SpaceEngine

with large but faint planetary rings|250x250px The proclaimed goal of SpaceEngine is scientific realism, and to reproduce every type of known astronomical phenomenon. Interstellar spacecraft simulate the hypothetical Alcubierre drive, including the relativistic effects that would occur in reality. Catalog objects The real objects that SpaceEngine includes are the Hipparcos catalog for stars, the NGC and IC catalogs for galaxies, all known exoplanets, and prominent star clusters, nebulae, and Solar System objects including some comets and asteroids. Extensions SpaceEngine has a fairly large modding community dedicated to expanding on the program's current catalogues, improving things like texture quality, and even improving the program's terrain and cloud generation as a whole (See Rodrigo's Mod). Some SE add-on creators create fictional star systems for their worldbuilding project, others do 3D modelling for spacecraft add-ons, and some do completely different things. These extensions are all available for download from SpaceEngine's Web Forums. == Limitations ==

Although objects that form part of a planetary system move, and stars rotate about their axes and orbit each other in multiple star systems, stellar proper motion or precession is not simulated, and galaxies are at fixed locations and do not rotate. Most real-world spacecraft such as Voyager 2 are not provided with SpaceEngine. The few spacecraft that are included do not use real trajectories or accurate orientations, as all bodies are required to follow an orbit that can be modeled with Keplerian elements. However, real-world spacecraft can be downloaded and manually controlled by the end user. Interstellar light absorption is not modeled in SpaceEngine. Intrinsic variable stars are not supported by SpaceEngine. In fact, most, if not all, simulators do not support intrinsic variable stars. Gravity is not simulated in SpaceEngine outside the orbits of moons, planets and stars in a system, with the exception of the controllable spacecraft. ==Development==

Development of SpaceEngine began in 2005, with its first public release in June 2010. The software is written in C++. The engine uses OpenGL as its graphical API and uses shaders written in GLSL. As of the release of version 0.990, the shaders have been encrypted to protect against plagiarism. Plans have been made to start opening them in a way that allows the community to develop special content for the game, with ship engine effects being made available to users who have purchased the game. On May 27, 2019, the Steam store page for SpaceEngine was made public in preparation for the release of the first paid version, 0.990 beta. SpaceEngine is currently only available for Windows PCs; however, there are plans for the software to support macOS and Linux in the future. Even though SpaceEngine only natively supports Windows, the Steam version can be run on Linux via Steam's Proton compatibility tool. ==See also==