There is no way that could work. You'd need MILLIONS of players for it to be exciting. The universe is big, really big.

The finished game will feature flight within atmosphere.

Apologies for the long post:

I don't know how many of you were/are MojoWorld users. It was really the first commercially available complete planet generator. There were plans to create a full blown sequel called MojoSpace which would have allowed the user to create full 3d volumetric space - essentially complete solar systems. I recently corresponded with "Dr. Mojo" and unfortunately, it looks like this will never come to fruition due to funding problems. In fact, there has been no further development on MojoWorld.

One of the "problems" with MojoWorld was that certain geologic features such as active volcanoes and caves could not be implemented into the engine when a planet was generated. There were a number of tricks users created to approximate caves but these were more eye candy than anything explorable. Rivers were possible however to create convincing river systems, the program utilized a mechanism called parameter bombs. It was an engine so to speak within the main engine of MojoWorld. With it you could create river systems and with some creativity also continents. I have no idea how something like this could be implemented on the fly so to speak in SE. Vladimir is a wizard and in this universe he has created also a god (small g on ourpose lol) but what many seem to forget is that MojoWorld focused entirely on one planet in which the user defined all of the parameters. For the faint of heart there was a random planet generator which was fun, but, it really served to create something which tasked the user with filling in all of the other cool stuff.

Someone mentioned Noctis IV. In its time it was a great program but just because flora and fauna were possible in Noctis - which BTW seems to be dead - that does not mean that the same is possible for SE especially in terms of animated fauna. Procedural trees could be done I am guessing with a L system fractal generator for instance - Menger trees come to mind. But remember that in Noctis everything was rather primitive looking and the fauna especially were very simple pixel blocks with very low resoultion.

Why this would not work with SE should seem obvious: at present the software is in 0.96.2 and we are treated with astounding detail on the planets. But the coding to create fauna whose appearance would be a s"realistic" looking as the planets themselves I would guess would be an almost impossible feat. Animating them would be insane! Bust out 3DS Max or Z-Brush, Silo and create a creature from scratch. Convincing animation and modelling for a 3D animated creature would have to take into account kinesthetics, constantly changing refraction, specularity, etc., in real time. Noctis didn't have to deal with this because the engine -while admittedly amazing for its time - was primitive. With SE, Vladimir has already equalled and in some instances surpassed the jaw dropping sequence of the Genesis planet from Star Trek II. THAT took a supercomputer to create!

I wonder however if a compromise could be made: let's say that Vladimir would implement a particle system. It could be possible I think to generate animated herds of animals using a particle system. The caveat would be that these would only look acceptable from a higher orbit. I don't see how generating fauna in the Planetarium portion of SE could work at ground level. For the smaller game component, of course it would work and COULD use actual models. So would caves and such as they could be hand crafted or, like MojoWorld, utilize a concept like parameter bombs or perhaps Boolean logic for caves.

Just brainstroming here and Vladimir - or anyone - please correct me if I am way off base in my thoughts. I have faith in Vladimir, but, I would surmise that it will be at least ten years until computers are powerful enough and affordable to implement convincing fauna especially. I am a musician and 3D artist, not a coder, so I may be completely talking through my glutius maximus wacko

you forgot to change the title

what's new?

Anyway, I should note: as long as SE is a scientifically accurate Universe simulator, then one day it will implement ALL space objects and phenomenon that are known to modern astronomy. So you may not bother yourself with questions like "will SE one day have meteor rain implemented". I guarantee that it WILL.

BTW, maybe start a new thread describing all features that are already implemented in SE?

Это глобальный список TODO, в основном касается графической части движка. То, что помечено:
Зелёный , - Приоритетно и будет выполнено/Уже выполнено.
Жёлтый , - Частично реализовано.
Красный , - Запланировано к следующему релизу.
Серый , - Вызывает сомнения, то есть не ясно, будет ли это, или это вообще возможно.

Why not here?