SpaceEngine Changelog

What's new in SpaceEngine 0.9.8.0 Beta

Aug 1, 2016

Major updates:
Many improvements with space ships - new functions and capabilities
New physically accurate rendering of black holes, neutron stars and white dwarves with accretion disks
Planemo (rogue planets)
Massive catalogs of binary and multiple star systems, black holes, brown dwarves
Chemical composition of planetary atmospheres
Dithering to fix banding artifacts
Reversed fp32 z-buffer: no more z-fighting, camera can approach objects up to a distance of a few centimeters
New addon installation procedure - just drop a single .pak file to the "addons" folder
Space ships:
Space ships are now rendered in interstellar space and in the Wiki preview
Implemented docking of ships with each other
Engines exhaust rendering and sound effects
Landing on planets: ships become fixed on the surface
Alcubierre warp drive physics, with HUD, controls and autopilot
Autopilot:
Flying to target using main engines (acceleration-deceleration scheme)
Flying to target using warp drive
Synchronization of the velocity with target
Holding altitude (hovering above a planet)
Target can be any celestial body or another ship
Physically-based autopilot turns
Autopilot commands in the right-click context menu (ability to give orders to remote ships)
Ability to bind warp drive power control to mouse, keyboard and joystick
Ship's warp state, autopilot state, reference body and target are saved to the config
Smooth third-person camera for the ship which is currently controlled
Newly built ship spawns with the same speed as the currently selected one
Simple ship editor: changing global parameters, adding/removing effects and modules, saving to the script
Button "Teleport here" in the Ships manager is available only in cheat mode
Buttons for "Fly here" and "Hyperjump here" commands are added to the Ships manager
Restored possibility of selecting the reference body
Ship is destroyed if reentry or landing speed is too high, or if tidal forces are too high
Hyperbolic orbits of ships are now displayed
Updated default ships
Procedural planets and stars:
New physically accurate rendering of black holes, neutron stars and white dwarves with accretion disks
Chemical composition of planetary atmospheres
Updated palettes for titans and iceworlds
Alien vegetation on titans with terrestrial life
Reduced too-common impact basins on titans and iceworlds
Suppressed mountain generation in impact basins
Random global tint of planets in shades of brown
Polar caps on cold selenas and iceworlds (Ganymede-like and Pluto-like thin frost deposit)
Animated surface of neutron stars and white dwarves
Improved rendering of late M-dwarves and brown dwarves
Smoother solar spots
Integrated Klud's mods for selenas and asteroids
Improved asteroid surface textures
Improved giant stars surface textures
Improved craters shape
New atmosphere models by HarbingerDawn
New volcanos
New cyclones on terrestral planets
New cyclones and textures on gas giants
Detail-less gas giants like Uranus
Haze-like cloud layer on cold and hot gas giants
Faint Jupiter-like rings
Fixed unrealistic rings in binary planet systems
Binary planets can have outer moons
Option to change hue and saturation of atmosphere for each planet, integrated to scripts and editor
Fixed seams in terrain textures and meshes on procedural planets
Detail specular bump mapping on planets
Astronomy:
Massive catalog of binary and multiple star systems by Cirax
Massive catalog of systems with relativistic objects (black holes, neutron stars and white dwarves) by Cirax
Massive catalog of systems with brown dwarves by Cirax
Integrated community catalog of binary and multiple asteroids
Added moon of Makemake
Completed Messier catalog
Updated exoplanets catalog (27 July 2016)
Added exoplanet names approved by International Astronomical Union
New textures of Mercury, Ceres, Vesta, Titan, Pluto, Charon, and Saturn rings
Milky Way's supermassive black hole Sagittarius A* and stars orbiting it
Integrated nebulae models by Bambusman, Astroniki, and Voekoevaka
Reduced brightness of some Solar System bodies
Added ability to replace procedural supermassive black hole with a catalog entry
Added ability to specify star mass, radius and temperature in the star script
Implemented planemo (rogue planets)
Implemented Y spectral class for brown dwarfs
Implemented procedural Wolf-Rayet, Carbon and Circonium stars
Implemented correct orientation of extrasolar systems (RefPlane "Extrasolar" for inclination and ascending node)
Added ability to specify locked position of a body relative to parent body with simplified script syntax (RefPlane "Static" and "Fixed")
Reduced luminosity of procedural star clusters
Updated open clusters size and star statistics
Some planets and moons can be in spin-orbital resonance (not only 1:1)
Added limit to mass of a catalog exoplanets to fix absurdly high densities
Added alternate designations for some nebulae and clusters, removed duplicates
Added rotational parameters of the Sun
Interface:
Improved ship manager with "Pack" and "Faction" filters for ships
Smooth switching of many display options and objects (labels, orbits, eclipse shadows, clouds etc)
Smooth lighting animation in the Chart mode
Updated Solar system browser:
Fictional barycenter of planetary system is not displayed
Ability to display a barycenters of binary planets
