Development

Since our last sneak peek of the Universe Sandbox graphics update, we’ve put out a preview version of our new state-of-the-art graphics system that you can test now on Steam to immerse yourself in a universe more awe-inspiring and realistic than ever before. We’ve also made many interface improvements to make controlling the universe easier and more intuitive.

There’s still more to do before this update is ready for release, but we wanted to share other improvements you can look forward to and test out right now.

Try the preview, including these interface improvements, right now!

Learn how to opt-in to this preview version on Steam, now available for testing and feedback.
https://universesandbox.com/support/previewversion 

You can learn more about all the additions and improvements that are part of this preview version in our preview What’s New.

The properties panel now lets you edit multiple objects at once. We’ve even added a new selection tool to make it easier to select multiple objects.

We’ve implemented a new user interface system that automatically positions, resizes, and closes panels so you can always see the simulation and focus on manipulating the universe instead of managing panels.

All object properties now support basic math. Try typing “*42” into a property to multiply by 42 or “/3” to divide by 3, for example.

Move across the surface of a planet with the WASD keys after landing on it by zooming in for a closer look or using the Land action button in the planet’s Overview tab.

It’s now easier to create binary systems orbiting a common center of mass (also called a barycenter). View and adjust an object’s Orbital Elements around a binary by selecting the system’s barycenter as the object’s Orbital Parent.

We’ve added all-new Action buttons at the top of every Properties tab. Quickly fly to a planet or explode it. Your call. (These buttons replace the Action tab)

Save objects or learn more about real astronomical ones with our new Wikipedia button under Additional Actions.

Use the new Inspect tool to quickly see the temperature, material composition, elevation, and other properties of specific points on a planet’s surface.

Stars and collisions can be blindingly bright. We’re overhauling the View panel with more intuitive controls and lighting options to show the action while preserving life-like accuracy and letting you customize your view of the universe. Learn more in our new guide under

Home > Guides > Tutorials > A Realistic View of Space

We’ve updated our Data View color maps to make them more perceptually uniform, along with adding colorblind-friendly color maps and the ability to invert them.

This preview version includes over 50 fixes and improvements related to all aspects of Universe Sandbox.

Our new graphics renderer and interface improvements are still in progress, and final appearances may look different. We’re excited for you all to test out the preview version and eventually share the full update with everybody.

Join our community discussions on our Steam Forum and our official Discord community.

Our new composition system, including eight new materials, like oxygen and methane, is still in active development and has not been released, but you can opt-in to a preview version now on Steam. Every planet in Universe Sandbox is simulated with a combination of materials, like iron and water, that are used to compute properties like planet radius and water flow. However, our current composition system is too simple to simulate phenomena like lakes of liquid methane on Saturn’s moon Titan. Our new system will allow you to realistically simulate planet surfaces and atmospheres, accurately terraform planets, and more.

Try the Terraforming | Update 34 preview right now!

Eight new materials and our new composition system are now available for testing and feedback. Learn how to opt-in to a preview version on Steam:

https://universesandbox.com/support/previewversion

Material Properties in Universe Sandbox

Current Composition System

Universe Sandbox’s current composition system uses four materials (iron, silicate, water, and hydrogen) each with a set of physical properties including

• Density – to compute an object’s mass and radius and determine where materials are within a planet (for example, iron is the densest so it’s at the core).
• Thermal capacity – energy required to increase the material’s temperature by one degree. Used to determine the Surface Heat Capacity of a planet.
• Molecular weight – average mass of a molecule of the material. Used to create clouds of evaporating gas called volatiles.

Water, the only material currently simulated across an object’s surface, has some additional properties

• Boiling point – temperature where a material changes from a liquid to a gas
• Melting point – temperature where a material changes from a solid to a liquid
• Mass of the material in each phase (solid, liquid, or gas)
• Liquid and solid density, heat of fusion, and heat of vaporization – to determine how fast water flows, evaporates, and freezes on planet surfaces
• Realistic (and customizable) colors

New Composition System

Our new composition system has 12 materials: iron, silicate, water, hydrogen, helium, carbon dioxide, oxygen, sulfur dioxide, methane, nitrogen, argon, and ammonia. These are the materials necessary to simulate the most interesting internal, liquid, and atmospheric properties of most objects in our Solar System. Many, like oxygen and carbon dioxide, will also be necessary for life simulation.

