Universe Sandbox
Universe Sandbox Legacy => Universe Sandbox 2008 | Discussion => Topic started by: Dan Dixon on August 10, 2009, 08:02:31 PM
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Our Universe is amazing and it feels wonderful to help share that reality with you. I want to make this my life's work.
If I had $100 million dollars I'd hire top programmers and artists to help me take Universe Sandbox to the next level, and then I'd just give it way.
Unfortunately I'm not wealthy and the most straightforward way to eventually be able to work on Universe Sandbox full time is to charge people money.
I'm really conflicted because I don't want money to get in the way to people (and kids) of using my software, but at the same time I need money to be able to take it to the next level. This is why my pricing model is "pay what you can". I feel this is a fair compromise between my need for monetization and my desire of generosity.
If someone 'steals' a copy of Universe Sandbox who doesn't have any money and they're learning about our amazing Universe then what's there for me to be upset about?
Likewise, if someone does have the means to pay for Universe Sandbox and they don't... I think that borders on the unethical. If this is you, please consider making a purchase at the price you can afford.
I don't know what each and every person's story is. I don't know if you have the means (or a parent or guardian that has the means). For some, $25 is a lot of money, while others might not give it a second thought.
I am so thankful to each and every person that has purchased a copy of Universe Sandbox. You have pushed me toward making the big leap toward the dream that has unfolded for me over the last year (making Universe Sandbox my full time job). There's still a long way to go, but I'm dedicated to making it happen.
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I never put lowest price, I always put average (in this case $25).
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Thank you Dan.
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Yes, I felt bad about purchasing it for a low price, but I'm considering a donation or something soon, so I hope that'll make it good again. :)
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Unfortunately I had to get it for only $5 because i have no income. My parents don't give me money for doing chores, and I'm underagged. I feel really bad now... :-[
hopefully my ideas will make up for it...
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Unfortunately I had to get it for only $5 because i have no income.... I feel really bad now.
Don't feel bad. That's not the point.
hopefully my ideas will make up for it...
There's no need to make up for anything.
At the same time... This forum exists, in part, to allow for the sharing of ideas with the Universe Sandbox community. The value of sharing is invaluable.
Yes, I felt bad about purchasing it for a low price, but I'm considering a donation or something soon, so I hope that'll make it good again. :)
When the new version of Universe Sandbox is released, a second purchase would be a great way of showing your support.
Either way... we're already good. No worries.
And to be clear: The new version will be fully unlocked to everyone who has purchased in the past.
Edit: This is no longer true as of 2010.
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i apology for my behavior in the last days.
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Yeah. If I had a job I would definitely paid $25 for it.
Hey Dan, do you have an estimate of how many purchases of US theres been?
:D
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Yes, and how many are buying it monthly? :P
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i apology for my behavior in the last days.
Andreas... Thank you.
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Dan, Greetings for this wonderful product and your feeling about keeping it "pay if you can". Thanks for your views about poor children who cannot pay but can learn a lot even if they have an illegal copy. What i can say is "LISTEN TO YOUR HEART". I am also a programmer in State Government office in Madhya Pradesh and not a wealthy person. Long time back I have developed a charting product for ASP websites (ProFX ASP Chart Component) and made it free for all. Similar products cost around 100-300 dollers. Approx. 2500 installations are there worldwide including Lufthansa Airlines and EA sports Canada (the giant game maker). These companies can pay but still enjoying this product and still requesting for enhancements. The money comes from where you dont expect. Some users from USA sent me a few $s time to time by their own. May be they were "listening to their heart". So, again "LISTEN TO YOUR HEART".
Best wishes.
-mahesh joshi, Bhopal. INDIA
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Thanks for your views about poor children who cannot pay but can learn a lot even if they have an illegal copy.
Your welcome.
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That one made me laugh..
Interesting..
How does one donate to you Dan?
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That one made me laugh..
Interesting..
How does one donate to you Dan?
I think you need to buy another licence. :)
Source:
How?
Buy another license for the price you can pay.
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Also if you buy another you can give it to a friend!
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:( None of my friends like space. Only one of them somewhat does. They are the new person "Ilikejuicygossip" or something.
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Well theres family too.
Or Donate it to someone on a forum you go to!
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Probably friend. I'll ask when they come over or next time I call them.
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You guys are great. I really appreciate your support.
At the same time... Please don't feel any obligation to buy multiple copies or pressure friends into buying copies.
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Friend Too
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I will continue to support your efforts Dan.
I think your software is absolutely wonderful.
Great teaching tool for kids too!
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hey dan did you ever fix that bug i told you about
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I will continue to support your efforts Dan.
I think your software is absolutely wonderful.