Active navigation buttons with number of satellites counter
Added ambient lighting for a rogue planet or solitary black hole systems
Updated Star browser:
New options in spectral class drop-down lists for new star classes provided
Option to hide planemo from the search result
Option to show only systems with 100% match with the filter in the search result
Updated Wiki:
Finished description editor, supported standard shortcuts like Ctrl-Left, Ctrl-Shift-PgDn etc, text selection and copy/paste
Increased length of the first column in the data tables
User and default descriptions are saved to separate files
Added information about exosphere temperature, chemical composition of atmosphere, etc
Updated articles
Updated Player settings menu:
Added option to display full and abbreviated names of constellations
Added option to display radius instead of diameter for the selected object
Added option to choose pressure unit
Updated Graphics settings menu:
VSync switch is moved here from the Display menu
Added quality switch for MSAA
Added quality switches for aurora, black holes and ship warp field effect
Added "Loading speed" slider to control planet loading speed vs framerate
Maximum planet LOD is limited to +1, with the ability to set +2 in the console
Removed "Atmo from sea level" and "Atmo extinction" switches
Updated Export skybox menu:
Added image format selection
Swapped pos_z and neg_z faces
After pressing "Save", engine wait for loading/generation completeness before saving files
Updated Planet editor:
Localized interface of the Planet editor
On click for edit, too large/too small values are converted to the scientific notation (like 1.23e4)
Blinking cursor in the text edit boxes
Hints allows viewing of table cell contents if the cell is too small
Planet shine is disabled on previews in Solar System browser and Wiki
Displaying of spin-orbital resonance and solar day length of a planet
Button "Start" on Video capture dialog changes to "Stop" when video capture is in process
Planet SurfStyle can be updated in the Planet editor
Right side toolbar do not overlap the selected object's info table
Localized parent names in the Search menu
Changed colors of orbits, labels and markers of barycenters, suns and comets
Customizable colors of GUI and fonts (via skins system)
New GUI skins
Added Norwegian localization (by username6)
Updated localizations
Controls:
Swapped default rotate CW/CCW keys
Camera motion mode or controlled ship is restored after closing of the Map Mode
Added ability to cancel autopilot "Warp to" and "Fly to" commands
Smooth camera rotations in Free mode, adjustable in user.cfg
Camera in spacecraft/aircraft mode is stopped after using "Go to" autopilot
Catalogs and file system:
Accelerated pak files loading
Changed directory structure - "data" and "addons" folders are provided, which have identical internal structure (textures, models etc subfolders) and work in parallel
"addons" folder can have custom subfolders inside, which also work in parallel to "data" and "addons" folders
New addons/mods installation procedure - just drop a single .pak file to the "addons" folder or to the any custom subfolder inside it
Duplicate entry of any object in a catalog file updates/patches the older entry (entry in older file) - no need to edit default catalog files to install a patch or mod
Automatic search for catalog files through default directories - no need to edit the universe.cfg to install a catalog patch, mod or addon
Automatic search for galaxy/nebula model scripts through default directories - no need to edit the models.cfg to install a model patch, mod or addon
Automatic search for atmosphere model scripts through default directories - no need to edit the atmospheres.cfg to install a model patch, mod or addon
Shaders, music and sounds are moved into the "data" folder; overriding by corresponding file in the "addons" folder is possible
csv file format for galaxy catalog
Local group galaxies are moved into separate catalog file, others are converted to csv
Added Lum and Luminosity parameters for the nebulae, clusters and galaxies script
Added AlbedoBond and AlbedoGeom parameters for planet scripts
Advanced catalog error logging: typing file name and line number where error was detected, ability to change behaviour globally or per catalog file
Improved star solver: calculating missing parameters for catalog star using the provided ones, now works for multiple stars
Automatic creation of directories to save config/script file if they don't exist
Changed config file structure and behavior: user settings are not overwritten by new patches
Engine:
All shaders are moved to OpenGL 3.3+ core profile
Implemented multi-sampling anti-aliasing (MSAA)
Rendering in equirectangular spherical projection
Optimized and updated GUI rendering and skins system
Optimized labels and markers rendering
Label rendering for selected object is independent of distance and brightness
Markers rendering in correct order: markers of closer objects can be visible in front of farther objects
Labels and markers for ships
Implemented custom defines for glsl shaders, some similar shaders are merged into a single file
Separate shader cache folders for each driver version
Separate files for saving default and user locations
Changed format of locations config
Added cvars for planets lighting dimming magnitude and secondary lighting limit magnitude
Added StereoIPD parameter to the config
