Space Engine

[starnsey]

Has anyone else "played" this? It's like the interactive planetarium of your dreams.

http://en.spaceengine.org/

It's free to play and it's essentially just a planetarium the size of the universe made up of (mostly not-really-existing) planets, nebulae, stars, clusters, etc. You just pick any point in the sky you see and can travel there. Even outside of solar systems! For space nerds, you can for sure kill a lot of time with this. You can travel to the surface of planets and stuff. It's not really much of a game, just go around and explore things.

You sorta need a fairly decent computer to run it, but here are some screenshots I took from in the game. Pretty cool!

 

[Tezz500]

This looks really interesting....

 

[starnsey]

If your computer has good enough specs, give it a shot. It's completely free and seriously the scope of it is mind-boggling.

 

[TurboBird]

Wow thats cool downloading now

So, they google earthed the universe?

Google universe?

 

[ShiftinGT]

Cool, downloading now.

 

[starnsey]

Wow thats cool downloading now

So, they google earthed the universe?

Google universe?

Eh, all the planets/galaxies/solar systems/stars/nebulae/etc I believe are just made up. Not sure if they're randomly generated or what but you can get some pretty cool views and stuff.

Cool, downloading now.

Just so you're aware, on my computer, I have to Right-Click and choose "Run as Administrator" to get it to open. Just a heads up in case you have any issues. I believe it's in a fairly early stage so some bugs will obviously exist.

 

[CobraBob]

Pretty neat. I wish you could travel to the surface of the sun. THAT would be neat. Don't see it here, though.