Visiting new locations

During my ongoing literature review I often discover interesting facts about things I’ve never thought about. Sometimes I can connect these facts with my own observations: The result is mostly a completely new idea why things are as they are. Maybe these ideas are new to you, too. Therefore I’ll share my new science based knowledge with you!

This week: This time, I think about how the virtual environments of computer games can help us to navigate through unknown locations.

When a traveler visits for the very first time a new city, he needs some time to orientate himself to be able to navigate through the unknown location. Over time, the visitor gets used to the city and starts developing shortcuts. Finally, the visitor is able to navigate through the city without getting lost, because he has developed a certain understanding.

The same thing applies to virtual cities in computer games: the player gets used to the virtual environment over time. After a short learning period, the player is able to move quickly through the environment and to develop some shortcuts.

These virtual cities mostly share some similarities with real world cities and thus the general location is mostly familiar to the players. In Mafia 2[1], the player explores the fictional city „Empire Bay“ which is based on real cities like New York, Chicago and Los Angeles. At first, all the streets are completely new to the player and he doesn’t know where he is. But over time, the player gets used to the city and knows how he can navigate through the streets of Empire Bay.

This can lead to the assumption, that virtual environments in computer games can train the ability of computer game players to navigate through unknown locations without any difficulties. Additionally, developing a general understanding of a new city can be much easier to computer game players who are used to explore new locations on a regular basis.

Apart from the training effects of getting used to new locations, it could be also interesting to create real cities in a computer game. On the one hand, this could allow players from all over the world to explore famous cities, they’ve never visited before. Furthermore, it could be used in order to boost the tourism. The story of the game could take place at the most special locations of a city thus evoking a desire to visit this city in the reality.

On the other hand, it could be interesting as a preparation for a visit. The player can get used to the city and won’t get lost on the very first visit. Moreover, it would be an interesting experiment to rebuild a location in a computer game. Players then could start exploring the virtual version of the location and get used to it. Afterwards, they would be challenged to do a scavanger hunt in the real location to test out if they’ve really benefited from playing the game.

Game Breaks

During my ongoing literature review I often discover interesting facts about things I’ve never thought about. Sometimes I can connect these facts with my own observations: The result is mostly a completely new idea why things are as they are. Maybe these ideas are new to you, too. Therefore I’ll share my new science based knowledge with you!

This week: This time, I think about playing computer games for a short period of time in order to recharge some energy between exhausting tasks.

If you really have to focus on a certain task, it’s easy to loose concentration after few hours of working. At this point, it’s often useful to make a short break in order to regain some energy and to keep the concentration high. In best cases the break should have no correlation with the task and allow the brain to relax a bit from the original task.

Playing computer games could be one of the very helpful options to allow the brain to completely stop thinking about the main task and to recharge some energy. The highly immersive environment of video games allows the player to focus on the gameplay and to stop thinking about the original problem he was working on. Playing a game for 10 – 15 minutes can be really refreshing and help to get back a clear view on the task, because it allows to gain a bit of a distance to the problem.

However, the game shouldn’t be a real time investment in any case. It should just help to completely switch off and think about a completely different situation. In this case, going on a raid or instance run in an MMORPG would be the wrong approach because this would take too much time. On the other hand, I’m not only talking about so called „casual“ games like Bejeweled or Angry Birds.

The best possible game should allow the player to jump right away into the action without too many preparations. On the other hand, the gameplay should be also quite „short“ or allow an easy stop so that the player isn’t in danger to get lost in the virtual world.

The first example I like to present is the round-based strategy game „Civilization V“ (Civ V). In Civ V the player leads a nation from prehistoric times to the future and tries to achieve one of several victory options. The gameplay of Civ V is almost like chess: once the player has done all his decisions, he ends the turn and the other nations get their turns. Each round can be seen as a complete game session because every round has a clear beginning and a clear ending. This would allow the player to play a few rounds and easily finish the game break, because all actions are done once the end of a turn is reached.

The next example are action-adventures like „Diablo III“. This option is a quite risky one, because it’s very easy to get lost in the game. „Just one more group …“, but with enough discipline, these games can work just as well. The gameplay doesn’t need much preparation. Once the player has started the game, he can jump right away into the next group of evil monsters. Furthermore, the game has no clear ending–it’s more about killing an infinite amount of enemies and collecting new equipment. This endless flow of action can also be easily separated: the player just can make his way through one level and then stop playing without missing anything.