Stars and planets does not disappear when galaxies are switch off
Exposure doesn't affect labels
Exposure doesn't affect GUI in Oculus Rift mode
New object selection method for Oculus Rift
Updated to Oculus 0.8 runtime
Separate buffers for left and right pass in stereo modes
Improved quality of elliptical galaxies rendering
Internal time representation is changed to 64.64 fixed point type
Improved quality and performance of the logarithmic z-buffer
Implemented reversed floating point z-buffer:
Rendering orbital paths with proper order with planets and ships
Fixed z-fighting issues on water and clouds
Allows placing the camera up to few centimeters from a planetary surface or space ship
Support via GL_ARB_clip_control for OpenGL 4.5+ drivers (including Intel HD 4600+)
ClipHeight is moved to main.cfg and changed automatically based on reversed depth buffer support at first launch
Improved stability at 4k+ screen resolution
Atmosphere models are managed by the memory manager
Music player working in a separate thread
Faster reloading of terrain generator shaders by Ctrl-F5 (only for selected planet's class)
Improved terrain tiles culling algorithm - slightly less VRAM is needed to load a planet
Added limit for size of a non-loaded planetary systems (optimization for Sun neighbourhood)
Fixed colorizing of the stars lens flares by orbital path lines (only in reversed/logarithmic depth buffer mode)
Switch between impostor and fullscreen FBO is occurred at matched resolution
Bugfixes:
Fixed planetary rings brightness in the "real planet brightness" mode
Fixed holes in planetary surface where lava flows should be
Fixed wrong terrain LOD calculation on small screens
Fixed Pluto system orientation
Fixed some bugs in planet script exporting
Fixed black stain artifact on a planet surface
Reduced cyclone cutting probability
Fixed lags when changing FOV
Fixed changing of a planet particle size when changing FOV
Fixed climate smoothing on planets with a thick atmosphere
Fixed clouds lighting in thin atmospheres
Fixed too many cloud layers on planets with thin atmosphere
Fixed bug with sun shining through the ocean
Fixed change of the display mode and refresh rate at SE startup
Fixed a lot of stars with wrong/error stellar class in the star catalogs
Fixed over 400 duplicated galaxy names in the galaxy catalogs
Fixed camera velocity indicator
Fixed star motion blur when changing distance with left + right mouse drag
Fixed star motion blur for ships in hyperspace
Fixed some bugs with automatic ships hyperjump
Wiki descriptions now correctly display tabulations
Fixed specular spot on ships
Fixed specular spot on Oceanias
Fixed visual artifacts with atmosphere and water on Oceanias
Fixed atmosphere height on tidally heated worlds
Fixed too small atmospheres height on gas giants
Fixed sudden stopping of ship rotation when changing orbital orientation mode
Fixed blinking LOD of a planet when Wiki is opened
Fixed Overbright slider initialization in the Magnitude/brightness settings menu
Fixed blurring of slider handle texture
Fixed bug with invisible velocity pointer text
Fixed crash on opening Chart mode for the not currently visible system
Fixed wrong animation of the currently followed planet in the Chart mode
Fixed localization change in the Chart Mode
Fixed camera offset in the Chart mode while animation is in progress
Fixed camera collision detection with moons in Chart mode
Fixed incorrect saving of rendering options when exit program while Chart Mode is opened
Fixed continuous execution of ship's autopilot command "Retrograde"
Fixed render of orbits in the Map mode
Fixed bug with infinite radius of black holes, neutron stars and white dwarves
Fixed artifacts with black hole and ship warp effect in stereo modes
Fixed wrong camera positioning at program startup
Fixed pushing camera up while loading location on a planetary surface
Fixed camera pushing when landing on planet with Left+Right mouse drag
Fixed wrong calculation of orbital period of catalog binary stars
Fixed crash on building a ship in interstellar space
Fixed sprites rendering order in nebulae
Fixed extreme apparent magnitude of a comet nucleus if camera or ship is close to it
Fixed throttle and correction engines controls by joystick
Fixed switching ship's behind camera when planet is selected
Fixed smooth fade in of the selection pointer
Fixed orientation of the ship's orbit relative to moons
Fixed ship's orbital position calculation
Fixed ship's "Horizon" orientation command
Fixed bug with phase calculation for planets and ships
Fixed inability to change ship's hyperfactor if engines are off
Fixed autopilot warp to star systems
Fixed ship's gravity acceleration display
Fixed procedural stars generation in dwarf galaxies
Fixed rings blending with clouds and atmosphere
Fixed seam artifact in rings
Fixed star sprite in barycenters
Fixed star density in Milky Way
Fixed various rendering bugs in the Map Mode
Fixed planet particles rendering in front of water/clouds
Fixed foreground labels rendering in front of planets
Fixed instability in orbit solver for hyperbolic orbits
Fixed bug with sudden camera rotation when collide with terrain
Fixed star counter in galaxies
Fixed always off VSync in main menu
Fixed bug with clouds height of catalog stars
Fixed bug with broken Milky Way model
Fixed bug with wrong ships positions after program start
Fixed brown dwarf illumination by other stars in a system
