Real Universe educational program.

DvdGStwrt · Post by **DvdGStwrt** » Sun Mar 25, 2007 6:30 pm

There is a totally free educational program called Celestia : http://www.shatters.net/celestia/ which containes The Milkyway Galaxy in detail and outlying galaxies in a whole, meaning it has millions if not billions of 'local' galaxtic stars you can travel to, it also has the Solar System, the planets, their moons and comets and astroids and there are add-on options to add say the known 100 extra-solar planets, more astroids, comets, even fictional add ons based on star wars, star trek, etc.

It gives a fair idea of the immense distances in space, even traveling at light speed (c) in the solar system takes more time to travel between Earth and Mars than between Zion and Aryia as cargo shuttle speeds

We have people asking to connect the system in The Universal, once you use this program and travel at even 10 times the speed of light in Celestia you get a good idea of the distances between star systems it takes hours to travel.

Post by **Fooli** » Sun Mar 25, 2007 6:36 pm

It's good for the educational aspect, yeh, but I've always been disappointed at how pretty it isn't. There's a guy writing an Elite style game based on the Celestia engine, too, which might be interesting...
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lucifer1101 · Post by **lucifer1101** » Mon Mar 26, 2007 1:30 am

i would love to see this game realeased WOW i have had celestia for quite a while now and its ok and all but you cant really do anything in it so i only play around with it every now and again

Kona123 · Post by **Kona123** » Mon Mar 26, 2007 1:32 am

Can someone tell me me a little about it? Id like to download it, though I want to make sure i'll like it.

lucifer1101 · Post by **lucifer1101** » Mon Mar 26, 2007 1:38 am

you are on earth, you cant move around earth but u can zoom to other planets stars etc and you can turn on other interesting options like draw the constellations. but if you really shouldnt be downloading dont cus it really isnt worth it.

DvdGStwrt · Post by **DvdGStwrt** » Wed Mar 28, 2007 2:40 am

Kona123 wrote:Can someone tell me me a little about it? Id like to download it, though I want to make sure i'll like it.

It is an astronomey program. The real aspect of is is that distances, real time orbits blah are virtually near correct.

You can tag a star and hit the f keys, to travel at I think 100 km per second, at the speed of light, at one light year persecond, an au per second and of course you can just hit g to go to your picked star.

Some people have taken time to make fictional systems, like 40 eri containing Vulcan (from star trek).

You can also plot events like eclipses in the system. Other scripts are out there such as a "warp" script which allows you to travel at warp speeds to get a good idea of how long it takes Capt Picard to travel to any given star system.

Kona123 · Post by **Kona123** » Wed Mar 28, 2007 7:54 pm

IS there any space stations and stuff? Is it a MMO?

kb32a · Post by **kb32a** » Wed Mar 28, 2007 10:23 pm

Its not a game Kona... It isn't something you would spend any great amount of your time playing with. It does however do an extremely good job at showing you just how big space really is.

Kona123 · Post by **Kona123** » Wed Mar 28, 2007 10:51 pm

_owner_ · Post by **_owner_** » Wed Mar 28, 2007 11:27 pm

It's a pretty cool program. Good for people studying science and whatnot. I sometimes just go on there to check out the other planets besides ours in the solar system. I've always liked space since like 1st grade. I have like 3 encyclopedias on it and even used to have a website, it became dead though. Oh well!