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2019 · Indie · Simulation

Space Engine

SpaceEngine is a 3D astronomy program and game engine developed by Russian astronomer and programmer Vladimir Romanyuk. Using real astronomical catalogs and procedural generation, it creates a three dimensional planetarium representing the entire universe.

Released: 11 June 2019
Platforms: SteamVR Windows
Genres: Indie Simulation
Developers: —
Publishers: —
Modes: Single-player
Perspective: Virtual Reality
Themes: Science fiction Educational Open world
Country: Russia
Languages: Chinese (Simplified), Chinese (Traditional), Czech, Dutch, English, Finnish, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Polish, Portuguese (Brazil) and 5 more
Time to beat: 4hmain story5hcompletionist

About

SpaceEngine is an interactive 3D planetarium and astronomy software initially developed by Russian astronomer and programmer Vladimir Romanyuk and released in June 2010. Romanyuk and the SpaceEngine team later founded the American game studio Cosmographic Software in Connecticut in February 2022 to continue development.

SpaceEngine creates a 1:1 scale three-dimensional planetarium representing the entire observable universe, combining real astronomical data with scientifically accurate procedural generation algorithms. Users can travel through space in any direction or at any speed and can move forwards or backwards in time. SpaceEngine is currently in beta status. 0E, released in August 2017, it was available as freeware for Microsoft Windows.

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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 27 May 2019, the Steam store page for SpaceEngine was made public in preparation for the release of the first paid version, 0.990 beta.