Alpha 13 Preview (12.5) now available - December 25, 2014

[Dan Dixon]

Despite our best efforts, Alpha 13 is taking longer than we planned, so we’ll release it to everyone in January. In the meantime, here’s what we've gotten done so far.

Among other issues, this preview includes the new collision rewrite which is still very much in progress. Accuracy adjustments, fragmentation, and Roche limits aren't working yet.

How to get the preview?
This is an opt-in update.
1 - Right click on Universe Sandbox ² in your Steam Library and click 'Properties'.
2 - Click on the 'BETAS' tab, and then select 'alpha13preview' from the drop down list. (if you don't see this option, try restarting Steam)

If you want to go back to Alpha 12.1, go back to the 'betas' tab and select 'none' from the drop down list.

If you don't already own Universe Sandbox ², you can buy it here:
http://universesandbox.com/buy/

What's new?

This version introduces Mars climate simulation, a planetary cutaway view, radial velocities and light curves, and an improved graphing tool. Refactored physics and collision systems means performance boosts and better collisions more of the time. There are also further improvements to the UI and graphics, as well as bug fixes.

Complete List of Updates

Let us know what you think! And please report any problems either with the in game feedback tool or in this thread.

And happy holidays everyone!

[Gordon Freeman]

Really cool. I like the new background for the Solar System Simulation. The starry one was so empty and generic, and essentially pretty ugly.

[DaniheltheMage]

Uhhh, why does the smaller object in a collision just disappear?

[smjjames]

Uhhh, why does the smaller object in a collision just disappear?

Well, it IS a work in progress. Would help to give an example of what you're seeing though.

[valentin123]

Oh,finally 

[crashman1390]

Nice, thanks Dan!

Merry Christmas by the way! 

[nosirrbro]

Cant wait for the full release when roche limits are introduced

[smjjames]

I'm really not liking the camera inertia while zooming, what if I don't want to zoom in quite as far as the camera inertia is sending me?

I know I could use the scroll zoom, but it's rather sensitive, maybe because it's a touchpad mouse (laptop).

Edit: I see what danihel is talking about, yeah the body just sort of vanishes and is replaced by a cloud of vapor. I'm guessing WIP thing.

Edit2: Um, the one I'm looking at seems to have become a comet? with a semivisible shockwave of a cloud in front of it and a blobby tail. Maybe I'll do regular collisions to get a better sense of it.

[Dan Dixon]

Really cool. I like the new background for the Solar System Simulation. The starry one was so empty and generic, and essentially pretty ugly.

Thanks. The new background is from Axel Mellinger:
http://home.arcor-online.de/axel.mellinger/

I'm really not liking the camera inertia while zooming, what if I don't want to zoom in quite as far as the camera inertia is sending me?

I don't think this has changed since 12.1, is this a new issue or one you've had all along?

Uhhh, why does the smaller object in a collision just disappear?

Collisions are more WIP than usual and there are a number of broken issues and things still to fix regarding the new system.

[crashman1390]

Just threw an asteroid at earth...  :|

My number of posts is the magic number!

[Dan Dixon]

Strange... large bodies collide no problem, but use the 1 key to fire a small asteroid at the Earth and it disappears. We'll fix it. Thanks.

[Gordon Freeman]

@Dan
This used to be an issue but seemed to be fixed at around A•8 or A•9. It's resurfaced for some reason though.

[The_Fool]

Strange... large bodies collide no problem, but use the 1 key to fire a small asteroid at the Earth and it disappears. We'll fix it. Thanks.

I found a large body collision issue.  During the Sun & (Jupiter x 30) x 3 simulation the collision system will turn off and the bodies will pass through each other.  If you watch in HD you can see that the pace of the simulation will say 0.0 ms per sec in red even though it keeps running.  The normal Sun and Jupiter collision causes the Sun to lose a lot of mass and creates a second small star that passes back and forth through the Sun.  You can see that happen in the top star in this video as well.

http://youtu.be/yTXcWJRpO7Y

[Gordon Freeman]

"This video is private"

[The_Fool]

There is a sticky saying to make the video of the bug private.  So, I did.