Fixed comet tail cutoff
Fixed object name text goes outside preview area in Wiki
Fixed bug with wrong generation of a star rotation period in multiple catalog systems
Fixed bug with catalog stars not being properly overwritten by new entries
Fixed bug with wrong galaxy sysmodel loading after cache cleaning
Fixed bug with no procedural nebulae generated in Irr galaxies
Fixed sudden appear/disappear of nebula model when distance changed
Fixed camera motion direction after using of tracking
Fixed offset between terrain texture and mesh, gaps in terrain on small bodies
Completely fixed seams in the terrain textures and mesh
Fixed transparency of the interface in Fish eye mode
Fixed bug with name of barycenter of binary planet
Fixed bug with ability to select "invisible" stars and planets in the star clusters
Fixed comet tail and star corona brightness in the autoexposure mode
Fixed bug with not loading of some planet's shaders (missing previews in the Solar System Browser, transparent planets etc)
Fixes some ship models
Fixed asteroids terrain
Fixed rayed craters
Restored narrow features on gas giant's clouds
Fixed missing procedural red giant stars
Fixed behaviour of the engines thrust sliders when time flow is reversed
Fixed bug with ship's real speed in interstellar flight is 2 times faster than expected
Fixed ships flight state (interstellar/interplanetary) in catalog star clusters
Fixed too big oblateness of some supergiant stars
Fixed bug with rendering of galaxies with ModelBright different from 1
Fixed crashes on AMD/ATI cards at startup
Fixed broken textures/mipmaps on AMD/ATI cards
Fixed ship models non-loading in Interleaved mode
Fixed non-loading of textures of rings, lens flares, ships and galaxies at program startup or at high load
Fixed inability to select a procedural planet if catalog planets are disabled
Fixed freezes on Earth and other real planets with huge texture packs
Fixed flipped saving of png images
Fixed incorrect shader code generation for warm and hot oceania
Fixed bug in atmosphere scattering precomputing code (broken atmosphere models)
Fixed bug with reading coordinates of Mintaka and other stars in DMS format with D between -1 and 0
Fixed ' character typed in the console when it opened
Fixed changing of the camera velocity then typing + or - character into any edit box
Fixed bug with solar eclipses not affecting planet brightness in "Super" Planet shine
Fixed bug with loading/generating of incorrect galaxy sprite model
Fixed seams in nebula skybox
Fixed a bug with rendering of a black squares instead of star sprites on Intel HD in stars style mode "points"
Fixed blinking of ship star-like particles
Fixed bug with Map mode if camera tracked some object before entering the Map Mode
Fixed disappearing of the value labels near sliders in the Planet editor
Fixed a bug with incorrect star/planet counter in the Star browser table
Fixed scorched asteroid moon bug
Fixed missing OpenGL version check and crash on initialization on systems with no graphics driver (generic Windows driver)
Fixed artifacts (precision issues) with zero-phase glare, detail textures and water specular then camera is close to the planet surface
Fixed brightening of the planet surface then camera is close to it
Fixed autoexposure then sun is occluded by a planet
Fixed star spectral class initialization in the Planet editor
Fixed crash on entering Planetarium if no catalogs was loaded
Fixed object filter checkboxes if no catalogs were loaded (fully procedural Universe is possible)
Fixed precision issues with eclipse shadows
Fixed too high mass of procedural brown dwarves and supergiant stars
Fixed colliding binary stars
Fixed a bug with not showing a planet if system's center wasn't in the field of view at least once
Fixed a bug with file system data not being updated when a pak file is renamed, deleted, or added
Fixed swapped palettes of cool, cold and frozen gas giants

New in SpaceEngine 0.9.7.3 Beta (Mar 14, 2016)

Fixed Windows XP compatibility issue
Oculus Rift DK2 support: positional tracking and Direct mode
Shadows on the rings from other planets and moons
Fixed texture tiling on planets
Updated exoplanets catalog, unconfirmed Kepler candidates are included in a separate file (more than 5000 planets total)
Added many binary and multiple star systems, including all with discovered exoplanets
Interface skin system with the switch option in the Player menu
Astronomy:
Added moons of asteroid (87) Sylvia
Asteroid moons classified as dwarf moons to avoid tidal heating bug
Catalog planets with no mass and radius specified got generated mass and radius
Automatic calculation of the orbital period in a binary system (star or planet) if only masses and SMA provided in the catalog
Automatic tidal braking and locking in a binary star systems
Generation of missing planet orbital inclination and ascending node are worked based on a binary star data
Reduced rings probability of tidal locked planets and moons
Updated textures of Mars and moons of Saturn
Interface:
Updated Find object menu: third column with the object type, scrollbar, more clear controls (keyboard and mouse wheel to scroll), case sensitivity
Updated localizations
Options "Compress textures", "Normal" autoexposure, and "Super" diffraction spikes are removed from the graphics settings menu
Anti-aliased selection pointer
Map mode marks and cursor textures are moved into interface texture