Great teaching tool for kids too!
same! i think schools should use it!
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I will continue to support your efforts Dan.
I think your software is absolutely wonderful.
Great teaching tool for kids too!
same! i think schools should use it!
To make it really tasteful for schools I think US would need a couple of additional tools,
capable of displaying the mathematical circumstances, different type of vectors, energies and a couple of diagram modes. Also a couple of gaugers helping to analyze the physical properties of the environment (field strength; force; distances) would probably be helpful. As I always say the potential of US is giant, since a lot of groups interested into different aspects of a gravity simulation could be pleased by it. Anyways, there we'll be lots improvements in the next version. So I'm looking forward to US 2.0. :)
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Thanks for all the support everyone.
One of my goals for the next year is to get Universe Sandbox into some schools.
To make it really tasteful for schools I think US would need....
What am I missing from this list?
- Show acceleration vectors of a body
- Show velocity vectors of a body
- Distance measurement between any two bodies
- Gravity field strength view - a fixed grid showing the force of gravity (like the diagram from your other post)
- Global system properties list: # of bodies, total mass, total energy
What do you mean by diagram modes?
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One of my goals for the next year is to get Universe Sandbox into some schools...
I might tell my science teacher about this when we get to the solar system chapter next year :) But not a promise though. :-[
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Let's continue discussing this in my thread (http://universesandbox.com/forum/index.php/topic,628.msg7525.html#new). I don't want to derail this one.
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I bought it for $3 :P, soz for that,
not that I'm poor but with those crisis stuff, and I had to buy it of my own pocket money :(
and I only had 2,80 euro left on my account,
program is amazing btw.
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Awesome program. I only wish it could use my 4 cores and/or GPU for very detailed star systems and more numerous particles etc.
It's worth the money as it looks like quite a significant amount of time was put into this software.
Looking forward to 2.0 and definitely going to be picking that up.
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When Im eighteen, I will donate because I'll get $20k :P
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I never put lowest price, I always put average (in this case $25).
Why? It doesn't matter what you pick!
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Actually it does.
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No, it is "pick your own price"
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No, it is "pick your own price"
But the money you pay go to Dan Dixon, and if he doesn't have enough money he has to spend more time at another job, meaning that he has less time to develop Universe Sandbox, meaning that it will take longer time to develop, so it does matter.
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No, it is "pick your own price"
But the money you pay go to Dan Dixon, and if he doesn't have enough money he has to spend more time at another job, meaning that he has less time to develop Universe Sandbox, meaning that it will take longer time to develop, so it does matter.
Exactly.
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No, it is "pick your own price"
But the money you pay go to Dan Dixon, and if he doesn't have enough money he has to spend more time at another job, meaning that he has less time to develop Universe Sandbox, meaning that it will take longer time to develop, so it does matter.
Oh, is that why he is delayed?
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I'm working on Universe Sandbox full time now. It's delayed because I didn't start working on it full time as soon as I had expected to and there's lots to do. Many of them improvements are under the surface and not immediately obvious.
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I think this kinda "pay as you like" policy is very generous. I mean, you could except people to pay for a quality software like this. Becouse it is quality software :D Right now, I assume there is some evil spyware on my PC, so I won't make any PayPal transactions, but if I fixed this, I will buy a license, no doubt.
Keep up the good work, Dan. I love astronomy, and destroying star-systems in top-notch 3D graphs. xD
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Get some anti-virus.
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Get some anti-virus.
You can download Microsoft's Security Essentials for free.
http://www.microsoft.com/security_essentials/
It's apparently the best, free option.
http://lifehacker.com/5433229/microsoft-security-essentials-ranks-as-best+performing-free-antivirus
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I did. And i payed for it ;) I mean for US. Not as much, as it's worth IMHO, but I guess you've heard that a lot. Right now I don't want to bother you with my life, just gotta say, I'll think about getting another licence, when things are going to clear...
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I think this kinda "pay as you like" policy is very generous. I mean, you could except people to pay for a quality software like this. Becouse it is quality software :D Right now, I assume there is some evil spyware on my PC, so I won't make any PayPal transactions, but if I fixed this, I will buy a license, no doubt.
Keep up the good work, Dan. I love astronomy, and destroying star-systems in top-notch 3D graphs. xD
i love astronomy aswell! i hope to be a scientist when i'm older :) also this software really is topnotch, i searched up any other sort of physics engine simulators but i couldnt find any! i really appreceate your work and effort you put into this, dan. i probally owe a lot of my knowledge to you.
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I never put lowest price, I always put average (in this case $25).
Yes but if your trial runs out and it asks you for a lisense # you can just put a random #'s and letters
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I've tried for somethings... I've never been sucsessful.