The last example I like to mention are racing games like „DiRT 3“ or „Assetto Corsa“. The good thing about these racing simulations is, that they take place on finite race tracks. Additionally, it is pretty easy to set up a race and drive around the race track or race against computer controlled opponents. Furthermore, these realistic driving games require the complete focus of the player to keep the car under control. This immersion catches the player immediately and completely disctracts the player from the original work. On the other hand, once a short race is finished and the results are displayed, the player gets immediately out of the immersion, but feels more refreshed and can start working again on his original task.

As a result, playing for a few minutes the right computer game could be quite refreshing and even improve the work performance. The intense gameplay allows the player to completely switch off from the exhausting work and regain some energy. Once a short game session is finished, the player can return back to work and even might have a completely different view on the task.

Happy Easter

During my ongoing literature review I often discover interesting facts about things I’ve never thought about. Sometimes I can connect these facts with my own observations: The result is mostly a completely new idea why things are as they are. Maybe these ideas are new to you, too. Therefore I’ll share my new science based knowledge with you!

This week: This time, I approach the search for Easter Eggs in a completely different way.

Exploring the virtual game world is one of the key methods of interacting with a computer game[1]. Explorers try to discover most of the facts about a game world during their gameplay. Additionally, they try to move beyond the normal path of a player in order to discover interesting features most players probably have missed.
Explorers are mostly focussed on interacting with the virtual world. They like to climb up the highest mountain or explore the deepest cavern. Following the normal approach of the game and aiming for the best outcome isn’t the direct goal of an explorer. It’s more about discovering all the wonders and enjoying every component of the virtual world.
However, it’s not just about exploring the world, it’s also about exploring the game and every feature of it. Explorers like to combine different actions in the game world to discover different outcomes. It’s mostly like permanently asking the question „What if …?“.

On the other side, following the gameplay of an explorer can be also very rewarding for computer game developers. Explorers are digging deep into the game mechanics, the storyline and the virtual world. They’re also appreciating the design work of the developers and they even notice small features most players probably might overlook. But especially these features make the world live and breath and can cost a lot of time during the design process. Furthermore, explorers are also seeing the „end“ of the world and appreciate when the boundaries of a level seem to be very consistent with the game world. In the end, explorers are enjoying every part of the game thus exhausting the creative result of the developers.

Game developers even found a way to thank these players for their thorough exploration of the game world and enjoying their content: they started to implement small but very meaningful features into the game world. This approach is almost like giving an additional gift to the explorers, because they feel rewarded when they discover a well hidden wonder that might leave them in awe.
These special special features even don’t need to be very complex. It just can be a group picture of all the developers, a small reference to another game or movie or even a game community meme, which will be identified immediately. In most cases, these special features aren’t directly related to the game world and are often a bit ironic.
The location on the other side needs to be a very special and often way off from the normal path a player should take. Explorers are then able to discover well hidden and „cool“ relics in the game world when they explore every corner of the level.

The special characteristic of being nice and little goodies which are well hidden in the game world might have caused the name these special features have received. They’re called Easter Eggs.

Happy Easter and good luck discovering every corner of your very own level!

Happy Easter

[1] Bartle, Richard (1996): Hearts, clubs, diamonds, spades: Players who suit MUDs, http://www.mud.co.uk/richard/hcds.htm, retrieved on 2014/04/19.

Understanding art with games

During my ongoing literature review I often discover interesting facts about things I’ve never thought about. Sometimes I can connect these facts with my own observations: The result is mostly a completely new idea why things are as they are. Maybe these ideas are new to you, too. Therefore I’ll share my new science based knowledge with you!

This week: This time, I think about the problem of understanding art. Games can be used to simulate real world facts, but can they be also used to enhance the understanding of art?

I’m always seeking for new or good applications of computer games to enhance the education. Computer games do have a high potential of keeping the motivation high and they also easily allow to visualize different outcomes.
In order to target a certain learning outcome, computer games can be tailored for this specific purpose and directly cover the learning content. Computer games that fall into this category are also referenced as serious games.
However, games don’t need to be designed as a serious game to have a good educational effect. Regular computer games with a pure focus on the entertainment can be used to illustrate specific knowledge as well. Cooperative games like World of Warcraft can enhance the team training[1] outcomes and simulation games like Kerbal Space Program can be used to demonstrate the specific knowledge[2] they’re simulating.