Menu for video capture settings: switch between set of screenshots mode and avi mode, choosing screenshot format and codec settings
[F9] key brings up the Video capture menu, [Ctrl]-[F9] starts and stops the video recording with the chosen settings
Removed default key binding [N] to enable/disable night side lights and emissive textures
New planet filters in the Star browser
Solar eclipses are not rendered in the system browser
Orbital path rendering is disabled together with disabling of planet rendering
New music added
Smooth switch on/off of orbits, coordinate grid, vectors, selection pointer
Object's into table is smoothly disappearing after a while in Oculus mode
Engine:
Hardware auto VSync is used if supported
Galaxy and nebula rendering are moved to OpenGL 3.3 standard
Returned back skybox for nebulae, so performance inside a nebula is improved
Removed useless gal_part.png and aurora_part.png textures
Built with Oculus SDK 0.4.4
New video memory limiting system
Washing out of planets which are small on the screen
Texture of deposit layers on steep rock slopes
More realistic sand dunes
Conical shaped volcanoes
Window resolution can be set in the Display settings menu to the maximum resolution supported by hardware
Added frame output (screenshot sequence) video capture mode
Video capture files are saved in the screenshots/capture/ folder
Selena is a world with atmosphere pressure < 1 mbar
Better rendering of low-pressure atmosphere models (thin haze on Selenas and Ice Worlds)
Added details and dynamics to aurora
Improved comet tail performance
Atmosphere brightness is calculated based on air density
Upper limit for atmosphere brightness is risen to 20
Bug fixes:
Fixed almost all Intel HD compatibility issues
Fixed crash on entering Display menu
Fixed bug with extremely hot asteroid moons
Fixed button sound in the main menu and autopilot scripts folder location
Fixed the text "(null)" in the critical error message box
Fixed crash on ATI in Oculus Rift mode
Fixed too long landscape generation time on ATI and Intel
Fixed skybox edge artifact near center of the galaxy or nebula
Fixed axial tilt of 57 degrees of every solitary star in the Wiki
Fixed a bug in the life panspermia code
Fixed glitches in the Find object menu: selection line position, auto scrolling, missing parent name for some objects
Fixed the physical VRAM size detection on ATI
Fixed a bug with only one planetary nebula model being used per galaxy
Fixed nebula model cut in the impostor rendering
Fixed a bug with stars scale did not applied at program start
Fixed changing of the lens flare color in the "norm" mode
Fixed disappearing of a star-like particle of dim brown dwarves illuminated with a main star
Fixed disappearing of a star-like particle of hot asteroids and dwarf moons
Bigger ClipZNear to reduce z-fighting
Fixed bug with Dactyl tidal heating
Fixed disappeared canyons and rivers
Fixed ignorance of Temperature/Teff parameter in the star script
Fixed bug with selection and go-to of planets/stars with the same name (planet b and star B in the same system)
Fixed extreme heating of planets of cold (T type) brown dwarves
Fixed wrong comet tail orientation of binary planets
Fixed body selecting in a binary planet system
Fixed reset of the rotation period to 1 day of the catalog stars with the "Static" orbit
Fixed bug with white dwarves color and temperature

New in SpaceEngine 0.9.7.1 Beta (Feb 25, 2014)

Major updates:
3D water: animated water specular reflections, underwater fog
Improved procedural moon system generator
Debris rings around planets
New landforms: pseudo rivers, shield volcanoes
Music player with smooth mixing, context switching of soundtracks, repeat options and other capabilities
25 original soundtracks made by many authors
Smart blending of terrain detail textures
Detail noise textures on the planetary surface
New types of worlds with life, improved lifeform classifications
Many improvements with space ships
Built-in avi video recorder
Fast multi-threaded Star Browser: it uses all CPU cores to generate systems and does not reduce FPS
Added Czech, Dutch, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Slovak, Swedish and Turkish localizations
Installer for SpaceEngine distribution with automatic selection of localization
Space ships:
Supporting of emission textures
Supporting of modular models
Updated Ships Manager: ability to build, rename and destroy spacecrafts, sorting tables by any column
Easy installing of ships addons: just copy files into SpaceEngine folder, and new ships become available in the Ships Manager's build menu
Some old ships models changed to modular models
New "SS Basic", "SS Cargo", "SS Science", "Fire Dragonfly" and "Skylone" ships
Computing the Keplerian orbital elements and rendering the Keplerian orbit of the ship
Atmospheric flight physics
Spaceship Control Panel with Autopilot buttons
Spaceship HUD (Head-Up Display) for atmospheric and space flight modes
Ships may have Main engines, Retro (Braking) engines, Hover engines and Correction engines that can be controlled separately
New ship control system: rotation with mouse, changing Main Engines and Hover Engines thrust with mouse wheel or by Control Panel, WASD keys controls correction engines only
Additional parameters in the spaceship config file (engine thrust, hyperdrive, aerodynamics)
