Brent Shapiro-Albert

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Posts by Brent Shapiro-Albert

Two Earths, each of which as been changed with frozen continents and oceans, new continents and islands, drained seas, and more.

Planetscaping | Update 29

Two Earths, each of which as been changed with frozen continents and oceans, new continents and islands, drained seas, and more.

Run Steam to download Update 29, or buy Universe Sandbox via our website or the Steam Store.

Update 29

This update introduces Planetscaping, a powerful new way to design and shape planets to your whims. Surface Lock, which gives a clear, stationary, and illuminated view of the surface of a rotating object, has been enabled to better observe how an object’s surface is changing.

Planetscaping (Surface Editing)

Create continents, freeze oceans, flood planets, and more with Planetscaping. Watch the realistic consequences of your actions unfold as you alter the face of planets. Learn more in our Planetscaping guide:
Guides > Tutorials > Planetscaping

Surface Lock

We’ve made it easier to view how the surface of an object is changing by improving and enabling Surface Lock. This gives a clear, stationary, and illuminated view of the surface of a rotating object when you zoom close to it.

More Highlights

  • We’ve added a Blank Planet, like a blank canvas for Planetscaping, to the Add panel
  • Collisions have been further improved with updated frictional forces
Before
After
  • We’ve exposed the Elevation Span, the distance between the lowest and the highest elevation point of an object, to better assist with Planetscaping

This update includes 5+ additions and 18+ fixes and improvements.

Check out the full list of What’s New in Update 29

Please report any issues on our Steam forum, on Discord, or in-game via Home > Send Feedback.

Hiring Another UI Engineer & Universe Manipulator

This position has been filled. Thank you to everyone who applied.

If this still sounds like an ideal job for you, please reach out. We are always looking for more help from the right candidates.

Universe Sandbox is a space and gravity simulator masquerading as a video game with over 750,000 unit sales and an overwhelmingly positive 95% rating on Steam.

Giant Army is looking for another creative and highly technical software engineer/programmer to help us implement and polish the user interface (UI) that controls the universe.

This position will work closely with our creator & designer, our UI team, and with support from the rest of the team, to execute our vision of a clean, minimalistic, accessible interface. Universe Sandbox development is one-half UI and one-half simulation; you should have a passion for both.

We embrace responsive design to use the same UI and codebase across all platforms (currently on Desktop, VR/AR, while working toward mobile and console releases). You should have an eye for interface animations, and take delight in pixel-perfect polish and consistency.

You might be the perfect candidate if you’ve ever agonized over blurry UI elements that are supposed to be crisp, or a UI transition that’s slightly too fast. We take heavy inspiration from Google’s Material Design system.
This is a full-time, remote position working with a 100% remote team.
Join us. We’re making something incredible that’s unlike anything else.

Your Role

  • Implement UI that makes our complex simulation accessible, based on our designer’s mockups and style guide 
  • Make sensible decisions over matters of UX where there are gaps in the provided design 
  • Maintain and proactively iterate on UI in our Unity project
  • Constantly evaluate motion, spacing, and timing to create a smooth experience
  • Stay current on Unity UI tech and trends
  • Think critically about and help us solve complex UX problems
    • Where does a new property go? What is it named? How do you show that it’s related to another property?

Qualifications

  • Experience with creating user interfaces in Unity (we use uGUI, but are looking to UI Toolkit for the future)
  • Strong C# skills
  • Excited about clean design and elegant user experiences
  • Strong attention to detail and a love of polish & iteration
  • Passion for science, astronomy, and real-time interactive simulations
  • Love of fantastical what-if scenarios: what-if.xkcd.com (note citation #6 on 148)
  • Ability to see things from our user’s perspective
  • Demonstrable experience – professional or personal projects showing your talent
  • Enjoys video games; experience with Steam

Benefits

  • This is a full-time, remote position working with a 100% remote team
  • You will have a great deal of autonomy over your working hours
  • Health coverage for all American employees
  • We also offer optional 4 day work weeks (8-hour days)

Company Overview

Giant Army is a profitable company wholly owned by Universe Sandbox’s original creator. Our headquarters are in Seattle, Washington, USA, with team members across the United States, Germany, Denmark, and Australia. 