Taking advantage of simulation games is often a good way to enhance the demonstration of specific knowledge because these games do have a good visual presentation of the outcomes. Furthermore, simulation games rely on the laws of the natural sciences and thus are able to use the appropriate formulas for calculating the results.
Understanding these formulas is often the main learning goal and thus simulation games become a good visual enhancement to understand the presented facts. Learners can try out what will happen if they manipulate a certain variable and thus foster their understanding of the specific knowledge.

Although there’re no clear formulas for team training or similar social skills, taking advantage of cooperative games can be very useful. Players need to collaborate in these games to succeed. This often can be done if they establish a general understanding of the common goal and their specific role in their group. Establishing this understanding is mostly the key factor for a successful teamwork.
Cooperative games create a virtual world where players can get used to understand the connection between the common goal and their specific role. Additionallly, goals and roles are often well defined in computer games and thus it’s much easier to develop a basic understanding for the own role. The ability of the own integration into a group can be finally transferred to real world teamwork.

However, there’re some learning goals that are much more complicated to be represented and demonstrated in a (serious) computer game. I’m referring to the understanding of literature and art. Of course, there can be a certain interpretation of a text or a canvas, but often this can vary from the personal standpoint and/or from the personal experience. In this case, there aren’t any formulas which will return a clear result.

Although there might be no clear result, computer games could still be used to tackle the understanding of literature and art. Computer games could offer a certain interpretation or could evoke some questions about the work. These results of playing the game could lead to a deeper look into the work and/or to another point of view of approaching the topic of the work. In the end, this could help the learners to think more deeply about the work and to develop a completely own understanding.

Try out a planned space mission

During my ongoing literature review I often discover interesting facts about things I’ve never thought about. Sometimes I can connect these facts with my own observations: The result is mostly a completely new idea why things are as they are. Maybe these ideas are new to you, too. Therefore I’ll share my new science based knowledge with you!

This week: This time, I like to present NASA’s good strategy of increasing the popularity of a planned space mission: they were collaborating with the developers of Kerbal Space Program to develop a custom addon to the game.

NASA is currently planning a new challenge in space flight: the Asteroid Redirect Mission (ARM) [1][2]. The main goal of ARM is the investigation of an asteroid by astronauts. In order to allow astronauts to fly up to an asteroid and to take some samples of it, it’s necessary to bring or redirect an asteroid into the reach of human space flight.
The idea is pretty simple: an asteroid will be captured by a robotic mission and afterwards propelled into a stable orbit around our Moon. After the asteroid is captured by the Moon’s gravity, a manned mission will be launched up to the asteroid to allow a thorough investigation and to enable the option to return back some samples.

Unfortunately, NASA’s space flight activities are pretty expensive and thus needing the support of the people. Support often can be only given, if an understanding of the work is established. Additionally, NASA and space agencies in general are all the time searching for future workers, who are deeply interested in the exploration of space and who like to work in the field of space science.
In order to gain a higher popularity, NASA is very active on social media services and also tries to involve people in the work by creating special social events to allow in-person experiences at NASA[3].
Now, NASA found a new partner to collaborate with. The partner already provides a good service to develop a better understanding of space flight, is entertaining and already used by many users.

The partner I’m writing about is Squad, the developer of Kerbal Space Program (KSP). KSP is a computer game that allows its players to develop an own space program [4]. The player can assemble rockets and space crafts from a broad variety of different components and launch them into virtual space. Moreover, the space simulation game helps its players to understand the basics of space flight because everything in the game is based on real world physics. Players can start to learn orbital mechanics by playing the game [5][6].
Altough the game is still in development, it has already achieved a huge popularity among space interested players and computer game players in general.

Since 1st of April, the popularity of KSP is now also used by NASA to increase the popularity of their ARM project. The developers of KSP have implemented in collaboration with NASA the ARM mission into KSP. KSP now allows players to rendezvous with asteroids and to investigate these space rocks. Additionally, KSP now offers new components in the Vehicle Assembly Building which are mostly inspired by NASA rocket components. This even includes a component that can attach an asteroid to a rocket and finally allow the player to redirect the asteroid to a different orbit.

In the end, it’s a win-win situation for everyone involved. KSP receives more attention, because it’s now possible to simulate an upcoming real world space mission. NASA’s popularity will also increase, because their project is now also offered to the broad variety of already existing KSP players, who might start spreading the word about the next huge challenge in human space flight. Moreover, by playing the ARM, players will learn more about the upcoming challenges for NASA in order to redirect an asteroid. This knowledge could on the one hand lead to more applicants at NASA and on the other hand to more people who appreciate the science and engineering of NASA. Finally, the KSP player itself now has more components and options to play around during his gameplay. Furthermore, KSP has received an additional amount of realism due to the new and authentic components.