Improved autopilot: orientation commands (Prograde, Retrograde etc), and automatic hyperjump to selected body
Simulation and Orbital physics modes for spaceships (unfinished, switch modes on the Spaceship Control panel)
Static Keplerian orbit mode for space stations artifical satellites
Improved warp bubble effect
Astronomy:
Improved life classification: new types of lifeforms and biomes, various types of worlds to handle life, new script parameters
Reduced density of stellar remnants (black holes, neutron stars and white dwarves)
Updated exoplanets catalog
Improved star calculator (computing of required parameters based on some parameters given in the script)
New parameter Msini (M*sin(i)) in the planet script - used instead of Mass for exoplanets with only M*sin(i) known
Procedural generation of orbital inclination in the catalog system for planets with unknown inclination, based on planets with known inclination
Computing of actual mass of a planet based on given M*sin(i) and generated orbital inclination
New parameters in the planet script - discovery method, discovery date and date of last data update
New lines in the planet info table - discovery method, discovery date and M*sin(i)
Implemented "HH MM SS" or "DEG MM SS" format for RA and Dec for galaxies, star clusters and nebulae
New Vesta, Mercury and Saturn textures and landscape
New galaxy and nebula models
Increased turbulence on clouds of procedural gas giants
Interface:
Updated GUI tables appearance
Updated Display Settings menu: options for toggle to fullscreen, choosing fullscreen and windowed mode resolution, VSync, anisotropy level
Variable column width in the Star Browser's table
Green text in the Solar System Browser indicates that an object has life or satellites with life
Updated localizations and added new ones
FPS counter is enabled or disabled via console command "FPS"
Changed color of orbits, markers and labels for dwarf planets and dwarf moons
Onscreen keyboard help info in the Edit mode
Some improvements in the Planet Editor
Controls:
Capturing video with GUI by pressing [Ctrl]+[F9]
Sliders in the planet editor are not scrolled with mouse wheel
Close button on the Solar System Browser window
FOV is taken into account when choosing the camera position behind the ship in the Game mode
"Look around" by holding the middle mouse button; on release, camera returns to original view
Improved Controls settings menu: binding keys and mouse axis, independant bindings for planetarium and spaceship controls modes
System:
Terrain detail texture atlases are merged into a single atlas
Configurable color palettes for procedural planets
Automatic calculation of the offset of the ship model to make it perfectly centered
SpaceEngine's window saves its size, position and fullscreen state in the config and restores them in the next launch
New magnitude function in the Map Mode: easy to find dim stellar objects
Supporting RGBA diffuse textures for ships with per-pixel specular power in the alpha channel
Supporting RGBA color specular textures for ships with per-pixel specular power in the alpha channel
Supporting RGB color emissive textures for ships
Experimental support of the logarithmic Z-buffer
Exit screen texture saved to the config folder
The stars120k.txt file is renamed to stars120k.cfg
Bug fixes:
Fixed a "poor terrain textures" bug (incorrect indices of detail textures on procedural planets)
Fixed a bug with generating worlds with life only in multiple star systems
Fixed a bug with setting "StarProcBifurcation false" in the config disables procedural binary and multiple stars
Fixed a "boring planets" bug and "deserted terra with life" bug
Fixed too low and too high altitude of clouds on some planets
Fixed a bug with impossibility to disable the VSync
Fixed a bug with moons counter in the Wiki's General info tab
Fixed a bug with moons with life counter in the planet's info table
Fixed a bug with incorrect star multiplicity counter
Fixed a bugs with the nearest star searcher (in star clusters and galactic halo)
In the Map Mode, the Star Browser performs search around the map center, not around the current camera position
Removed double slash in the message "Saving screensots//scrxxxx.xxx"
Removed duplicate of Fomalhaut
Removed "Fomalhaut B" name of star TW PsA/Gliese 879
Fixed some other mistakes in catalogs
Fixed wrong luminosity (0.9) of the Sun in the info table and in the Wiki
Fixed artifacts when window is stretched on a bigger or a secondary monitor
Fixed bugs with fish eye projection
Fixed various bugs in the Star Browser
Fixed a rendering slow-down after using the Star Browser
Fixed a crash in Search By Name menu when entered a name of non existing star in a star cluster
Fixed wrong axial tilt info of Earth and other barycenter-orbiting planets
Fixed wrong obliquity parameter in exporting of the planetary system script
Fixed the absolute magnitude of the Halley's comet
Fixed a crash when turning on rendering of a spacecraft trajectory
Fixed a bug where "Warm ice world" was printed as "Warm ice giant"
Controls settings menu and right-click context menu changes localization properly
Fixed a typo on the coordinate grid labels
Fixed incorrect camera orientation on start if the last bound object was a spaceship
Fixed some VRAM cache issues (blinking stars, etc)
Fixed the music player
Fixed small blurriness of font and GUI
Fixed galaxy orientation problems
Restored clouds bump
Fixed a bug with no cyclones on gas giants