Team members enjoy a flexible, collaborative environment that values work-life balance. We are independently published and release updates on our own (relaxed) schedule.

Giant Army provides generous paid time off, new hardware/software reimbursements, and other benefits.

We pursue features that get us excited about science. We strive to create an accessible experience that can’t be found anywhere else.

As a fully remote team since 2011, we rely on Google Workspace (Gmail, Calendar, Docs, Spreadsheets, Meet), Slack, Groove, GitHub, ZenHub, Unity, and WordPress.

We believe science and video games are for everyone, regardless of identity, and we’re committed to making an inclusive workplace. We encourage anyone who shares our passion for space to apply.

Product Overview

Universe Sandbox is a physics-based space simulator that allows you to create, destroy, and interact on an unimaginable scale. Experiment with gravity, climate, and collisions to reveal the beauty of our universe and the fragility of our planet.

It’s more than a game; it’s a way of experiencing and learning about reality in a way that’s never been done before.

Universe Sandbox is available on Windows, Mac, Linux, and VR with mobile in development and future platforms planned. We’ve sold over 750,000 copies and have an “Overwhelming Positive” rating on Steam with 95% positive user reviews.
If we don’t have an active job opening that fits your skillset, but if working on Universe Sandbox is your dream job, send us an email telling us why and we’ll at least send you back a reply.

How to Apply

This position has been filled. Thank you to everyone who applied.

If this still sounds like an ideal job for you, please reach out. We are always looking for more help from the right candidates.

A red star and a blue star shine colored light down on two different sides of a planet. A small moon is colliding with the planet, causing a shockwave across its surface.

Starlite Starbrite | Update 28.2

Run Steam to download Update 28.2, or buy Universe Sandbox via our website or the Steam Store.

Update 28.2

Stars have new Absolute and Apparent Magnitude properties, which measure their brightness from different distances. This minor update also includes improvements to black hole collisions, object trails, and bug fixes.

Stellar Magnitudes

Stars now have both Apparent and Absolute Magnitude properties, which are measures of the brightness of a star, under Properties > Temperature. Learn more in our new Stellar Magnitudes guide: Guides > Science > Stellar Magnitudes.

More Highlights

  • Colliding black holes now compute the correct Schwarzschild radius
Before
After
  • Trails for objects are no longer broken and jagged when an object is set as the trail center
Before (Bug)
After (✔️ Bug Mitigated)
  • Starlight color on nearby objects now updates in real-time
Before
After
  • Human scale objects are now simply heated by stars and supernovae to better reflect their temperature in space
Before
After
  • Created a new guide about object oblateness and its effect on gravitational fields under: Guides > Science > Non-Spherical Gravitational Fields

This update includes 3+ additions and 13+ fixes and improvements.

Check out the full list of What’s New in Update 28.2

Please report any issues on our Steam forum, on Discord, or in-game via Home > Send Feedback.

A planet and moon orbiting a star

My Eyes, the Space Goggles Do Nothing | Update 28.1

Run Steam to download Update 28.1, or buy Universe Sandbox via our website or the Steam Store.

Update 28.1

We’ve improved the “Realistic” Object Visibility setting to better reflect the sensitivity of the human eye to object brightness and colors. We also added a new “Enhanced” Object Visibility, improved collision detection, smoothed out habitable zones, added bug fixes, and more!

Realistic Object Visibility

The “Realistic” Object Visibility setting now shows objects fading in and out with adjusted colors tuned to what the human eye would see. Learn more in our guide, Limits of Human Eyes.

Before
After

Smoother Habitable Zones

The habitable zone now smoothly changes size for stars of all luminosities, including very hot, bright stars like Rigel. Check it out under View > Habitable.

