Build 0.991.49.2090: The Universe Generation Update

Hey folks!

Our next major patch, 0.991: The Universe Generation Update, is now live! This update brings major changes to SpaceEngine’s procedural generation systems, elevating all things beyond the known universe and breaking from the dreaded giant-terra-giant-terra pattern.

Generation changes like this cause a universe reset— recalculating the 'where' and 'what' of all procedural objects. For established users, this means information like screenshots, saved locations, and procedural object names from 0.990 will likely no longer be accurate*. Fear not for your 0.990 records, however! For posterity, build 0.990.48.2075 has been saved as a legacy branch and is available in the Betas dropdown (Steam library, right click SpaceEngine, Properties, Betas).

(* data from Beta Update 2 will carry over)

The changelog section at the bottom outlines everything new to SpaceEngine in 0.991.49.2090. Below we’ve highlighted some of the immediate changes you’ll find in the update:

Planetary Generation

In 0.991, expect system-to-system exploration to become more interesting! The old giant-terra-giant-terra meander sequence has been replaced with a more diversified procedure. This includes dwarf planets, which did exist in 0.990, but were exceedingly rare.

Comparison of the 'same' system between 0.990 and 0.991

You’ll also find greater diversity among planetary rings (including rings for smaller objects like dwarf moons), accretion disks, and more!

Graphical Tweaks

We’ve also made some tweaks to visualization for star surfaces and underwater terrain.

Sunspots and granulation patterns in 0.990 had contrast much higher than in reality. With this update, they look closer to real-life images.  On top of that, we’ve updated calculations so that the visual temperatures of these features are determined by the effective temperature of the star.

A comparison of granules and sunspots on a G2V star in 0.990 (left) and 0.991 (right).

Also new with 0.991, the terrain of underwater surfaces mimics the absorption of light, darkening as you increase depth. This is a small shader change, but lets you feel just how far down you’ve gone.

Sea floor images from a variety of depths, showing their appearance in 0.990 (left) and 0.991 (right).

Math Overhauls

Finally, we’ve updated the math for several aspects of procedural generation. We’ve already mentioned planetary generation and sunspot temperature, but that’s far from everything! We’ve also overhauled the math behind:

• Globular cluster generation

• Effective temperature/radii for main sequence M dwarfs and L, T, and Y brown dwarfs

• Mass-radius distribution of terrestrial planets

• Iron core mass distribution in terrestrial planets

• Eccentric orbits (greatly reducing the likelihood of planet/star or planet/planet collisions)

• Galaxy type generation probabilities

For those who want to read more, see the Overview article from September

What you don’t see here is all the hard work that went into fixes and testing during the Beta, both by the team and you, our dedicated community. We opened to Beta on September 15th; then, over the course of two months of daily feedback (and three total resets), we’ve packed in several further fixes to make this the best build it can be, as well as logging many more reports and suggestions for the next major update.

It’s all thanks to you, our community of space enthusiasts, that we can keep working on this project. We’ve made a solid leap with 0.991, and have much more planned for future updates. Thank you!

Changelog:

Editor’s Note: Changelog reflects changes between 0.990.48.2075 and 0.991.49.2090. Fixes between beta patches are excluded. Duplicate entries from beta patch notes imply the issue(s) pre-dated 0.991.

• Improved procedural planetary generation, fixing giant-terra-giant-terra meander sequence and increasing diversity of procedural systems

• Improved diversity of properties of procedural rings and accretion disks

• Improved generation of dwarf planets; previously, they were far too rare

• Calibrated mass-radius distribution of terrestrial planets

• Calibrated iron core mass distribution in terrestrial planets

• Updated effective temperature calculations for M5-M8 (main sequence), L, T, and Y spectral types

• Updated radii calculations for L, T, and Y spectral types

• Updated star system seed generation

• Improved temperature generation for star granules (convection cells)

• Improved temperature generation for sunspots

• Improved shading of underwater surfaces to mimic absorption of sunlight by water; your view now darkens and fades as depth increases

• Improved generation of globular cluster luminosities

• Increased the number of globular clusters generated in galaxies

• Increased the maximum number of clusters per galaxy

• Added ability to specify the number of globular clusters in a catalog galaxy (galaxy catalog keyword: GlobClusters)

• Updated galaxy type generation probabilities

• Increased suppression of procedurally generated galaxies near the Milky Way (Procedural content can be toggled in the Filter Objects settings)

• Improved radius-luminosity relationship for elliptical galaxies

• Added new Featured Locations procured by the SE team to partially replace many that were lost when the universe reset (more to come on this in the new year~)

• Improved brightness of blurred interface background relative to main scene

• Added "deselect" console/script command to deselect objects (in addition to "unselect")

• Fixed a bug where binary planet orbits were often oriented on-edge, “cartwheeling” around their host stars.

• Fixed a bug where comets, asteroids, and moons could be assigned incorrect temperature classes. Classes for all planets/moons/comets/asteroids are now based on their time-averaged distance from their host star(s).

