Stereobase adjustment disabled in 2D mode (for real this time)
Fixed mass of Luhman 16 A and B
Now that the stereobase issue is fixed, those of you on the "stereobasefix" branch can come back to the main public branch. The "stereobasefix" branch will be removed at a later date.
Workaround for Stereobase bug
Hello everyone! We're sorry about the mix-up with stereobase functionality in the latest patch. A true fix will have to wait a little while longer, but in the meantime there is a workaround.
If you are having issues with the stereobase not adjusting properly in 3D/VR modes with the latest patch, the previous build has been restored in a separate branch that's open to the public.
To use this version, right-click on SpaceEngine in your Steam library, select "Properties", go to the "Betas" tab, and select "stereobasefix" in the drop-down menu. If it doesn't appear, restart your Steam client; it should then show up in the list. Once you've clicked on that and exited the window, Steam will automatically download and install the previous build with working stereobase adjustment.
Sorry for the inconvenience!
Patch notes, Saturday, June 15
Build 0.990.34.1640
Fixed interface disappearing in fish eye mode when "Distort interface" is checked
Added Polish localization
Stereobase can now only be changed in VR/3D modes
Fixed Haumea's rings
Hotfix patch
Hello SpaceEngine fans! We are thrilled about our successful launch on Steam! Not everything was perfect, and there have been some negative reviews and refunds, but this was expected! Those typically came from users with technical problems, and those with VR-related issues. The most overwhelming thing has been the volume of support messages we have to manage somehow. HarbingedDawn, DoctorOfSpace, Duke, Phunnie, retro-visor, BambusDude and other SE team guys have been replying to support messages for up to 12 hours a day each, but they can't keep up! Please be patient - there are only a few of us and we're dealing with a very heavy workload right now. Someone will respond to your message as soon as they can! I have not responded to many support messages myself because I am focusing on the code, sorry.
Today's patch fixes some issues that are easy/quick to fix:
Build 0.990.33.1625 (this was a day 0 patch, but I didn't made a post about it)
- Fixed crash if SDL reports invalid joystick instance ID (-1)
- Texture compression is disabled by default for high and ultra graphics settings
Build 0.990.34.1630 (today's patch)
- Fixed missing terrain on integrated Intel graphics
- Fixed glitch with eclipse shadows on rings
- Completed Spanish localization
- Dimmer nebulae
- Main menu button "Exit" is changed to "Exit VR" in the VR mode
- A note added to the tutorials menu that they are not designed for VR
- Added a "main menu" button binding to the first Vive controller
- Ship manager automatically appears when entering the Simulator mode if there are no ships built
If the update does not download automatically, restart your Steam client.
It also seems that, for some people, Steam did not automatically download and install the Visual C++ 2015 and OpenAL common redist packages. If Windows gives you an error message when trying to launch SE, download the Visual C++ 2015 redist package from here, and OpenAL from here, and install them.
INTEL USERS: Textureless planets has been fixed, which means that you can now explore just like everyone else. However, performance will most likely still remain dismal at best (reminder, Intel GPU's are far below the minimum hardware requirements).
Steam release!
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!
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
SpaceEngine 0.990 Releases on June 11!
The date is finally set! SpaceEngine's Steam debut is set for Tuesday, June 11! If all goes well, the program should be available before noon (UTC) on that day.
Please feel free to post any questions or comments you may have. We can't thank our community enough for the love and support you have continued to show for SpaceEngine over the years, and we hope you're as excited for release day as we are!
