I implemented the "Star browser": it gets a list of stars in a certain radius from the camera (your current location). Some properties like distance, spectral class and luminosity are returned by engine immediately. But most interesting properties - number of stars in a system, number of planets, and presence of life - are not available until planetary system is being generated. SE generates systems relatively slowly - 0.1-1 seconds per system. So last 3 columns of the table are filled gradually, taking up to several minutes to be finished (depending on number of stars found, it is limited to 1024 for now). Systems are generated one by one per frame, multithreading is not used, so FPS is dropped significantly, until search finishes.

The table can be scrolled (of course), and can be sorted by any column, in ascending and descending order, by pressing keys above the table. Clicking the table row selects the star, you may press the "Goto" button or "G" key to fly there.

Generated and sorted table can be saved in a text file by pressing "Export" button. This can be useful to build external databases and watch statistics - I will use it in future to tweak the procedural stars generator.

Example of the exported table:


Class        Distance        Luminosity      App.magn      Mult  Plan  Life   Name
G0 V       7.186802E-006   2.029118E+000  -2.668559E+001     1     5     4    RS 8403-914-6-214202-31
G0 III     9.328954E+000   5.169801E+000   2.865480E+000     1     7     2    RS 8403-914-5-26775-5
M0 V       2.082997E+000   4.722701E-002   4.707967E+000     2    14     2    RS 8403-914-9-109671791-46
K2 V       1.091951E+000   2.795946E-001   1.374694E+000     1    11     2    RS 8403-914-8-13708973-44
M0 V       3.159101E+000   5.042942E-002   5.541107E+000     1    11     1    RS 8403-914-9-109671791-45


Of course this is a very cheaty feature. Now many forum's contests almost loses sense, because you can easily find a most habitable system or so. However, the searching (generating) time is quite big, and this is slightly softens the circumstances. But in the final game, you will not be able to determine the number of planets and life from the distance, you must enter the system on your spaceship to explore it. The star browser will show a number of planets/life only for systems that already has been explored by players.