Small things I want to see changed in the next version, devs

[gabriel.dac]

Just small stuff that can be fixed in a moment

1. The labels of objects should be invisible when they are behind some other object. Right now you can see the labels (the names) of the objects through another object, and it is kind of annoying.

2. In the add list, make the images of planets/stars/etc have a transparent background. It would look a thousand times better. Use a PNG file I guess.

3. When the add list is opened, clicking the "add" button again won't close the window.

4. Organize the list of simulations. I'm pretty sure you can get rid of a lot of test simulations that are taking up space.

5. Shorten some of the trails. In the solar system sim, for example, all those minor objects with huge trails make the simulation look dirty. The planets should have a more visible trail than all the minor insignificant objects

6. A real time button in the timestep controls

[FiahOwl]

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[Dan Dixon]

Good points... we'll consider them. We'll almost certainly address 3, 4, and 6.

[Cryo]

I disagree. Having equally visible trails for all objects can be very useful in some of the more nuanced simulation cases. I think it might be a good feature to have as an option, though.

Option is key

[Dan Dixon]

You know what Universe Sandbox ² needs? More options, dropdown menus, and check boxes.

[DiamondMiner10]

You know what Universe Sandbox ² needs? More options, dropdown menus, and check boxes.

For some reason I liked the check boxes

[Only2ndplace]

I agree with all of these options, however I have to add, that seeing the labels of bodys through planets can be useful, in case you've landed your camera on a planet and want to see, where a certain body is, that has not yet risen over the horizon.

[gabriel.dac]

You know what Universe Sandbox ² needs? More options, dropdown menus, and check boxes.

For some reason I liked the check boxes

what checkboxes are you talking about

[vmorgo]

Just small stuff that can be fixed in a moment

1. The labels of objects should be invisible when they are behind some other object. Right now you can see the labels (the names) of the objects through another object, and it is kind of annoying.

2. In the add list, make the images of planets/stars/etc have a transparent background. It would look a thousand times better. Use a PNG file I guess.

3. When the add list is opened, clicking the "add" button again won't close the window.

4. Organize the list of simulations. I'm pretty sure you can get rid of a lot of test simulations that are taking up space.

5. Shorten some of the trails. In the solar system sim, for example, all those minor objects with huge trails make the simulation look dirty. The planets should have a more visible trail than all the minor insignificant objects

6. A real time button in the timestep controls

Gabriel's got some good ideas here.

I'd like to add the following:
1.  Fix Wolf 359.  It's not a brown dwarf.  It's a RED dwarf.
2.  Get rid of the DDouble CCapitAAls bug (or am I the only one experiencing this)
3.  There seems to be a memory leak.  The program gradually consumes all available memory on my system if left running for hours (as in more than 24 to 36).  I have some long-running simulations I would really like to not have to cut short to avoid these annoying crashes and resultant loss of data. I am running it on a stock Dell Optiplex with an i5 at 3.4 GHz and an nVidia 730.  RAM is a roomy 16 GB.
4.  It would be great if we could have more than one "pop-out" graph at the same time.
5.  Could Pop-Out Graphs be made so that they could be iconized, or rolled up into their title bar?  It's a pain to have to move the graph window out of the way to get at the save dialog or make an adjustment to the running simulation.
6.  Adding moons and getting them to stay in orbit around their primaries is still almost impossible.  For example, placing a moon in orbit around an earthlike world orbiting an M0V 0.5 solar mass red dwarf is not possible--either I have to move the planet too far out from its sun to support life, or if I leave the world close enough to the star for (humanoid) life to survive, the moon gets yanked out of orbit and ends up orbiting the star, rather than the planet.  This has lead to several rather embarrassing collisions....
7.  When a star is seen through the atmosphere of a planet (looking past the edge of the planet at its sun), the portion of the star obscured by the atmosphere turns black.  This needs to be corrected.

I think Gabriel got my other points, so that's it for now!

[atomic7732]

4.  It would be great if we could have more than one "pop-out" graph at the same time.
5.  Could Pop-Out Graphs be made so that they could be iconized, or rolled up into their title bar?  It's a pain to have to move the graph window out of the way to get at the save dialog or make an adjustment to the running simulation.

I agree on better graph handling.

6.  Adding moons and getting them to stay in orbit around their primaries is still almost impossible.  For example, placing a moon in orbit around an earthlike world orbiting an M0V 0.5 solar mass red dwarf is not possible--either I have to move the planet too far out from its sun to support life, or if I leave the world close enough to the star for (humanoid) life to survive, the moon gets yanked out of orbit and ends up orbiting the star, rather than the planet.  This has lead to several rather embarrassing collisions....

I'm pretty sure that's supposed to happen. Such a planet would not have very much of a Hill sphere, and would not be able to retain a moon without ripping it apart or allowing it to fly off into space to orbit the star itself.

[DenisineD]

What i would like is that we can change the color of trails or orbit...so i could put all moons with 1 color trails, all minor object trails in an other one and planets in an other color trail

Ex: I would put planets color trails RED, Moons WHITE and minor objects (and dwarfs planets) BLUE

 

[atomic7732]

speaking of which

it'd be cool if you have an option to make trails color by parent, so say everything orbiting saturn would have trails colored similarly, darker or lighter. that way when things switch parents their trail colors differently

[vmorgo]

4.  It would be great if we could have more than one "pop-out" graph at the same time.
5.  Could Pop-Out Graphs be made so that they could be iconized, or rolled up into their title bar?  It's a pain to have to move the graph window out of the way to get at the save dialog or make an adjustment to the running simulation.

I agree on better graph handling.

6.  Adding moons and getting them to stay in orbit around their primaries is still almost impossible.  For example, placing a moon in orbit around an earthlike world orbiting an M0V 0.5 solar mass red dwarf is not possible--either I have to move the planet too far out from its sun to support life, or if I leave the world close enough to the star for (humanoid) life to survive, the moon gets yanked out of orbit and ends up orbiting the star, rather than the planet.  This has lead to several rather embarrassing collisions....

I'm pretty sure that's supposed to happen. Such a planet would not have very much of a Hill sphere, and would not be able to retain a moon without ripping it apart or allowing it to fly off into space to orbit the star itself.

I suspected that would be the case.  Though I didn't know about "Hill Spheres", it did seem to make (disappointing) sense that a planet orbiting close enough to a red dwarf to be habitable would be so close to that sun that it didn't stand much of a chance of holding onto a moon.  That close to a sun--and your moon is going to get snatched.  I mean, really...when you think about it, if the gravitational pull of the star is sufficient to tidally lock the planet, it stands to reason that it would be strong enough to pull that planet's moon (if it had one) into a position where the moon was between the planet and the sun and "tidally lock" it there.  That, of course, means that the moon is now in orbit about the star, not the planet, and, since the orbit is smaller than that of the planet, the moon will now orbit the star slightly faster than the planet does and, well...buy-bye moon.

Dang.  I should have thought of this sooner.  Oh, well--I've learned something and that's what Ubox2 is for!