The video is now set to unlisted.

[Gordon Freeman]

No, it says to make the videos Unlisted. If they're private, nobody can watch them but you.

[WitheHole18]

it's really cool.thanks for update

[wubbzy301]

Just threw an asteroid at earth...  :|

Same for me, I am downgrading this alpha.

@Dan

Aren't you quoting?

[smjjames]

Just threw an asteroid at earth...  :|

Same for me, I am downgrading this alpha.

Well, it is a work in progress and they wanted to show what they have so far.

[gabriel.dac]

Mars permanently invisible in my saved simulation.

[C7]

You'll get invisible planets and failed collisions if an impact has invalid data in it. Which is what happened in the past as well.

 It prevents the renderer from having the information it needs to display the planet. If the error is bad enough, we'll get a null ref in physics and impacts can stop working. Essentially if you throw NaN (Not a number) into an equation it tends to wreck all further calculations down the line.

I updated the description on the video topic to include Unlisted, since that's the correct term for Youtube's services.

[gabriel.dac]

Thanks for releasing a preview. Edit: And thanks for the clarification, C7

Ups

• I really liked your idea to increase\decrease rotation if you change the radius. That's an idea that didn't occur to me.
• You added small icons next to Mass, Density and Radius as I suggested once. That looks far better and more friendly.
• The Milky Way background was a huge surprise to me when I saw it. It is jaw dropping
• When planets are hot the look FANTASTIC now. Jaw was dropped again
• Edit: Thank you for finally making the camera automatically zoom in when you select a small object
  

Downs

• Properties window is too long I guess
• "Switch to Grid view" and "Switch to List view" texts are placed at the wrong moments. I mean, when a list is showing, the "Switch to List view" text appears. Silly dan
• The zoom in-out inertia has to be reduced
  
• I can't shoot objects at anything. They pass right through the planets.
• I believe that in terrestrial planets, Hydrogen shouldn't be represented in the cutaways. It is part of the atmosphere

I'm waiting for...

• .png files with transparency in the Add lists
• Galaxies and galaxy simulations
• Observable universe boundary

[WitheHole18]

The function of the interior of the planets was not implemented in the preview , will be made in version 13 ?
However, I really like the style of the melted fragments 

[C7]

Planet interiors should be in the preview. You need to select the body, and go to the materials tab to turn on the planet cutout feature. Which will slice out a portion of the surface, so you can see inside.

[SeanathonJames]

Things that make planets go invisible in my instance of the game:

- collisions between any two objects (literally any normal collision, the weird glitchy collisions where the smaller object disappears and the bigger object gains its mass but doesn't warm up work fine though)

- growing a gas giant to a point where it starts to emit heat (the exact point it starts emitting the gas/comet trail particles)
That reminds me, why did you make really heavy gas giants/brown dwarfs emit gas particles? Surely the gravity of something weighing 100 Jupiter masses would keep the gas confined to a relatively smooth sphere, even if it reaches a bit over 1,000 Kelvin?

- heating any planet or asteroid by making it orbit close to a star (manually setting it's temperature to 1 x 10^100 degrees C or more locks the planet at -273 degrees C, anything below 1 x 10^100 degrees C seems to act normal)

I can't tell if it's just my garbage computer or not. I know it ran the previous version at around 40fps without a hitch as long as there were no slow motion collisions or severe lag inducing comet tails or galaxies in the simulation.

[blotz]

planetary cutaways i can't wait to try this

[WitheHole18]

yes 

[The_Fool]

The Earth and Wolf collision simulation seems to crash the application.

On a positive note, during rocky planet and moon collisions, the collision system works well and much smoother than before.  Once these bugs get ironed out the new collision system will be far better than it was before.

[Camacha]

The cut-outs are really neat, though I think they are not as accurate as they could be yet.

However, is simulation accuracy supposed to be locked at 15%?

[Dan Dixon]

However, is simulation accuracy supposed to be locked at 15%?

Unfinished feature... as we're in the middle of our collision rewrite, that is one of the many broken features in the preview and why this is an opt-in release. It will be fixed for the final release of Alpha 13.