As a conclusion, computer games like KSP help players to understand the way orbital mechanics work. Additionally, it will increase the interest of the players in the work of space agencies and maybe inspire them to start a career in one of the fields of today’s space companies.
In the end, I hope that other space agencies will understand the great potential of computer games, too. It would be very interesting, if not only NASA but also ESA and Roscosmos would join the club of virtual space flyers in order to spread the word about their work.

And maybe, after gamers were inspired by computer games like KSP, it could be also a gamer who finds the solution to a real world problem because of the creative way gamers are approaching difficult things–like redirecting an asteroid.

Concentration training by playing Papers, please

During my ongoing literature review I often discover interesting facts about things I’ve never thought about. Sometimes I can connect these facts with my own observations: The result is mostly a completely new idea why things are as they are. Maybe these ideas are new to you, too. Therefore I’ll share my new science based knowledge with you!

This week: This time, I like to discuss how the main game mechanic of „Papers, please“ is challenging the concentration ability of a player. Furthermore, I like to propose the assumption that playing „Papers, please“ will train the player’s concentration ability.

„Papers, please„[1], developed by Lucas Pope, is an indie game that puts the player into the role as an employee of the Ministry of Admission of the fictive country Arstotzka, who’s duties are to check the documents of entrants at a border checkpoint. The player needs to make sure that every document is valid before an „Approved“ stamp is applied to the entrant’s passport. In order to fulfill the duties, the border checkpoint is equipped with a rule book that explains all the requirements for valid documents. Apart from the daily business of checking documents, the player is sometimes faced with moral issues, when entrants with a special background story try to enter the country. At this point, it’s up to the player whether he likes to help people out or to stick to the rules and deny the entrant.

From my „learning by gaming“ point of view, the most interesting fact about this game comes from the procedure of checking documents. Every entrant hands over several documents the player has to check before the finale dicision is made. Each document provides different information about the entrant and the player needs to check if these information are valid.

As an example, the passport of an entrant provides the player with the following information: picture, date of birth, gender, city, expiration date and passport number. After receiving the document, the player has to check if all the information do apply to the entrant. Sometimes, the player even has to cross-reference information over different documents.

The game mechanic of checking documents challenges the concentration ability of the player. The player has to pay attention to every single line of each document and has to make sure that the information presented is valid. This task gets more and more complicated over time, because the player will receive sometimes more than four different documents at once. Additionally, the player works against the time, because each day at the border checkpoint has a certain length and the player gets paid for the amount of checked entrants. In this case, the player also feels the need of checking the documents as fast as possible to get enough money at the end of the day to keep the own family alive. This time constraint however influences the player’s concentration and thus is making the player vulnerable to mistakes.

As a conclusion of this blog post, I like to propose the assumption that playing „Papers, please“ will train the concentration ability of a player. In order to score well, the player is encouraged to focus on the given information about an entrant. Moreover, the player starts to develop the awareness for anomalies and differences between the rules and/or the different documents. In the end, this concentration ability can help the players in other parts of their life, when they need to process new information within a short amount of time.

Anniversaries

During my ongoing literature review I often discover interesting facts about things I’ve never thought about. Sometimes I can connect these facts with my own observations: The result is mostly a completely new idea why things are as they are. Maybe these ideas are new to you, too. Therefore I’ll share my new science based knowledge with you!

This week: This time, it’s time to celebrate the two year anniversary of Learning by Gaming and the one year anniversary of my weekly article series „Finding of the week“.

About one week ago on March 12th was the second anniversary of Learning by Gaming. Unbelieveable, that it’s been already two years since I launched my personnal science and research website. So many things happened during this time.

2 year anniversary

On the one hand, I experienced the process of writing and publishing a paper. It started with the first concept of it and ended with a short presentation on a conference[1]. Additionally, I was able to make some progress and developed a concept for a research project over the second half of the passed last year. Currently, this research project is on a good way to be realized. A first prototype exists already and the project attracted two students, who like to design and program it as their bachelor thesis.

