Galaxy Project is a new multi-user virtual reality environment where you can explore fully spherical planets created by other players in the community. The project is currently in alpha development and some features are not yet implemented. This introduction is a guide to the features we have already established, as well as an outline of future development goals.

Each world is a life size procedurally generated spherical planet in orbit around one of the stars in a virtual galaxy. When walking on the planets surface, it can be hard to tell that you are in fact walking on the surface of a sphere but this becomes clear if you fly up from the surface into the planets orbit.

World Building

When a player has ownership of an area of land, or the planet itself, they have the ability to build on that land. There are two ways to create models on the planets surface. The first is to use a set of basic 3d shapes provided by the building system that can be spawned on the surface and edited to create models directly. The next and most powerful way is to import a model that has been created in a 3D modeling program such as Blender.

After a model is imported, it can be dragged from the players inventory and dropped into the world. Other content such as textures and animations can also be imported to be used in building or avatar customization.

Models can have other extended properties applied to make them more interactive. This is achieved using 'Model Modifiers'. A modifier is simply a tag that is applied to a model that marks that model as having a specific extended functionality. Examples of modifiers are Extended Physics and Particle Emitter.

Avatar Customization

Textures can be used to create clothing assets which can be applied to the players avatar. Multiple clothing layers can be applied and the viewer merges each layer into a single texture for each part of the avatar. These single merged textures are then uploaded to the server and shared with other users. This means that an avatar can wear lots of clothing layers with out that slowing down the loading or rendering of avatars.

3D models can also be attached at specific joint positions on the skeleton allowing for hair, jewelry and hand held items. For a model to be attached to the avatar, it must have the Avatar Attachment modifier applied. 

Economy And Marketplace

It will also be possible to share models and other inventory items with the community. Galaxy has its own virtual currency and players will be able to buy and sell content either in stores created in world or via an online marketplace. When an item is given away or sold, the creator may have imposed permissions on that item to limit how it can be modified or further shared by its next owner.

Vehicals

At the moment the only option for moving around the planet surface is to walk, fly or teleport. In the future we plan to add vehicles such as cars, planes and spacecraft to help assist getting around the vast virtual space. It will be possible eventually to take a shuttle from the surface of the planet and fly into space to meet a large starship in a planets orbit. Content creators will also be able to create these craft. The transitions between the planets surface will be seamless with no loading screens or noticeable transition points.