What's this "Universe Sandbox 3"?

[scruffygamer]

Ok, so I've checked some 2-3 year old threads on this website and there is a lot of mentions about US3. Was it the old name for Universe Sandbox 2 somehow? I'm curious.

[im4space]

First there was Universe Sandbox version 1 and then Universe Sandbox version 2. There was some discussion about Universe Sandbox 3 but it should have been called Universe Sandbox version 3. Version 3 never happened. They started over from scratch and called it Universe Sandbox². This was a complete rewrite.

[Physics_Hacker]

Ok, so I've checked some 2-3 year old threads on this website and there is a lot of mentions about US3. Was it the old name for Universe Sandbox 2 somehow? I'm curious.

The old Universe Sandbox had an earlier version than what we now call Universe Sandbox Legacy. Legacy is actually the second incarnation of the program (I think the first was 2008 and the second was 2010? Not 100% sure though) and so, when the idea of Universe Sandbox^2 was first introduced it was called Universe Sandbox 3, as technically that's what it is, but the older two were similar enough that to some people calling it 3 wouldn't make sense, so they changed it to "to the power of two" "squared" "Times itself" or however else you want to say it, with the two representing that its the second incarnation and that they planned (and have succeeded in just about every way) for it to be uch better than the original, and it being the power of two instead of just 2 as a tip of the hat to there being two earlier versions. just very similar ones.

[im4space]

Universe Sandbox version 1.0 was released May 2008
Universe Sandbox version 2.0 was released 2 May 2010
Universe Sandbox version 2.2 was released 1 October 2012 the last update

Universe Sandbox ² early access initial release   24 August 2015

[Cryo]

Wow. It has been a little over two year's since I have joined the alpha team. Jesus does time fly by.

[atomic7732]

i'm pretty sure it had to do with the fact that Universe Sandbox 2 was released on Steam as Universe Sandbox, so releasing Universe Sandbox 3 would be confusing, so having Universe Sandbox^2 makes it kind of like a "second version" but not really at the same time