Each material has all the properties described above, and they will update in real-time according to the conditions on the planet (though iron and silicate will only exist inside planets and won’t have customizable colors). Want to know the freezing point of carbon dioxide or see how fast it’s evaporating on your custom planet? We’ll simulate it in real time.

Using New Materials for Simulation

Material Phases

In our new system, all new materials can exist inside of, on the surface of, or in the atmosphere of a planet. A material’s phase will be simulated based on its temperature and pressure using something called a phase diagram. Our phase diagrams, which show a material’s state at different temperatures and pressures, are based on data taken in labs as well as geological and astrophysical models of planets. Check out the real-life phase diagram of water from Wikipedia as an example, pictured below.

We plan to show the phase diagrams we’re using to simulate each material eventually, but right now, they’re primarily for testing. Our phase diagrams have been simplified for performance reasons but still closely reflect the scientific phase diagrams. You can compare our water phase diagram below, which has been edited for clarity, to the real-life phase diagram of water above.

Planet Interiors

The cores of planets are hot and under intense pressure. These extreme conditions affect a material’s phase and density and thus the volume the material takes up in a planet’s interior. We’re using realistic models of planet density to compute and dynamically update planet radii from their compositions.

The graphs above show Earth’s density based on depth (or radius) in Universe Sandbox (top) compared to a scientifically researched model (bottom). While our in-game model is simplified, both graphs have the same shape and similar densities when compared to the radius. Comparing models allows us to check the integrity of our in-game model. 

Our new composition model is more realistic but does not account for the porosity, or amount of tiny holes, of the internal structure of some objects, like the Moon. This means our model simulates some object radii slightly smaller than in real life. To account for this, we’ve added a porosity factor, which is usually an increase of a few percent, to adjust known object radii to match their real values.

The materials on the inside of planets, including iron and silicate (which are only simulated in planet interiors), do not mix together like materials on the surface or in atmospheres. Instead, we simulate planet interiors with layers of individual materials to accurately compute their radii.

Surfaces

Planets can be constructed with any (or all) of the materials available in Universe Sandbox using the Planetscaping tool, Material tool, or an object’s Composition tab. The four materials with the most mass are automatically simulated across an object’s surface, similar to how water is simulated now. You’ll also be able to override this and choose which four materials to simulate across an object’s surface regardless of mass.

Surface materials freeze into ices, evaporate to become part of the atmosphere, and melt or condensate to flow together and form oceans. This allows us to realistically simulate phenomena like the lakes of liquid methane on Saturn’s moon Titan and plumes of gas evaporating into the atmosphere during collisions.

We plan to increase the number of simulated surface materials in the future, but we’re still determining the best way to do that without decreasing performance. For now, we’ve found that four materials allow for realistic simulation and fun experimentation without significantly affecting performance.

We simulate material colors on the surface and in the atmosphere based on their thickness and scientific measurements of how much light they absorb and emit. The colors of materials in each phase are also customizable across the simulation. For example, liquid water has the same base color on all planets (not including other color changes from the atmosphere or starlight).

Our material color simulation only simulates single material colors and doesn’t include any complex particles that might normally be suspended in them in real life. This means Venus and Titan may not look completely realistic yet because their atmosphere color comes from tiny amounts of complex materials not in Universe Sandbox. We are actively working on the best way to realistically simulate these colors.

Atmospheres

Atmosphere color, opacity, amount of atmospheric heating (the greenhouse effect), and amount of Rayleigh scattering (which determines how light scatters in the atmosphere and is what makes Earth’s daytime sky appear blue) on planets is realistically simulated from the mixture of gasses in a planet’s atmosphere. 

You can create realistic Earth-like atmospheres for habitable planets and oppressive Venus-like atmospheres just based on their compositions. Currently in Universe Sandbox, this is only possible by manually changing a planet’s Infrared Emissivity, which can increase the amount of heat the atmosphere of a planet retains.

The color and opacity are simulated locally throughout a planet’s atmosphere. If you add lots of oxygen in a single region of a planet’s atmosphere, it will get more opaque and change color based on the amount of oxygen in just that area.

