Video: Space Engineers is a tremendously popular Steam construction game. In a few days, it’s adding planets. Wanna get out of your spaceship and freefall through the atmosphere to a planet’s surface, without a single loading screen? Be my guest.
To announce the long-awaited addition of hulking landmasses to Space Engineers‘ galaxy, developer Keen Software House dropped the following video:
Dang. Hell of a fall, that.
Here’s a nutty detail: that video was running at 4x normal game speed. That means pseudo-suicidal leaps like this one will, in (virtual) reality, take approximately four minutes.
Granted, it probably won’t be in your best interest to do this — at least, in Space Engineers‘ survival mode. Still, I think this is Keen Software House’s way of driving home a point: planets will be pretty darn massive. So yeah, probably don’t look down.
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16 responses to “Steam Game Lets You Drop From Space To Earth”
Been waiting a long time for planets. I am excited.
How do you fall from space? If your spaceship is high enough to be in geosynchronous orbit wouldn’t you just sit there floating? Then there’s the whole not burning up or even getting a little warm during re-entry. It’s almost like this is some kind of fabrication of reality designed for amusement or something.
Stop ruining everyone’s fun with your facts and logic! 😛
What would be even more fun is if when you do this you are actually high diving into a tiny bucket of water…someone should mod in a diving board!
The ship itself has a gravity generator and the field it generates is usually a big bigger than the ship it is installed on, so that’s where the initial downwards velocity will come from.
Gonna get all nerdy on ya now.
So the ship itself doesnt appear to be in a geosynchronous orbit. It looks as if its just elevated in a stationary position above the ground, not unlike the Red Bull Stratos balloon.
The Red Bull Stratos balloon did the space jump at 39 kms above the earth. Gravity had full effect at this time. In order to have 0 gravity the spaceship would need to be at least 35,000kms above the earth.
The fall from that height would take a little longer than a few minutes…
If it’s not in a geosynchronous orbit, or in any kind of orbit, how is it maintaining its altitude? A balloon is a significantly different amount of mass to a spaceship so you either need to be making an orbit to offset or reduce the gravitational pull or be expending a heck of a lot of fuel to keep tonnes of steel in the air.
Oh that’s simple. Magic!
35,000km’s above the Earth yeah, but this planet is clearly no Earth sized body, and would have suitably weaker gravity so your explanation doesn’t really nail it for me.
He got a running start!
That sort of determination makes anything possible!
I remember when this was going to be a feature in SW Battlefront 3 a lifetime ago.
Welp, looks like they might as well pack up No Mans Sky.
Wow, surprisingly detailed planets. Good work.
And when you land, you run into players from Medieval Engineers.
That looks horrible. How did it even get on the kotaku page?
The author collated information and imagery into an article and then published it on a website?
It’s a surprisingly fun game.
MDK did it way better in ’97