Before
After

More Highlights

  • “Enhanced” has been added as an Object Visibility option, which removes rim lighting from objects while keeping them always visible
  • Collision detection has been further improved as part of our continued work to make collisions even better
Before (Bug)
After (✔️Bug Mitigated)
  • We’ve added a satellite to our human-scale objects
  • Created simulation of ESA and JAXA’s BepiColombo spacecraft flyby of Mercury in October 2021: Open > Historical > BepiColombo Flyby of Mercury in 2021
  • Open, Guides, and Workshop panels can now be pinned open, allowing for much easier simulation browsing
  • The View Settings panel has been reorganized for better clarity and usability
Before
After

This update includes 6+ additions and 12+ fixes and improvements.

Check out the full list of What’s New in Update 28.1

Please report any issues on our Steam forum, on Discord, or in-game via Home > Send Feedback.

Small moons colliding with a planet

Codename: Fire Ring | Update 28

Run Steam to download Update 28, or buy Universe Sandbox via our website or the Steam Store.

Update 28

Fire Ring introduces a collision model that simulates an impact shockwave across the surface of an object, as part of our work to continuously improve collisions. In addition, there are improvements to object trails, additional object information, bug fixes, and more.

Shocking Collisions

Object heating from impacts now realistically moves over the impacted object as a shockwave. Fragments are ejected from the edge of the shockwave at more realistic angles. Learn more in our Collisions guides:
Guides > Tutorials > Planetary Collisions
Guides > Science > Collisions: Energy, Mass, and Speed

Before
After

Impactor Heating

Both objects involved in a collision now experience collisional heating on their surfaces, instead of just the larger object.

Before
After

More Highlights

  • Grazing collisions now look more realistic with shockwaves and surface dragging
Before
After
  • Object trails are now projected back in time to show their full past trajectory
Before
After
  • Objects now have additional information (like, planet, moon, rogue object) in the property panel based on their relative motion around other objects
Before
After
  • As we work toward making our simulations more deterministic, seeds for randomized simulations are now easier to find, allowing you to recall previous random scenarios
Before
After

This update includes 6+ additions and 22+ fixes and improvements.

Check out the full list of What’s New in Update 28

Please report any issues on our Steam forum, on Discord, or in-game via Home > Send Feedback.

Screenshot of the laser tool on Earth in Universe Sandbox on a smartphone.

Hiring a Cross-Platform Engineer

This position has been filled. Thank you to everyone who applied.

If this still sounds like an ideal job for you, please reach out. We are always looking for more help from the right candidates.

Universe Sandbox is a space and gravity simulator masquerading as a video game with over 870,000 unit sales and an Overwhelmingly Positive 95% rating on Steam.

Giant Army is looking for a creative and highly technical cross-platform engineer to help put Universe Sandbox in everyone’s pocket (and, eventually, in the living room). 

We are a close-knit multidisciplinary team of astrophysicists, engineers, graphics developers, and designers that highly values individual contributions and collaborative problem-solving. The company name, Giant Army, was inspired by the concept of “standing on the shoulders of giants.”

Our mission is to reveal the awesomeness of the universe and the fragility of our planet through real-time interaction, creation, and destruction of a realistic, science-based simulation.

Cross-Platform Goals

Help us solve the complex challenge of bringing Universe Sandbox to all platforms. We are getting closer to our initial mobile release (iOS & Android) and need some help pushing us over the finish line. We plan to begin console development in 2022.

We embrace responsive design and use the same UI and codebase across all platforms; desktop, AR/VR, and mobile are all built from the same project. 

You might be the perfect candidate if you:

  • Enjoy solving technical challenges with multi-platform support
  • Have shipped titles on desktop, mobile, and console
  • Strive to make the user experience feel great on desktop, mobile, and console without compromise

Join us. We’re making something incredible that’s unlike anything else.

Your Role

  • Work with our team to bring the best possible experience to mobile, consoles, and future platforms, without losing desktop functionality
  • Help solve technical issues with input, performance, and overall usability
  • Plan for the future as we dive into gamepad and console support
  • Stay current on Unity’s tech and trends. We’re working on a major rewrite to be more closely integrated with Unity’s DOTS Physics.

