[watsisname]

Oh God Oh God Oh God Oh God



Black holes are freaking scary, even simulated ones.

Edit:  Oh neat, an Einstein Ring!

[Achillion]

Pardon the language but HOLY ****ING ****. I found this thread a few months ago and played around with it shortly after but didn't find a black whole in my "travels". I agree, that **** is SCARY!

[watsisname]

It really is strangely unsettling to come up on one, seeing the field of view getting increasingly distorted and then that black void opens up in front of you.

I've yet to come across any procedurally-generated holes yet (not actually sure if those exist), but if you want to find one just

Spoiler:

go to the center of a galaxy.

[Achillion]

I don't understand the reason for a "spoiler". I was unaware that there were things to spoil. Am I missing something?

[Retsof]

They are also at the centers of globular clusters.

[watsisname]

Nah, there's not really anything to spoil.  The developer has said he might add some easter eggs (directly into the source code, so that they can't be found via the catalogs), which could be neat.  Fat chance of anyone actually managing to find such a thing though, given the vastness. :X

[IronBeer]

I found a black hole by chance not too long ago. Looks like a regular star from a distance. Yeah, fat chance of actually finding one- it was a total fluke.

Also, dunno if anybody's tried this yet, but you can fly to other galaxies altogether. No guarantees as to how well Space Engine will run, however... Went to Andromeda once, flying right through the elliptical plane, and the program gave up when I was only about a kiloparsec from the core.

[watsisname]

I found a black hole by chance not too long ago. Looks like a regular star from a distance.

Where at, just randomly hanging out in the galactic disk, or was it in the center of a cluster or something?

I can fly to other galaxies without a hitch, but the central star clusters give my system heart palpitations. :V  That starnode generation is killer.

[IronBeer]

Where at, just randomly hanging out in the galactic disk, or was it in the center of a cluster or something?

I don't remember exactly where it was, but I remember *what* it was: "RSC-8404-4028-0-0-0", the core of a globular cluster, apparently.
I don't know if there are randomized black holes yet. Shockingly, Cygnus X-1 is *not* in the Space Engine star charts. Also, some types of objects, like Wolf-Rayet stars (Eta Carinae) don't appear to be procedurally generated either. To be clear, Eta Carinae is present, it's the brightest single star in Space Engine- you can easily resolve it from well outside the Milky Way!

[Achillion]

I didn't play around too much but my machine didn't seem to have any problems flying anywhere. Then again, I did just zoom in and out of places. First thing I did was set the speed to a few kparsecs/sec and hold S for one of those movie-like "zoom out of the universe" effects. I should spend more time on this!

EDIT: Currently at work; discovered it runs fine on Wine; goodbye Thursday!

EDIT2: Right. No actual work done yet. Just showed it off to a few work-mates. I think one of them is going to lose his work-day as well.

[watsisname]

I found a pretty neat planet and moon -- a cool terra with life orbiting around a calid terra with life.  Oh, and they also have two suns.


The calid terra has some impressive hills and mountains.


And weird seasons.  For a few weeks out of the year, this world is totally nightless!  When one sun sets, the other rises.


The two worlds also get mutual eclipses now and then.  The eclipse shadows are strange with the double lighting.






System:  RS 8404-141-8-15203302-4.  It's very close to the super-luminous star Eta Carinae, which is so bright that it shines even in the daytime sky.

[Topgun]

the download link in the op doesn't work for me

[Achillion]

Yeah I think that's been broken for a while. Just go to http://en.spaceengine.org/ and download from there. If the direct download is a bit slow, try the torrent; it was very fast for me.

@watsisname: I found the system, but no planets like the ones you described. While typing "RS" in the searchbox though, the system "RS sex" caught my eye. The orbits of the stars in that system are interesting

[watsisname]

I suggest the torrent, too, it's MUCH faster (I peaked 5MB/s) and less of a hastle than going through the download sites.

@Achilleas.k:  Weird, I wonder if procedural planets aren't the same on different machines?  (I have no idea.)
The particular planet is B5 -- the outermost planet that orbits the B star, which is a K-9 V orange dwarf.  The system looks like this:



(There are two more planets orbiting both stars much farther out, but they're just boring ice giants.)

I also just realized that planet A5 also has life on it.  Three life-bearing worlds in a single star system!

And wow, RS sex is interesting, indeed.  Two blue suns!  All the planets are too hot, though. =(

[Achillion]

If I can be bothered, I might make a video of some of the more interesting things during the weekend.

[IronBeer]

@Achilleas.k:  Weird, I wonder if procedural planets aren't the same on different machines?  (I have no idea.)

The procedures might not be random. I was able to locate the star system in question.
Hm... perhaps the name of a system/feature represents some kind of random seed? It is a lengthy code after all.

[Achillion]

Well I typed in the code exactly, found the system as seen in the screenshots, but found no life-planets. Perhaps I didn't look close enough. I'll check again!

Hm... perhaps the name of a system/feature represents some kind of random seed? It is a lengthy code after all.

That's a very reasonable way of handling it, I think. I would be surprised if they weren't, to be honest.

[IronBeer]

Well I typed in the code exactly, found the system as seen in the screenshots, but found no life-planets. Perhaps I didn't look close enough. I'll check again!

Make sure you're checking the correct star- one of the pair only has some gas planets.

[watsisname]

I just tried out the video rendering tool [F9] and it works very well.  If you want to make a video I highly recommend using it rather than other recording software like FRAPS or the like, because with Space Engine the result will be smooth and seamless even under variable framerate and any brief pauses for the procedural generation.  The catch is you'll need to turn the exported frames into a video through other software.

Here's my test video

[Thaeris]

I want this as a promotional video, promoting more funding for space exploration. My God, what I wouldn't do to be able to stand there in person on such a world, and see it with my own eyes...