Immersive Galaxy - Astronomical Objects

REQUIRE HIGH GRAPHICS QUALITY TO WORK

I don't know how you play, but I spend most of my time on the galaxy view, and everything seems so bleak, just dust and some stars. I've been looking for a way to spice things up a bit. No gameplay impact unfortunately, this is a pure graphical mod. "High" graphics quality option is required, medium or low won't display the new entities.

This mod adds a plethora of visual goodies for your galaxy, regrettably they'll always spawn in the same area, there's no way to randomize it.

Satellite galaxies

There are currently 3 new galaxies added:

• The first is located at the north west, it has a spiral form and is roughly the same size as ours.
• The second one is in the south east, a small spiral galaxy that almost touch ours when playing at 1k stars.
• The third one is in the south south west ans is quite isolated, it is a small elogated spiral galaxy. All of these are animated and slowly rotate on themselves.

Galactic core

The galactic core is empty and quite sad to look at. Now, we have a proper galactic core, in 3D and, if you look at it close enough, the stars are slowly rotating around. A little warning, if you zoom too close, you might experience some slow down.

Globular Cluster

You'll find plenty of globular cluster lying around the galaxy now.

Nebulae in 3D:

Nebulae in 2D:

Fantasy nebulae (using the fantastic work of Starkiteckt)

I've made two addons available for this mod:

The quadrant addon will add 4 rotating circles to define the various part of the galaxy as well as captions. It is an addon, as many might not like it.

The L-Cluster addon will add animated dust, cpation and some nebulae for the L-Cluster, even before it is discovered. Removed from main mod for people not having distant stars (but they can still use it).

These two addons can now be used as standalone.

The mod is completely save game compatible, you can activate/deactivate the mod without any impact. Works on previous save games.

Achievment compatible.

Compatible with any mod that does not alter the "default_galaxy_center_entity".

KNOWN BUGS :

• Every time a portrait is active on screen when player is on galaxy view, the entities incorporated by this mod disappear. This include tabs such as governement/contact/sectors, and fleets with leaders, such as military or science ships. Closing the tab/fleet resolve the issue.
• Opening the ship designer in galaxy view make animated parts of the mod (galactic core, companion galaxies, quadrant) to spin VERY fast. Closing it resolve the issue.

• 1.0.1:
• Fixed missing texture.
• Quadrant & L cluster can now be used as standalone, although they'll give some (harmless) warnings in the log.

A big thank you to Starkiteckt, he allowed me to use his great work in this mod. Go check it out!

Tools used:

Space engine (again) Gimp Nasalization font GifCam