Finally, the last year was also the first year of my weekly „Finding of the week“ article series. Today’s article is also about the celebration of the first anniversary of the Fotw series, because the first article was published on March 23rd. This means nothing else than that there was one short article released per week about a certain gaming related topic. I can’t believe, that it’s been already a year since I started writing those articles.

In celebration of these two anniversaries, I like to go back a bit in time and share with you maybe one of the key moments, that really started my interest in the research of computer games with a special focus on the social and educational aspects.

It was around the release of Diablo 2 and my first attempts of playing this game online. The most interesting thing for me around this time was the chance of getting in contact with people from all over the world. Players could open up game sessions and if these games weren’t protected by a password, everyone could join these sessions and play together with all the other players in this particular game. Moreover, there was no real separation between countries–players could join games independently from their origin. Naturally, this often caused some issues due to the language barriers between the players. However, as long as everyone was writing in English, it was possible to play together with people from all over the world.

During these early days, I ended up playing one sunday morning together with a player from Spain. We began to chitchat a bit, exchanged later on our e-mail adresses and finally we became penpals. Unfortunately, this lasted only a few weeks, but it was a very interesting experience to become a penpal with someone from another country just by playing a computer game.
In today’s gaming community with World of Warcraft and other MMORPGs available, it’s nothing special anymore to become friends with other players. However, back in these days, it was completely new to me.

The above described experience was mostly so special to me, because it was the first time that I really stayed in contact with a player from a different country. However, there were a lot of other contacts and friendships I’ve made during this time and to some degree, it was a feeling of being connected to players from all over the world by just playing one game.

Since these early experiences with Diablo 2, I came to the result, that games can do so much more than just entertain us. Now, about 14 years later, I’m hopefully able to proof some of these initial thoughts in my profession as a Ph.D student.

Game controls: A challenge for serious games

During my ongoing literature review I often discover interesting facts about things I’ve never thought about. Sometimes I can connect these facts with my own observations: The result is mostly a completely new idea why things are as they are. Maybe these ideas are new to you, too. Therefore I’ll share my new science based knowledge with you!

This week: This time, I like to discuss one of the biggest problems for serious games. These games are targeting the learners of a specific topic, who might not have a gaming background and thus need to understand the game controls and the new knowledge at the same time.

In general, computer games are developed for people who are interested in playing games and who like to be entertained by games. However, there’re also computer games with a more serious background. Although these games are still computer games, their main purpose is mostly to educate or train the players. These games can be still entertaining, but the entertainment isn’t the main focus of these kind of games. Games with such an educational purpose are called serious games.

In contrast to regular computer games, serious games aren’t targeting only experienced computer game players but also learners without a gaming background. Computer game players are used to control their actions in the game with the computer peripherals. Movement in a game is often requiring inputs over the keyboard whereas the view of the player is often changed by mouse movements. The combination of both devices allows the player to walk and look around in a virtual environment. Over time, this control scheme becomes natural to the player as walking around in the real world. Computer game players aren’t distracted by figuring out how to move from A to B and thus are able to focus on the action in the virtual world.

Non-gaming learners don’t have this background. They might be used to operate a computer during their regular office work or to search for new information on the internet. However, they aren’t used to explore a virtual three dimensional room using their regular input devices. These new gamers are more challenged by wrapping their head around the movement controls than on focussing on the training task offered in the game. Finally, these new gamers would have to achieve two learning goals at once: learning to control their actions in the game and understanding the presented knowledge.

Regular computer games often try to help new gamers by offering some tutorial missions. During these early missions, the new players is often accompanied by a non-player character (NPC) who explains the basics of the game. Moreover, the NPC also gives hints which key is used to perform a certain action.
Such a tutorial mission could be also helpful for new players of a serious game to introduce them to the keybindings of the game. Unfortunately, tutorial missions don’t really help to understand the general relationship between the control interfaces and the actions going on on the screen. Completely new computer game users need to develop the general understanding that they’ve a „presence“ in the virtual world and thus that they can interact with it.

This problem isn’t really easy to solve. The serious game could also offer some kind of „sandbox mode“ which allows new gamers to gain more experience in moving in a virtual world. However, the main issue still remains: the new unexperienced game-learner needs to achieve a general understanding about the own virtual presence in a game. Only after this understanding is achieved, the new game-learner will be able to focus on the presented learning goals.

Observations of a Humble Bundle sale

During my ongoing literature review I often discover interesting facts about things I’ve never thought about. Sometimes I can connect these facts with my own observations: The result is mostly a completely new idea why things are as they are. Maybe these ideas are new to you, too. Therefore I’ll share my new science based knowledge with you!

