Solarex - Travel and Explore the Galaxy Files

Solarex GL
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Solarex GL is a project to port Solarex from the Java Swing UI kit to OpenGL for all graphics operations. The goal is to add a first person view space flight display, and open options for other display improvements due to the better performance and versatility of OpenGL.

Currently the space view is implemented, but still suffers from display glitches. There are no collision checks yet, so one can fly through planets and stars.

Working UI panels include the station lounge, the goods exchange, the galactic map, the system information panel and the planet info panel.


Key Bindings, Flight Control
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- W, Cursor Up: Speed up 
- S, Cursor Down: Slow down
- Space: Emergency break
- A: Autopilot

Cockpit Controls
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Left row of icons

- Top: Galactic map
- Middle: Inactive (Navigation map)
- Low: System information panel

Center area

- Switches to space view or station panel depending if the ship is in flight or docked.


Project site
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http://sourceforge.net/projects/solarex/

Quality
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Solarex GL r003 is a development snapshot to showcase the new space display. Compared to the original Solarex it is incomplete and probaly more buggy.

Known bugs:

- Space ports are missing in flight mode
- Sometimes planet display has lighting or clipping mistakes
- Small planets get way too big polar caps
- Gas giants with rings have no models yet and are shown as 'small gas giant' aka blue gas giants.
- Black holes are displayed as yellow suns
- Docking at stations only works reliable at very slow speeds
- Very large suns are not displayed correctly in system info panel
- Some systems have a lot of overlapping labels in system info view
- One can hyperjump while docked