• Fixed a bug causing incorrect procedural metallicity of stars

• Fixed a bug with generation of double Wolf-Rayet systems, where the secondary star had hundreds of times larger luminosity than the whole system

• Fixed a bug where every solo star (not in a multiple-star system) had the same axial tilt of 100.28 degrees.

• Fixed multiple bugs causing cases where a star's age could be greater than its lifetime

• Fixed a potential bug where the star generator thread can overrun its working array, corrupting data in the other worker thread's working array

• Fixed a bug in calculation of stellar magnitudes

• Fixed a bug with star corona coloration

• Fixed a bug in the Climate Model where planets in systems with a binary star could have a huge temperature spike

• Fixed a bug where catalog stars with no physical info aside from apparent magnitude would default to spectral type M2V

• Fixed a bug where changing the oblateness in the Planet Editor was not reflected in the Wiki.

• Fixed a bug causing lava to appear ~10% hotter than it should

Catalog Updates:

• Added several of the brightest and largest known galaxies (see Catalog Additions below)

• Added LMC globular cluster NGC 1978

• Added LMC open cluster NGC 2164

• Updated distances and magnitudes for numerous galaxies, especially in the Local Group

• Tweaked brightness of a few Local Group elliptical galaxy models

• Removed unsupported/refuted black holes

• Changed “Central Black Hole” affix to an asterisk (*) to match astronomical naming conventions

• Updated distance and size of the Owl Nebula

• Updated atmospheric composition for K2-18 b

• Updated 2M1510 to be a triple system with the correct orbits

• Updated physical parameters of the PSR J2222-0137 pulsar+WD system

• Updated distance to SPECULOOS-3

• Updated WOH G64 Star

• Added star UDF 2457 (most distant Milky Way star visible in Hubble Ultra Deep Field)

• Reclassified Quaoar as a dwarf planet and its moon as a dwarf moon

• Updated distance and location for PZ Cassiopeiae

• Updated the exoplanet catalogs with 78 new host stars and 105 new planets (plus 1 planemo)

Catalog Additions:

Galaxies:

• Abell 2261 BCG

• ESO 383-76/Abell 3571 BCG

• ESO 248-6/ACO 3112 BCG

• ESO 409-25/ACO 2734 BCG

• ACO 3039 BCG

• ESO 347-9/ACO 3998 BCG

Planemo:

• OGLE-2015-BLG-1609L b

Brown dwarf candidates:

• TOI-201 c

• KMT-2024-BLG-0404L B

• KMT-2024-BLG-0404L C

Exoplanets:

• KOI-134 b 

• KOI-134 c 

• Kepler-725 c

• L 98-59 f 

• TIC 88785435 b

• TOI-1117 b

• TOI-1117 c

• TOI-1117 d

• TOI-1238 b

• TOI-1238 c

• TOI-1846 b

• TOI-2031 A b

• TOI-2169 A b

• TOI-2346 b

• TOI-2382 b

• TOI-2407 b

• TOI-2876 b

• TOI-2886 b

• TOI-2986 b

• TOI-2992 b

• TOI-3135 b

• TOI-3160 A b

• TOI-3464 b

• TOI-3474 b

• TOI-3486 b

• TOI-3523 A b

• TOI-3593 b

• TOI-3682 b

• TOI-3856 b

• TOI-3877 b

• TOI-3980 b

• TOI-4214 b

• TOI-4465 b

• TOI-4487 A b

• TOI-4734 b

• TOI-4794 b

• TOI-4961 b

• TOI-5181 A b

• TOI-5210 b

• TOI-5322 b

• TOI-5340 b

• TOI-5386 A b

• TOI-5592 b

• TOI-5800 b

• TOI-5882 b

• BEBOP-3 b

• Gliese 508.2 b

• Gliese 9773 b

• HD 135344 A b

• KMT-2023-BLG-0119L b

• KMT-2023-BLG-1896L b

• KMT-2024-BLG-1209L b

• MOA-2022-BLG-033L b

• MOA-2022-BLG-091L b

• Ross 176 b

• TOI-1011 b

• TOI-1346 b

• TOI-1346 c

• TOI-2719 b

• TOI-4155 b

• TOI-5795 b

• TOI-5817 b

• TOI-6000 b

• TOI-7149 b

• TOI-880 c

• Gliese 536 c

• HD 224018 b

• HD 224018 c

• HD 224018 d

• HD 28471 b

• HD 28471 c

• HD 28471 d

• K2-73 c

• TOI-1438 b

• TOI-1438 c

• TOI-2141 c

• TOI-2141 d

• TOI-2322 b

• TOI-2322 c

• TOI-4773 b

• TOI-5261 b

• TOI-5350 b

• TOI-6303 b

• TOI-6330 b

• TOI-6420 b

• WISPIT 1 b

• WISPIT 1 c

• WISPIT 2 b

• AU Mic e

• HD 143811 AB b

• NGTS-31 b

• NGTS-32 b

• TOI-1203 b

• TOI-1203 c

• TOI-1203 d

• TOI-1203 e

• TOI-1743 b

• TOI-2449 b

• TOI-5799 c

• TOI-6109 b

• TOI-6109 c

• TOI-6223 b