Fixed asynchronous loading of shaders
Fixed a bug with a black dot rendered above the star in the "Points" mode
Fixed a bug with bright blue stripes in evaporating planet tail
Fixed appearance of wrong textures on planets during loading/generation
Fixed a bug with wrong positioning of the camera relative the ship during hyperjump
Fixed inability to select a moons inside the planet's shadow
Fixed discontinuity in normal map lighting on a ship models

New in SpaceEngine 0.9.7.0 Beta (May 7, 2013)

Major updates:
Auroras
Comets and evaporating planets
Improved rendering of interstellar dust in galaxies
Oblate planets and stars, automatic calculation of the oblateness value
Gravity darkening of oblate stars
Improved planetary rings variety, increased color saturation
Multiple cloud layers on terrestrial and gas planets
Smooth gas giant textures
Dynamic lens flares with ability to choose a preset in the menu
Planets and moons illuminate each other with their actual color
Star Browser - builds a list of the nearest stars with the ability of saving it to a file
Importing ship models in the OBJ format with material library and multiple textures
Built-in wiki system
Ability to give a name and description to any planet or other object
Improved FPS on planets
Multithreading for resource loading/generating
Menu for selecting GUI language, applies changes without restarting
Default localizations: English, Russian, German, French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Finnish
Astronomy:
ESI (Earth Similarity Index) in the planet's info table
Better function of the mass-radius dependence of gas giants and brown dwarfs
Reduced thickness of the atmosphere on Earth-like planets
Inverted red giant surface temperature pattern
More solar spots on red dwarfs
Desaturation of faint stars (simulating color sensitivity of an eye)
Supporting of unlimited number of cloud layers on catalog planets
Config parameters for maximum number of procedural cloud layers of gas and terrestrial planets
Dynamic model of Jupiter (11 cloud layers)
Console variable to modify cloud layers rotation speed (set CloudsSpeed xxx)
Reduced a radii of procedural ice giants
Gravity lensing effect for white dwarfs
Multiple galaxy models per Hubble class for procedural galaxies
Multiple nebula models per nebula class for procedural nebulae
Simplified galaxy/nebula mod installing system
New galaxy models
Russian Wiki database have translated all stars names, Solar System planets and satellites
Updated catalogs of comets, asteroids and exoplanets
Interface:
Context menu when you right-click on the object
Shadows under the text
The little loading icon instead of the progress bar
Mouse cursor changes its shape depending on situation (crosshair in space, arrow in GUI, etc)
Scrolling tables and sliders with the mouse wheel
Button "Current" on the Find object dialog to put currently selected object's name into it
Info table for any planet, star or barycenter shows counter of its satellites with life
Various upgrades in the Universe Map
[F1] opens the Universe Map for selected system, [Ctrl]-[F1] for the current one
[F2] opens the Planetary System Browser for selected system, [Ctrl]-[F2] for the current one
HDR, Bloom and FXAA effects in the Solar System Browser previews
Real planet brightness can be disabled in the Solar System Browser
Red giants and asteroids are rendered with 3D landscape in the Solar System Browser
Right click on the root star or barycenter in the Solar System Browser selects the planetary system itself
Wiki descriptions supports some of the BB-codes
Simple quotes " " automatically replaced with angular quotes « » in some text edit forms
Displaying planet's albedo / computed brightness and color in the Edit mode
Some sliders in the Planet Editor have logarithmic scale
Reduced width of the zone for opening of the side-screen toolbars
Pin buttons on toolbars
Saving state of toolbars in user config file
Ability to paint up oceans in the Export planetary textures menu
Updated Export planetary textures menu
Updated Graphics settings menu
Controls:
Changed some mouse controls
The [End] button rotates camera horizontally
New console commands
Velocity pointer in the Planetarium mode
Smooth stopping of the movement and rotation of the camera when you press the Z, X, or Num 5 in the Planetarium mode
Height of the lanscape is counted from the sea level (negative values if under water)
The land command and button performs a landing on the 10 meters height above sea level or ground
The [G] key in the Game mode moves current ship to a selected object
Warp effect for spaceships
Engine:
Automatic choosing of the NVidia chip on systems with hybrid graphics (NVidia + Intel HD)
Automatic selecting of some settings when hardware is changed
Automatic clearing of the cache when hardware is changed
Updated cache of galaxy models, they are now registered in the memory manager
Updated cache of textures and models for ships and buildings, they are now registered in the memory manager
Saving compiled shaders binaries to the cache for fast loading of them (NVidia)
Preloading all shaders at startup (option)
While capturing the video, GUI is visible on the screen, but not recorded to the video
Supporting of gray + alpha PNG format
Supporting of the TIFF format for textures and screenshots
Supporting of sounds in WAV and OGG formats
Built-in music player for OGG music
