Doctor Who Universe 2.0 is moving completely away from the old engine I had and I am writing my own so you will expect the same as in version 1.0 with some possible differences. You will be inside the TARDIS console room moving about in space, or you can switch to external view. There may or may not be a smooth transition from outer space to landing on planets possibly not due to the fact the TARDIS materialises on planets, doesnt enter the atmosphere and land. Which will provide me with a simpler method of displaying planet surfaces. There will be specular and bumpmaps applied to all planets. They will basically look like they do in Celestia:
This isnt the best example yet as its WIP:
http://celestialvisions.net/pics/s1.jpg
http://celestialvisions.net/pics/s2.jpg
Ive used perlin noise to combine two random textures and two sets of random colors. Out of 4 textures I have produced 100 completely different looking planets.
There might be some things missing in the new version such as a scripting engine. That will come later and believe me it WONT be xml! Probably similar to Celestia's ssc format...
There will also be a far better rendering of stars including pulsars and black holes and any others I can think of...