I'm addicted to these programs:
Celestia
That program is a lot like an observatory simulator like Stellarium, but unlike those not only can you zoom in, you can actually change your perspective. You can zoom into the moon, and then turn around and look at Earth. It's a 3D universe simulator that has all of the latest star and planet data built in. Not only that, but it moves in real time. You can speed time up and slow it down, to see things going really fast which is cool. It also comes with the ability to display night-time textures, so that the cities of Earth can be seen during the night phase.
The BEST thing about it for me though, is that you can make add-ons. That's where the next program comes in.
AstroSynthesis
That one is basically a random universe creator. It's really cool, but just not as interactive or graphically badass. The cool thing about it though, is that it comes bundled with a program called Fractal World Explorer. That program randomly generates planet textures, and you can use those in Celestia, which is what I've done.
Here are some I made:
That one is a phosphorescent moon that absorbs light from its sun (which shines in the ultraviolet range of the spectrum), and then glows during its dark phase. It was made using the alternate texture option in the program. Both textures are identical, but one is in daylight, and the other is in darkness. The object in the bottom left is the moon's planet.
The next one is another moon, but around a gas giant.
This last one is an almost cooled collapsed star. It spins really fast, and I actually had to slow time down to almost nothing to get a screenshot that wasn't blurred.
Oh, btw, Celestia is FREE. The trial version of AstroSynthesis is fully functional, you just can't save star/planet systems that you make. You CAN however use Fractal World Explorer, make a terrain, and then import it into another program to save it.
Celestia
That program is a lot like an observatory simulator like Stellarium, but unlike those not only can you zoom in, you can actually change your perspective. You can zoom into the moon, and then turn around and look at Earth. It's a 3D universe simulator that has all of the latest star and planet data built in. Not only that, but it moves in real time. You can speed time up and slow it down, to see things going really fast which is cool. It also comes with the ability to display night-time textures, so that the cities of Earth can be seen during the night phase.
The BEST thing about it for me though, is that you can make add-ons. That's where the next program comes in.
AstroSynthesis
That one is basically a random universe creator. It's really cool, but just not as interactive or graphically badass. The cool thing about it though, is that it comes bundled with a program called Fractal World Explorer. That program randomly generates planet textures, and you can use those in Celestia, which is what I've done.
Here are some I made:
That one is a phosphorescent moon that absorbs light from its sun (which shines in the ultraviolet range of the spectrum), and then glows during its dark phase. It was made using the alternate texture option in the program. Both textures are identical, but one is in daylight, and the other is in darkness. The object in the bottom left is the moon's planet.
The next one is another moon, but around a gas giant.
This last one is an almost cooled collapsed star. It spins really fast, and I actually had to slow time down to almost nothing to get a screenshot that wasn't blurred.
Oh, btw, Celestia is FREE. The trial version of AstroSynthesis is fully functional, you just can't save star/planet systems that you make. You CAN however use Fractal World Explorer, make a terrain, and then import it into another program to save it.
I'm just interested to see other people's planets that they made.
Comment