Universe but from the ship?) I'm fine with either, just curious.
 
So what's the ship mode in this like? Is there an actual gameplay, or it's just like...looking at the Universe but from the ship?) I'm fine with either, just curious.
There isn't a game mode as such, but now its opened up a little and there are mod making tools, its just a matter of time really. Also I wouldn't be surprised if a game dev takes the opportunity to build a game. That said, I think I'll be waiting to see what mods appear, there are some very talented people around that will be taking a long look at SE now, more closely.

I can also see space fans, thinking hard about game modes etc.

It's a vast space sandbox that blows away all the others really, always has done, but it's good that it might get a direction now or indeed a few directions for people to choose from. Just be patient and enjoy it as it is at the moment, it's a great relaxing sandbox.

Just imagine what might come, in the near future. :)

Don't forget it's still Early Access, so expect what that term means. ;)
 
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I’ve not managed to figure out the spaceship part, but just Supermanning it around is pretty impressive. Chose any star in view, click on it then whizz toward it in 3d space. Very nice.

If someone would be so kind as to mod Frontier Elite 2 into it, I’ll just be rooting out the stillsuit in preparation :)

As far as I know the issue is that generated surfaces are not permanent, i.e. unlike Elite in which all the rocks are at the same place every time you visit a single point.

But it would be nice to have that or even a simple exploration gameplay mechanic built in.
 
Don't forget when flying in SE (time obviously can be increased), but its a truer form of sci-fi space flight, maybe something in the distant future we're able to do, provided we can put humans into some type of long range storage. The flight is, for us that enjoy space flight, fantastic. It's not a simple jump fest, it's quite beautiful, give it a little time.
Its a little mindbending all the controls, calculations, info etc on-screen, but it gets easier.

Edit: Just for info, if your going to DL mods (there are some nice ships available), be careful where you get them. The forum is the best place to start. http://forum.spaceengine.org/

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Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jzVOZGdBN3A

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dTKKXknjKyo
 
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As far as I know the issue is that generated surfaces are not permanent, i.e. unlike Elite in which all the rocks are at the same place every time you visit a single point.

But it would be nice to have that or even a simple exploration gameplay mechanic built in.

Thats kind of a bummer, so if your exploring planets and bookmark some kind of poi and you come back its completely different, bummer 😑
 
I’m not sure that’s correct, the procedural planets will be generated according to their parameters the same way each time, it’s how procedural generation works. I’ve only had a quick look at SE but it looks like there’s a long list of parameters you can tweak if you fancy making your own planets.

It should be the same universe on everyone’s computer, the same way ED’s galaxy is the same on all our computers. Clever maths!
 
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