Qualifications

  • Professional or personal programming projects showing your passion
  • Experience with C# & Unity (DOTS knowledge a bonus)
  • Strong attention to detail and a love of polish & iteration
  • Experience shipping titles on mobile or console platforms (ideally)
  • Unity native plugin experience (Objective-C, Java) preferred
  • Passion for science, astronomy, and real-time interactive simulations
  • Love of fantastical what-if scenarios: what-if.xkcd.com (note citation #6 on 148)
  • Ability to see things from our user’s perspective
  • Appreciation of video games

Benefits

  • This is a full-time, remote position working with a 100% remote team
  • You will have a great deal of autonomy over your working hours
  • Health coverage for all American employees
  • We also offer optional 4 day work weeks (8-hour days)

Company Overview

Giant Army is a profitable company wholly owned by Universe Sandbox’s original creator; we have no publishers, marketing department, or external stakeholders to derail our vision. We are a decentralized, remote team founded in Seattle, Washington, USA, with members across the United States, Germany, Denmark, and Australia. 

Team members enjoy a flexible, collaborative environment that values work-life balance. We are independently published and release updates on our own (relaxed) schedule.

Giant Army provides generous paid time off, new hardware/software reimbursements, healthcare, and other benefits.

We pursue features that get us excited about science. We strive to create an accessible experience that can’t be found anywhere else.

As a fully remote team since 2011, we rely on Google Workspace (Gmail, Calendar, Docs, Spreadsheets, Meet), Slack, Groove, GitHub, ZenHub, Unity, WordPress, and Notion.

We believe science and video games are for everyone, regardless of identity, and we’re committed to making an inclusive workplace. We encourage anyone who shares our passion for space to apply.

Product Overview

Universe Sandbox is a physics-based space simulator that allows you to create, destroy, and interact on an unimaginable scale. Experiment with gravity, climate, and collisions to reveal the beauty of our universe and the fragility of our planet.

It’s more than a game; it’s a way of experiencing and learning about reality in a way that’s never been done before.

Universe Sandbox is available on Windows, Mac, Linux, and VR with mobile in development and future platforms planned. We’ve sold over 870,000 copies and have an “Overwhelming Positive” rating on Steam with 95% positive user reviews.

If we don’t have an active job opening that fits your skill set, but working on Universe Sandbox is your dream job, send us an email telling us why and we’ll at least send you back a reply.

How to Apply

This position has been filled. Thank you to everyone who applied.

If this still sounds like an ideal job for you, please reach out. We are always looking for more help from the right candidates.

Screenshot of the laser tool on Earth in Universe Sandbox on a smartphone.

Universe Sandbox for Mobile | DevLog 1

Universe Sandbox on iOS! We’re also working on an Android version.

You can purchase Universe Sandbox via our website or the Steam Store.

Have you ever wanted a universe in your pocket? We have too, and so we’ve been actively working on a mobile version of Universe Sandbox for both iOS and Android to make this a reality.

Universe Sandbox for mobile will have the same features and interface as the desktop version (in fact mobile and desktop are built from the same source code) and we are working to make sure it is an equally enjoyable experience.

All-Around Improved Experience

Our work on mobile has motivated many features and improvements that have already been made to the desktop version. This includes automatic scaling of graphics settings based on screen resolution and the separate, minimizable panel that comes up when you use a tool, like the laser. Additionally, optimizing Universe Sandbox for mobile has the added benefit of improving performance on the desktop version.

Screenshot of the laser tool on Earth in Universe Sandbox on a smartphone.
Adapting Universe Sandbox for mobile challenged us to simplify our user interface to its core, resulting in changes like the separate, minimizable panel for the tool currently in use, like the laser (shown in the lower right here on a smartphone).

Designing a Handheld Universe Simulator

For the last few months, we’ve been focusing on making sure the mobile version is just as fun to play as the desktop version. In Update 26, we unified the user interface across desktop and VR, and we’re continuing to develop this unified interface with physically smaller (that is, mobile) screens in mind. You can check out how we are building this flexible user interface right now by making the window in the desktop version small. If you do try this, you’ll notice it presents quite a design challenge, not only for existing features but also for any features we add.

