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SpaceEngine

SpaceEngineer
Explorer


Hi there! I am Vladimir Romanyuk aka "SpaceEngineer", here my project called SpaceEngine. It is a 3D space simulator with procedural Universe generation. It features real-scale planets with 3D landscape, physically based generation of solar systems, real-scale generation of galaxies and entire Universe structure. All transitions are seamless, you can land on any planet and explore it, then take off and fly to another galaxy. Known astronomical objects are also here, including ultra-high resolution textures for Solar system planets and moons (20+ gigs, available as separate download).

This engine is in a form of a free space exploration planetarium, but I am going to make a game based on it. It will feature realistic physics and exploration based gameplay. More info on the forum (look for a sticky threads). Space ships are already implemented, with basic physics and controls.

Website and forum: http://en.spaceengine.org/

Main program: download (960 Mb)
Hi-res Solar system textues: coming soon

Trailer:




This version should work with Oculus Rift DK1. I have only DK1, but I tried to make DK2 support by feedback from beta testers. Here is a relatively old dev video for DK1 (warning it may make you sick iw watch in Rift):




To run in Oculus, first switch it to the extended desktop mode. Then run SpaceEngine, fly there a bit using monitor 🙂 Learn controls, they are easy: WASD + left mouse drag mouse to move, mouse wheel changes speed, click to select object, G key to fly to it (double G for faster flight), and F2 key to bring up the planets list (left and right mouse click to navigate). Advanced controls including speedup and reverse the time flow: JKL and Space keys. You always can use a toolbars, but in Oculus you probably will close them. After this, configure a joystick. Needed actions are move, rotare and chage the speed (very important!).

Then go to Display settings menu (Ctrl-F8) and choose Oculus Rift mode. Moving the window to the Rift is easy: just hit Shift-Enter. Don't forget to toggle fullscreen (Alt-Enter). To move the window back, hit Shift-Enter again. Note that mouse cursor must be in the window to allow rotation and GUI navigation.

If SE crashes on attempt to enable Oculus mode. So you are have AMD graphics card, aren't you? Try to disable mipmaps generation for the framebuffer texture. Open the config/user.cfg and change these parameters to false:
EnableMipmapsGUI false
EnableMipmapsFrame false
EnableMipmapsWarp false
The last parameter could fix crashes on approaching black holes, neutron stars and white dwarfs. Disabling mipmaps reduces quality, but at least fixes crashes.
PS: does anybody know how to implement a CRASH FREE manual shader-based mipmaps generation on ATI on OpenGL? I had a problems with it since the beginning.

There a lot of things what should be done for perfect support of the Rift. The main task is obtaining a DK2, but this is hard because I live in Russia - the country where Oculus did not ship their devices. Other issues are bad tracking latency and lack of direct mode support. I using OpenGL in SpaceEngine and can't make it work in direct mode. Lack of good OpenGL example code is also an issue. Also this release was built with 0.4.3 SDK, because I has weird glitches with the 0.4.4. Interface should be completely reworked to use in Rift, this probably will be made in the next version.

But anyway experience in Rift is just amazing. I hope a nice feedback from this community. Enjoy!
115 REPLIES 115

Dark_Fread
Explorer
"SpaceEngineer" wrote:
"Dark_Fread" wrote:

Now to make things clear, what version of SpaceEngine does work with the 7.0 runtime ?

I guess you mean 0.7 runtime? No one. The version I am working on currently work with 0.8, I will release it soon. The latest official release (not beta) 0.973 worked with 0.5 runtime.


That's what I thought.
And now I can't wait, good job !
OR DKII - Win7 64 - Phenom X4 965 - Radeon R9 380 2Go (15.7 driver) - RT v7.0

Loafmeister
Honored Guest
Hi,

I just wanted to add to the comments. I'm an amateur astronomer (very amateur ;)), I've taken some pics with my telescope, quality isn't great but IMHO I'm having fun and doing what I always dreamed I could do, so very happy.

