Users can observe celestial objects ranging from small asteroids or moons to large galaxy clusters, similar to other simulators such as Celestia. Properties of objects, such as temperature, mass, radius, spectrum, etc., are presented to the user on the HUD and in an accessible information window. The program has full support for VR headsets. Users can travel through space in any direction or speed, and forwards or backwards in time. Procedural objects have fictional articles, the discoverer is free to choose his own story when he/she creates an article.

This means that our understanding of exoplanets is very constrained and purely factual articles would be extremely short, as most information we have is based on conjecture. What they do to circumvene this problem is making indirect measurements and extrapolating data from that. In reality astronomers don’t have the technology and methodology required to observe exoplanets directly. The background articles about exoplanet types are semi-fictional and should be imagined as extension of the Space Engine universe, where planet types such as “terrae” can be found in abundance and observed very closely.

Real objects have only data that is supported by external sources, albeit of course sources can be wrong in some cases and astronomy is also a quickly developing field, where theories and conjectures could be disproven at any time. SpaceEngine (stylized as “Space Engine”) is a 3D astronomy program and game engine developed by Russian astronomer and programmer Vladimir Romanyuk.It creates a three-dimensional planetarium representing the entire universe from a combination of real astronomical data and scientifically-accurate procedural generation algorithms. With SpaceEngine, the possibilities are limitless.

SpaceEngine is also very friendly for creators of mods and add-ons – create your own planets, star systems, even galaxies, import your own spacecraft models, create custom GUI skins, and more, all easily sharable with others. Spacecraft with Newtonian physics and pilot-assist autopilot features (in early development but fully usable) are yours to fly anywhere in the universe in the Flight Simulator mode.

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