The interface filling up the entire screen on a mobile phone shows how challenging it can be to fit all of the windows on a smaller display.

You may have seen some of the improvements we’ve made to our user interface in recent updates. For example, our bottom bar redesigns both create a sleeker, more adaptable desktop experience while also making everything more accessible on mobile. However, we are still working on solving a few design challenges including (but not limited to):

  • What’s the best way to manage all of the different panels on a small screen (our guide system creates particular challenges)?
  • Working around the limitations of minimum button sizes required for a touchscreens
  • How do we make the user interface work in both portrait and landscape orientations?
Lower amounts of memory on mobile phones, as well as hardware limitations leading to poor performance, are two of the challenges we are still working on to get Universe Sandbox to run smoothly on mobile devices.

What’s Next for Mobile Development

We have been working on numerous updated user interface designs that improve functionality and clarity no matter what device you are on, and implementing those is one of our major next steps. We’re also currently hiring a cross-platform engineer to help bring Universe Sandbox to mobile and beyond.

There are occasional bugs to fix in the mobile version, such as this one showing patchy trails on an iOS phone at high simulation speeds. (By the way, we fixed this bug!)

While we still do not have a release date or official price for mobile, we currently plan on it being a one-time paid app with no ads or in-app purchases. We hope to write more of these mobile-focused DevLogs as we make more progress, so stay tuned!

If you want to receive updates when there is new information about mobile, like this DevLog, sign up for our mailing list:
http://universesandbox.com/mobile/ 

To join our community discussions, please join us on our Steam Forum and our official Discord community

Atmospheric Adjustments | Update 27.2

Run Steam to download Update 27.2, or buy Universe Sandbox via our website or the Steam Store.

Update 27.2

You can now change specific simulation interactions, like gravity and collisions, on a per-object basis! This minor update also includes simulated atmosphere opacity (a measure of how hard it is to see through the atmosphere), bug fixes, and more.

Individual Object Simulation Manipulation

The ability to turn off specific simulation interactions on a per-object basis has been added to all objects in Properties > Overview. We plan to add to this over time, and we hope you enjoy creating all kinds of crazy scenarios with these options as much as we do!

Opaque Atmospheres

Atmosphere Opacity is now simulated based on an object’s properties, like Radius and Atmosphere Mass. Learn more about this new feature in our Atmospheres guide under Guides > Science > Atmospheres.

More Highlights

  • Polar ice caps on random rocky planets are now informed by the water depth around the poles and are no longer circles
Before
After
  • Opening multiple surface data views no longer causes a noticeable reduction in performance


Check out the full list of What’s New in Update 27.2

Please report any issues on our Steam forum, on Discord, or in-game via Home > Send Feedback.

Cloud Speed Simulation | ScienceLog #5

Universe Sandbox now realistically simulates the speeds at which clouds rotate.

One of our recent improvements to Universe Sandbox includes realistically simulating the speed at which clouds rotate around objects, like planets and moons. While our in-game guide, which can be found under Guides > Science > Clouds, shows off these new features, we wanted to explain them in a little more depth.

To simulate completely realistic clouds, we would need to do a full weather simulation, including the water cycle. As we talk about in our Snow Simulation ScienceLog, this isn’t currently possible without a supercomputer, so for now our clouds are drawn from pre-made cloud pictures. However, we determine the speed at which clouds rotate around an object’s surface from two simulated effects.

Simulating realistic weather patterns faster than real time (one second per second) is very difficult, especially with your average computer.

Creating Wind

In reality wind is initially created going in an unexpected direction – it travels outwards from the equator to the poles instead of rotating around the equator.

This is because objects are (generally) warmer at their equator and colder at their poles. The higher temperatures at the equator lead to a higher air pressure (essentially the weight of the atmosphere) at the equator, while colder temperatures at the poles lead to lower air pressure. The high pressure air at the equator moves to the lower pressure air at the poles, creating a wind that moves the clouds with it.