Part of that dream (barring some unforeseen development in space travel) was to somehow, some day travel across our solar system and beyond. Little did I think it was possible that the day I thought would be in maybe 10-20 years... is now.

First things' first: this is an amazing app! I have an oculus ready PC and I can tell you the performance is top notch in desktop mode. Just incredible, the graphical effects, never mind that this is a free download is just outstanding. Well done SpaceEngineer, well done and I can promise you I will be donating very soon for sure, it's well earned.

Now onto the Oculus support. I read of this app on the Oculus reddit forum where a user was saying he got his DK1 to work using the app switcher (to load firmware 0.5) and version 0.973. I promised (and being a fan of the genre, owed it to myself) to download everything (and even added on the beta 0.974) and try and see if I could get the DK2 to work. Unfortunately, it was a long and painful effort without the successful result. I got the menu to load in the DK2, however there was poor convergence of the images and it was not playable.

Now I didn't read the SpaceEngine forums as of yet so it's possible what I'm about to mention was common knowledge but as I didn't read about it here, well here you go: beta 0.974 has 0.8 support!

KAPOW!

Yep, the menu is even detached from the grid and it works very well. The only thing I'm having trouble with is the cursor is not displaying the same in both eyes and therefore you can't "right click" on an object and select goto to travel there, you end up selecting another background star instead. You can still manage to get around that via menu and the search tool but for the 1 hour of incredible fun I've just gone through, I'm not in a complaining mood right now ;).

The oculus experience is scaled down somewhat compared to the desktop mode (def feels much lower res) however what is there seems to work well and for sure it could be I have to adjust some settings to retain some visual fidelity of the desktop experience. Of course, once the CV1 hits, it should automatically be improved right there!

This to me, at the moment anyway, is the surprise homerun for an Oculus DK2 app, just came out of nowhere. Is this beta support for 0.8 known?? Anyway, I'll be cross-posting most of this message on Reddit, hopefully there will be more support thrown your way Vladimir, because as stated earlier, it's bloody earned!

Thanks!

Loaf

Synthetic
Rising Star
I have been following space engine for about 10 years now

.... great its getting support for .8.0!

schummy1
Explorer
Amazing work!
Now it deserve a CV1 support! 🙂 As soon as it came out! 😄

Anonymous
Not applicable
Apparently some one got elite dangerious working with .08 and cv1, so if space engine have at least .08 then it should work.

SpaceEngineer
Explorer
Dev version 0.9.7.4 supports ovrlib 0.8, you can download it here
http://en.spaceengine.org/forum/21-3022-1

Anonymous
Not applicable
If there are a bunch of supportive people here, I would be interested for the greater good of space education and also VR, if we could club together and help secure a HTC vive Dev kit for this author,

Space engineer, if you was provided a HTC vive, would you consider making your app available via steam and making good use of room scale VR? ( also keeping the oculas support?)


There is nothing wrong with trying to help space educational VR aspects, I would love to see this app continue to grow and take advantage of new technology's and means to convey about space.

gutang
Protege
Will this work with 0.6 runtime? I cant select the oculus rift option under display in either direct or extended modes and the hotkey doesnt work either.

schummy1
Explorer
I've tried the latest beta: I can choose Oculus Rift on the settings but it doesn't works. I can see only the sky with stars.
Any advice?

Steffen
Protege
"HappyHimitsu" wrote:
I really want to try this, but the game won't start at all even with a re-install.
I've tried running in extended, Rift as primary, and everything else I can think of but nada.

I'm running Nvidia GTX 780 so it's not the AMD issue obv...

Looks so awesome, I want to see it work lol!!!

😄

Edit: NVM figured it out, running as admin in win 8.1 did the trick.
This is amazing. Simply amazing. All it needs is a de-coupled GUI that we can look around at, and the ability to disable it altogether for immersion purposes and we would be golden.
Excellent work OP! 🙂

Thanks that worked for me two