OPENUNIVERSE(1)

💫 openuniverse — the 3D space sim you didn't know you needed 💫

okay so this is the manual page for openuniverse, and it lives in the General Commands Manual section, and it's giving space nerd bestie energy in the best way possible. buckle up 🚀

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🌸 NAME 🌸

openuniverse — a 3D space simulation 💖

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✨ SYNOPSIS ✨

openuniverse [-bench][-fullscreen[mode_string]][-logfile[filename]]

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🪐 DESCRIPTION 🪐

so like, this manual page is here to document openuniverse in a nutshell — briefly, bestie, just the highlights 🫶

OpenUniverse (aka OU, because we're close like that) is a fun, fast and free OpenGL space simulator. rn it's hyperfixated on the Solar System, and it lets you go visit all of its planets, most major moons, and a vast collection of smaller bodies — all in colorful, glorious, realtime 3D ✨. and like, if you've ever had a chance to visit Mercury or the asteroid Geographos, you'll find them here looking exactly the same way, following exactly the same path as when you left them. no cap. it's giving "we kept your seat warm" 😭💖

ngl this program really benefits from a 3D accelerator graphics card. like, it's literally the only way to ensure a decent framerate (a.k.a. speed). OU has been tested on these 3D chipsets, so here's the receipts: Voodoo 1/2/3, nVidia GeForce2 MX/MX 400 (with nVidia's binary drivers) 👑

when OpenUniverse starts up, we suggest you simply lay back for a few seconds. because bestie — you have just reached Earth! 🌍 OU's main screen with its helpful info pops up now, and the blue planet will slowly rotate in front of you, while you get a moment to enjoy its beauty and its fragility 🦋✨ iconic behaviour, honestly.

to view the Help, press the 'H' key 🆘. you can switch on and off the demo mode with the 'd' key. for other commands and functions, go check OU's manual 📖

and a lil context drop: this manual page was written for the Debian GNU/Linux distribution because the original program does not have a manual page 🙈. instead, it has documentation in the GNU Info format; see below 👇

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🎀 OPTIONS 🎀

a summary of the options is down below 💅. for a complete description, see OU's manual — this is the appetizer, not the whole meal.

• -h, --help — shows you a summary of the options. the classic "help me bestie" move 🫶
• -bench — does a benchmark of your system. let's see what you're working with 🔥
• -fullscren mode_screen — launches openuniverse fullscren 🖥️. the value mode_screen defines the screen resolution, the colordepth and the refresh rate. for example, the command line

openuniverse -fullscreen 640x480:32@70

will run OpenUniverse at a resolution of 640x480 pixels, a colordepth of 32 bit (truecolor) and at a refresh rate of 70Hz. please note that the characters 'x' and ':' are important and can't be removed (you don't have to supply a refresh rate if you don't want to — it'll use the default refresh rate for the supplied resolution). note as well that a lot of 3D cards are only capable of resolutions up to 800x600 and colordepths up to 16bit 😬 so vibe check your hardware first.

• -logfile filename — creates a logfile that describes the program operations 📝. if no filename is provided, the logfile will default to log.txt and it will be created in the current working directory.

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🔭 ABOUT 🔭

the programs are documented in the manual pages (not quite complete yet, we're working on it 💅) available in /usr/share/doc/openuniverse/manual. also go away and check the screenshots (not available in this package) that can be seen at www.openuniverse.org 📸✨

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📁 FILES 📁

• /usr/share/openuniverse/textures — textures used for planets 🌍
• /usr/share/openuniverse/fonts — fonts used by the program 🔤
• /usr/share/openuniverse/3dmodels — three dimensional models of the objects (satellites and space station) 🛰️
• /usr/share/openuniverse/data — stellar data sets. it includes a few objects from the Messier catalog and a basic set of bright stars derived from the yale bright star catalog (it includes only those entries Bayer and/or Flamsteed number and provides common names which were overlayed by closes postition match from a hand-edited list) ⭐
  • /etc/openuniverse/ — location of the configuration of openuniverse (ou.conf) ⚙️
• /usr/share/openuniverse/events 🎇
• /var/games/openuniverse/scrshots — as a Debian specific change, the Debian version of openuniverse will write its screenshots to /var/games/openuniverse/srcshots, instead of /usr/share/openuniverse/scrshots. notice, however, that users are not given full permissions to this directory (it can only be written by root or the games group). if you want to make screenshots you need to add yourself to the games group, or explicitly grant write permissions to all users in that directory (preferably adding also the sticky bit as is usually done for shared temporary directories like /tmp or /var/tmp) 📸💅
• /usr/share/doc/openuniverse — additional documentation 📚

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💀 BUGS 💀

OpenUniverse is affected by the year 2038 bug if running on a 32-bit platform 😭. the time definition used in OpenUniverse is based on a 32-bit variable and can only hold values up to 9th January 2038 (3:14:07 GMT). if time in OU is accelerated past this value, it will behave unexpectedly as time goes back to the past (to January 1901) ⏪🕰️ so like. don't time travel past 2038, bestie, it does not go how you think.

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👑 AUTHOR 👑

this manual page was written by Javier Fernandez-Sanguino <jfs@debian.org> for the Debian GNU/Linux system (but may be used by others) 🫶💖

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and that's the whole vibe, bestie 🌈✨ this page is dated abril 1, 2001 and it belongs to OPENUNIVERSE(1) — go look at some planets for me 💫🪐🎀