Automatic (based on FPS) vertical synchronization toggle
Changed directory structure
Bug fixes:
Fixed a flat landscape bug on Intel HD
Fixed color banding artifact on landscape and water
Console command "disable" now works
Fixed a bug with nebulae shining through planets
Fixed the accelerated spinning of the ship when time is reversed
Fixed a bug with "intergalactic" mode of spaceships in certain regions of Milky Way
Fixed glitchy star's Motion Blur
Fixed a bug with very small moons having atmospheres
Fixed camera autobinding
Fixed a bug with the equal mass of all brown dwarfs
Fixed a bug with wrong lens flare color at the edges of the screen
Fixed a bug with Earth fully covered with water
Fixed a bug with entering minutes and seconds in the time control panel
Fixed a bug with disappearing blocks of procedural stars in a galaxies
Fixed a bug with blinking planet when Autoexposure enabled
FXAA works when Bloom is disabled
Fixed a bug with "square shaped stars" when Real sun brightness is on
Fixed incorrect age of stars in multiple systems
Fixed a bug with stars generated outside star cluster boundaries
Fixed a bug with incorrect planet counter number in the star's info
Fixed a bug with incorrect planets with life counter number in the star's info
Fixed a bug in binary systems when smaller component have greater mass => reduced number of brown dwarfs
Fixed cropping of some rotation/orbital parameters when starting editing in the Planet Editor
Fixed wrong calculation of brown dwarfs and white dwarfs radii
Reduced stars aliasing
Fixed bug with atmosphere models generation/updating
Fixed a bug with white sparks on clouds

New in SpaceEngine 0.9.6.0 Beta (Apr 30, 2013)

new features:
A new coordinate system and camera
The Map of the Universe
The console, various console commands allow you to change settings, there are also commands that duplicate the functions of the autopilot
Console commands can be executed from the file - it is possible to create a scripts that controls the flight
Updated catalog of dwarf planets, exoplanets, nearest stars, etc.
Some new galaxies models, new textures for some Solar system bodies
A count on the number of planets with life has been added to the selected star's information table
Significantly improved performance in dense regions of galaxies (the nucleus and spiral arms)
In the Orbital review mode (Right-drag) rotation is always doing around the current object, but not around selected one
Showing vectors of a planet: its own X axis, the direction to the parent body, and the barycentric velocity
Collision detection of camera with all planets
Spacecrafts: motion control, gravity forces, collisions with planets
Procedural galaxies with large-scale structure of the universe and the redshift effect
Supporting of the indoor scenes in the *.map format ("Radiant" editor of games using the Quake engine) for buildings and ship interiors (maps are available as "scenes" from the console)
Anti-aliasing on the border of the cloud layer on the planets
New forms of landscape on planets
Smooth transition between textures of different materials on the surface of the planet
Changed the algorithm for calculating landscape level of detail - detail close to the camera is always high (as in LOD 0) for each LOD
Exporting of skybox (panoramic screenshot)
Exporting of procedural textures of planets
Editor of the procedural parameters of the planet with the script export function
Optimization of the interface, the active window is moved to the foreground
A new interface design
The "game" style of the Main Menu
Various control panels
Some settings for the Planetary System Browser
Binding keys and saving them to the config file
The "Copy" and "Paste" buttons in the Locations menu - for easier sharing of coordinates via the forum
Supporting for Windows clipboard in the text input fields (Ctrl-C, Ctrl-V), for example, in the Search By Name menu (F3)
Real brightness of the planets (lighting dependency on the distance to the sun)
White dwarfs, neutron stars, black holes - isolated and in multiple star systems
Binary gas giants
New model of the atmosphere with a green hue
New class of a planet - Titan (ice world with a hydracarbon ocean)
Fully cloudy planets - Venus-like warm deserts and Titans
Automatic procedural generation of atmosphere, clouds, water and rings for catalog planets, if these paremeters are missing in the catalog
Dynamic star coronas
Probabilities of double and multiple stars, stellar remnants, brown dwarfs, gas giants, etc. in the config
Bug fixes:
Fixed some bugs in the planetary system exporting code
Fixed "reddening" of the stars at very high magnification
Fixed "blueing" of the sun at sunset
Fixed bug with black spots on the edge of the disk of the planet (including the Planetary System Browser)
Fixed crashes due to excessive generation of planetary systems in nebulae
Fixed pulling of camera to infinity at first contact with a planet or a star
Fixed bug with generation of very small Terra planets and moons
Reduced the size of impact basins, their generation is suppressed for large Terras
Fixed an extremely dense clouds on Oceanias
Fixed a bug with the NoPlanets parameter in the stars catalog
Removed unnecessary lens flares of black holes
Fixed too often generation of gas/ice giants as a closest to sun planet
Reduced atmosphere artifacts on horizon
Fixed a blocky artifact in stars distribution the in galaxies