This wind moves faster, increasing the cloud speed, the larger the temperature difference between the equator and the poles is, since this will create a larger air pressure difference. In Universe Sandbox we simulate this difference in air pressure between an object’s equator and its poles based on the difference between its Minimum and Maximum Temperature, which are usually at the poles and equator.

By lasering Mars, we are increasing the maximum temperature, which increases the difference between the maximum and minimum temperatures on Mars, as well as the difference between maximum and minimum air pressures, which increases the cloud speed.

Changing the Wind’s Direction

So if wind, and clouds, starts out moving from the equator to the poles, why is it that in reality (and in Universe Sandbox) the wind and clouds move around the Earth’s equator?

This has to do with something called the Coriolis effect – the second effect we simulate for our cloud rotation speeds – which is an effect that occurs on any object that rotates. The Coriolis effect creates a force, called the Coriolis force, that pushes the wind around the Earth’s (or any object’s) equator. The strength of this force increases the faster the object is rotating.

The Resulting Rotation (Speed)

So we now have two effects pushing the winds, and thus clouds, in two different directions:

  1. The difference in air pressure (and temperature) between the equator and the poles of the object forces the winds to move outwards from the equator to the poles.
  2. The Coriolis Effect pushes the winds around the equator of an object.

So how do we arrive at the final wind, and cloud, rotation speed? The wind speed will increase until the strength of both effects on the wind is the same. When this happens, the wind and clouds end up rotating around the equator of the object at a constant, unchanging speed. In Universe Sandbox this speed is taken as the Cloud Rotation Speed.

Manipulating the Winds

A really interesting effect that happens when our two simulated effects have the same strength is that the faster an object rotates, the slower the cloud speed will be.

The cloud rotation speed here is changing only based on the rotation speed of Earth. Slower planet rotation speeds lead to faster cloud rotation speeds, which is not what you’d expect at first.

A faster object Rotation Speed creates a stronger force from the Coriolis effect, which allows the two effects to reach an equal strength more quickly. This means that the wind speed has less time to increase before it becomes constant. The result is that the final wind, and Cloud Rotation Speed, is slower.

In addition to Rotation Speed and the Minimum and Maximum Temperature, the strength of the wind that is created from the temperature difference also depends on the Atmosphere Mass, the Surface Gravity, and the Radius of the object (see the Bonus Math section below for details). This is because a more massive atmosphere will slow down the Cloud Rotation Speed, since it is harder to move, and a smaller object radius will increase the Cloud Rotation Speed, since it is easier to move air around a smaller object.

While simulating these effects is a welcomed advancement in our cloud simulation, there are still many improvements we would like to make. This includes dynamically generating clouds and giving them more realistic material compositions. For now, try experimenting with different object properties to see how they affect the Cloud Rotation Speed. We recommend the object’s Rotation Speed, since we can’t slow down the Earth in real life (nor would we want to), this is a great way to see some amazing science at work!


This blog post is part of our ongoing series of ScienceLog articles, intended to share the science behind some of Universe Sandbox’s most interesting features. If you would love to learn about the real-life science powering our simulator, please stay tuned and let us know what you would like to read about next.

To join our community discussions, please join us on our Steam Forum and our official Discord community.


Bonus Math

If you’re interested in exactly how different object properties relate to both the force from the difference in the air pressure between the equator and the poles (called the pressure gradient) and the force from the Coriolis effect (called the Coriolis force) then you’ll enjoy this extra little bit of math. 

When we simulate the cloud rotation speed we figure out the pressure difference, ΔP, which is based on the maximum atmosphere surface pressure, Pmax. This is the surface pressure at the equator, and depends on the Atmosphere Mass, M, the Surface Gravity, g, and the radius of the planet, R,

P_{\rm{max}} = Mg/(4 \pi R^{2}).

The pressure and temperature of a gas are related (by something called the Ideal Gas Law), so we can compute ΔP using just Pmax and the maximum and minimum temperature, Tmax and  Tmin , of the object,

\Delta P = P_{\rm{max}} \left(\frac{T_{\rm{max}}}{T_{\rm{min}}} - 1 \right).