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hey is the beta sing up open ??? :-\
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ya i would be very happy for this sim to be FREE
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ya i would be very happy for this sim to be FREE
Then Dan has to get a job, then it would be delayed.
hey is the beta sing up open ??? :-\
It's closed.
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It think it's very true that Universe Sandbox would not be as far along if I was giving it away for free. Charging money allows me to focus my time on making Universe Sandbox as good as it can be.
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I payed $25 for US 1, now, in the upcoming 4 days... What will I have to pay since it is $4 more... ?
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It think it's very true that Universe Sandbox would not be as far along if I was giving it away for free. Charging money allows me to focus my time on making Universe Sandbox as good as it can be.
Maybe you can use some money to buy lotary tickets :P naw.... that wouldent work :P
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hey so dan if we have already purchased universe sandbow 1 do i still get universe sandbox 2?
??? ???
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wish i could buy it, but money is more of a problem right now :/ ive always been interested in space.
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Unfortunately I had to get it for only $5 because i have no income. My parents don't give me money for doing chores, and I'm underagged. I feel really bad now... :-[
hopefully my ideas will make up for it...
how did you buy it for only 5 dollars?
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how did you buy it for only 5 dollars?
In the first Universe Sandbox, you could choose the price for it. This is not the case for Universe Sandbox 2, however.
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I'll talk to my Earth Science teacher about buying Universe Sandbox.
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on steam its only $9.99
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When I first heard about Universe Sandbox I downloaded the demo and loved it. I ran out of premium and immediately attempted to find a cracked premium version, which I did and used that for the next 3 months. After then joining the forums and asking for help and actually receiving answers from Dan himself and all the other community members that payed, helping me I felt guilty and bad. I then took money from my bank (Which I was saving) and payed the full 25 dollars. It is a brilliant program.
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Thanks for picking up a copy. I hope that wasn't a huge financial burden for you.
I'm using the revenue to make Universe Sandbox better. I'm on the verge of adding a paid astronomy expert to the team. They'll primarily be helping add more awesome science.
Thanks again.
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I'm on the verge of adding a paid astronomy expert to the team.
To think just several months ago you were programming this alone.
Can't wait to see what's in store for your companies future, it's looking blindingly bright to me right now.
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I'm on the verge of adding a paid astronomy expert to the team.
To think just several months ago you were programming this alone.
Can't wait to see what's in store for your companies future, it's looking blindingly bright to me right now.
That should be Supernovaingly bright. :)
Anyways, it's cool that he is just about to add an astronomy expert or two to the team (plus the amateur knowledge of us in the community, although a few seem more knowledgeable).
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To think just several months ago you were programming this alone.
Yeah... it's pretty crazy and a huge surprise to me. It was never about the money and still isn't.
I was making Universe Sandbox for myself at the beginning, but now it's about creating the most awesome and fun way to everyone to learn about our amazing universe.
Thanks again to everyone who's purchased and made it possible for me to both work on this full time and assemble a team of super smart and talented people to make something even more awesome.
(and the next big update, Universe Sandbox 3, a full rewrite of the current version, will be a free update for everyone that's bought any version).
Anyways, it's cool that he is just about to add an astronomy expert or two to the team...
It's probably to early to confirm anything, but the individual in question just wrote up some really great information about how we can better model the properties of stars and accurately model their surface. I'll share more when I can.
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Anyways, it's cool that he is just about to add an astronomy expert or two to the team...
It's probably to early to confirm anything, but the individual in question just wrote up some really great information about how we can better model the properties of stars and accurately model their surface. I'll share more when I can.
Modelling their surface... does that mean we'll be seeing solar prominences? I don't neccesarily expect them, but it would be neat.
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i cant afford it cuz i cant get a job and my parents dont spend money on stuff like this :( i wish i could get it somehow without cheating and stealing from you
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Nope .
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:P
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Our Universe is amazing and it feels wonderful to help share that reality with you. I want to make this my life's work.
If I had $100 million dollars I'd hire top programmers and artists to help me take Universe Sandbox to the next level, and then I'd just give it way.
Unfortunately I'm not wealthy and the most straightforward way to eventually be able to work on Universe Sandbox full time is to charge people money.
I am so thankful to each and every person that has purchased a copy of Universe Sandbox. You have pushed me toward making the big leap toward the dream that has unfolded for me over the last year (making Universe Sandbox my full time job). There's still a long way to go, but I'm dedicated to making it happen.
If I were rich I would give Dan a million dollars to continue to make Universe Sandbox and other things very cool
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It almost 2014 come on HURRY RELEASE IT! It late 2013.
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3 Months till 2014!!!!! ;D ;D ;D