This week: This time, I like to discuss the observations made by a game development studio after the selling period of a Humble Bundle package was finished.

During this week, I received the link to this blogpost during a Skype conversation. The post is from a game development studio and is describing the outcome of a two week Humble Bundle[1] selling period of one of their games: Monaco.

The most interesting observation comes from the fact that the amount of sold copies of the game hasn’t changed on Steam[2]–one of the game’s main distribution platforms–during the period of the Humble Bundle. This surprising result leads to several possible assumptions.

First of all, participating in a Humble Bundle does increase the revenue during the selling period of the Humble Bundle. The general sale of the game seems to be unaffected by the great offer and thus all the sold Humble Bundle copies are a huge plus to the general revenue of the game studio.

Additionally, the awareness about the Humble Bundle packages seems to be not as widespread as the Steam Shop. The blogpost already guesses that every consumer tends to stick to the favorite game store. However, the price of the Humble Bundle was completely up to the consumer whereas the Steam price is fixed. In this case, the consumer would have saved a lot of money by buying the Humble Bundle. This finally leads to the aforementioned assumption that all the buyers on Steam weren’t aware of the Humble Bundle sale.

Unfortunately, the sales of the Humble Bundle don’t reveal the reason why the consumer has bought the package. A Humble Bundle package includes several games and thus it’s not completely obvious which of the games has caught the interest of the buyer. However, Monaco was only included in the package, if the consumer has paid more than the avarage buyer. In this case, the consumer seems to have wanted to buy this particular game.
On the other side, Monaco wasn’t the only „pay more than the average game“, so it’s still impossible to find out, if the consumer really wanted to buy Monaco. This could also explain the fact that the amount of sold copies on Steam was unaffected by the Humble Bundle: Steam buyers really wanted to have this game, whereas the Humble Bundle consumers might have noticed the game only through this special offer. Moreover, it could be possible that these consumers weren’t sure if they really like the game and that the special Humble Bundle offer just convinced them to give it a try.

Under the bottom line, getting the own game into a Humble Bundle package can increase the revenue over the selling period. The Humble Bundle sale can offer the game to a completely different consumer base, who haven’t heard about the game before or weren’t sure if they like the game.

Presenting Space Engine

During my ongoing literature review I often discover interesting facts about things I’ve never thought about. Sometimes I can connect these facts with my own observations: The result is mostly a completely new idea why things are as they are. Maybe these ideas are new to you, too. Therefore I’ll share my new science based knowledge with you!

This week: This time, I like to present you another space simulation: Space Engine. A simulation that allows the user to explore the vastness of our universe in a beautiful three dimensional environment.

As I began to write this week’s article, I recognized that I’m currently writing on my 50th episode of „Finding of the week“. Every time I start writing a new entry, I’ve the feeling that I’ve just started with this idea of producing a short post per week. Unbelievable that I’m almost doing this for a complete year now!

One of the most used examples of my articles are space related simulations. Moreover, I presented several different games with the goal of simulating a topic related to space exploration. I like to continue this tradition and present you another space simulation: Space Engine (SE)[1].

SE allows the user to explore our universe in a three dimensional environment. The simulation takes adventage of real world data to simulate known regions of our universe as accurate as possible. Additionally, SE provides the user with the most important facts about a celestial body like its gravity, rotation period and orbital period. Moreover, the user can display the paths of objects to visualize their trajectories. Apart from a three dimensional representation and a real world data based simulation of celestial bodies, SE takes advantage of real world images and uses these images to create the surface of the celestial bodies.
Finally, I like to highlight the beautiful graphic engine of SE which allows the user to enjoy lens flares, solar eclipses, auroras, shadows of planetary rings etc.

Space Engine Saturn

The user itself can move through our universe without any constraints. It’s possible to search for objects and visit them or just to fly through the vastness of space. The user even can land on the celestial bodies and enjoy the view into space from their surfaces. This also allows the user to land on our Earth and search for constellations like the Big Dipper or to land on the Moon and take a look at our Earth as the Apollo astronauts did. Moreover, the user is not just in control of the own movement and position: the user can also control the time and thus can experience a look in the past and the future. Additionally, the user can accelerate or decelerate the time speed and thus follow the orbit of a planet or the trajectory of an astroid through our solar system.

SE is currently in beta status and developed by Vladimir Romanyuk.