Now that we have this pressure difference, we can compute the force, F, that this pressure gradient applies over a certain amount of air mass, m. This force per mass is what causes winds and clouds to move and depends on ΔP (and a few other less important things). That means that this force can change depending on M, g, R, Tmax and  Tmin , (that is Atmosphere Mass, Surface Gravity, Radius, Maximum Temperature, and Minimum Temperature respectively) so all of these properties affect the cloud rotation speed,

\frac{F}{m} \propto \Delta P \propto P_{\rm{max}} \times \frac{T_{\rm{max}}}{T_{\rm{min}}} \propto 
 \frac{Mg}{R^{2}} \times \frac{T_{\rm{max}}}{T_{\rm{min}}}.

Here the ∝ symbol means “proportional to,” which is similar to an equals sign, “=”, but leaves out some of the less important values. The Coriolis Force also provides a force per mass in order to move clouds. This force is dependent on a few different things, but in particular it depends on the rotation speed of the planet, Ω, and the speed that the wind is already moving due to the pressure gradient, v,

\frac{F}{m} \propto \Omega v.

To reach a balanced state where the wind, and clouds, are moving around the equator of an object at a constant speed, the two forces must be equal, leading to the relationship

\Omega v \propto  \frac{Mg}{R^{2}} \times \frac{T_{\rm{max}}}{T_{\rm{min}}}.

Now the value we want is the wind, or cloud, rotation speed, v. Rearranging the above equation gives us

v \propto \frac{Mg}{\Omega R^{2}} \times \frac{T_{\rm{max}}}{T_{\rm{min}}}.

So what does this mean? First, the larger the difference between the minimum and maximum temperature, the faster the clouds will move. This is because a larger temperature difference means a larger pressure difference, thus faster winds. 

It also shows mathematically why a more massive atmosphere slows the cloud rotation speed and a smaller radius can dramatically increase the cloud rotation speed like we discussed above.

But the most interesting consequence of this relationship is that it shows why it is that the faster an object rotates, the slower the cloud speed will be. This result was so surprising to us at first that we had to triple check it (we’re convinced it is correct now, don’t worry). While it’s impossible to slow down the Earth’s rotation in reality (not to mention the immense destruction that would cause if we could), exploring in Universe Sandbox allows you to see the consequences of some beautiful math for yourself.

The feature image shows a laser heating up the Earth to speed up the cloud rotation with no planetary rim lighting.

Clouds in Motion | Update 27.1

Run Steam to download Update 27.1, or buy Universe Sandbox via our website or the Steam Store.

Update 27.1

Cloud speed is now simulated based on an object’s temperature and rotation speed. Surface simulation performance improvements, an Appearance interface redesign, adjustable planetary rim lighting, and more round out this minor update.

The feature image shows a laser heating up the Earth to speed up the cloud rotation and our new atmosphere opacity property.

Simulated Cloud Speed

Cloud speed is now simulated based on an object’s temperature and rotation speed as part of our continued incremental improvements of clouds. Check out our new Clouds guide for a tour through our entire cloud system: Guides > Science > Clouds.

Before
After

Easier Appearance Editing

As part of our continued user interface improvements, the Properties > Appearance tab has been redesigned to combine color customization with visibility and other options to make changing the appearance of an object even easier.

More Highlights

  • Surface Simulation has been improved to update only objects that are changing each frame, improving performance for simulations with many objects
  • Created simulation of NASA’s Juno spacecraft flyby of Ganymede in June 2021: Open > Historical > Juno Flyby of Ganymede in 2021
  • Star glows correctly fade as you get farther away from them when Object Visibility is set to Realistic again
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  • Added Atmosphere Density and Speed of Sound Properties to Properties > Surface > Atmosphere
  • Rim Lighting can now be adjusted under View > Object Visibility > Rim Lighting

Check out the full list of What’s New in Update 27.1

You can also check out our 2021 Roadmap to learn more about what we’re currently working on!

Please report any issues on our Steam forum, on Discord, or in-game via Home > Send Feedback.