New Minimum Operating System Requirements

To add new materials and eventually simulate more than four materials across planet surfaces, we will be dropping support for Windows 7 when this feature is released.

While it is never fun to have support dropped, this will affect just 0.25% of our users and will allow us to leverage newer computational methods to increase the performance of our surface simulation. 

We’ll make sure all users who are affected by this change will be able to access the final version of Universe Sandbox with Windows 7 support.

What’s Still Being Worked On?

We’ve been prioritizing designing the properties, data views, and tools for you to easily construct atmospheres, build and terraform planets, and track these materials, but the interface for using them is still a work in progress.

Planets saved in previous versions of Universe Sandbox will only have the previous four materials, which will look and behave differently in our new composition system. Imagine Earth with a pure hydrogen atmosphere – not very realistic. We’re still trying to make this process as smooth as possible, and eventually, you’ll be able to easily update your planet’s atmosphere to be similar to Earth, Venus, Mars, or Titan.

And like any new feature, there may be bugs we have yet to find and fix – and you can help!

Try the Terraforming | Update 34 preview right now!

Eight new materials and our new composition system are now available for testing and feedback. Learn how to opt-in to a preview version on Steam:

https://universesandbox.com/support/previewversion

Let us know what you think and show us what you do with these new materials!

Join our community discussions on our Steam Forum and our official Discord community.

Bringing the complete Universe Sandbox experience to mobile is an exciting and challenging project, and while development was stalled while hiring a new user interface engineer, we are back on track! While we still don’t have a release date for Universe Sandbox on mobile, we want to share our recent progress and current obstacles.

For an overview of our plans for Universe Sandbox on mobile devices, you can read our first Mobile DevLog.

Pocket-Sized Complexities

We’ve been thinking about Universe Sandbox mobile for a long time and have been developing our panels and buttons to be easy to view and use on small screens for years. In fact, Universe Sandbox mobile is built from the exact same code as the version you already know and love, so it will have the same features and user interface as the desktop experience. 

This shared codebase means you can enjoy any new features and improvements we add to Universe Sandbox on any device, whether you’re on a desktop, laptop, VR headset, phone, or tablet.

While these are seemingly simple goals, they create complex design challenges:

• How to automatically arrange panels and adjust your view so you can focus on controlling the simulation, not having to manage the user interface
• Switching between multiple panels, like an object’s properties, data views, and guide instructions, on small screens in landscape and portrait modes
• Overhauling our simulation tools (like explode, laser, and planetscaping), to adapt to all screen sizes

Under New (Layout) Management

While most other simulators and games have a different user interface for their mobile and desktop versions, we want ours to use the exact same interface for all platforms. We think we’re among the first to do this, but if you know of another or have done this with your game, please let us know! You can see what Universe Sandbox mobile might look like right now (including why we haven’t released it yet) by resizing the Universe Sandbox window on your computer to the size of your phone (since our user interface dynamically responds to your window size).

While we are still making performance improvements so Universe Sandbox can run smoothly on phones, our primary obstacle in mobile development is ensuring our interface is usable on a small touch screen like a phone. We’ve started tackling it by designing a system to intelligently hide and reveal panels as they open and close, which we’re calling our Dynamic Layout System.

While creating this system will take time, it should allow future improvements and new features to work in Universe Sandbox without any extra development, regardless of whether you’re playing on mobile or desktop. That means we’ll have more time to work on new features instead of spending time implementing the same feature in two different ways.

Current Progress

We’ve been researching the best way to create this dynamic panel management system and have made significant progress implementing it within Universe Sandbox.

There’s still other work to be done, and we do not have a release date or official price for mobile, but we’re still planning on it being a one-time paid app with no ads or in-app purchases. 

We have yet to finalize the minimum device requirements for the mobile version, but it will likely require a modern device with decent specs. We will share more about hardware requirements as soon as we finalize them.

Taking a feature-rich, user-interface-heavy desktop game and porting it to mobile presents many challenges, but we are excited to tackle them and create an experience unlike any other at your fingertips.

To receive updates about mobile, like this one, sign up for our mailing list:
http://universesandbox.com/mobile/ 

Join our community discussions on our Steam Forum and our official Discord community.