Simulate tectonic plates and volcanic eruptions

[Cesare]

Tectonic plates are what makes continental drifting of continents possible on Earth. In Universe Sandbox, tectonic plates don't yet exist for any planets, not even Earth. What I suggest for developers to simulate in Universe Sandbox is tectonic plates and volcanic eruptions. Those plate movement features must be simulated for Earth and all other Solar System bodies, including randomly generated planets and custom planets created by users.


Gas giants also have volcanic eruptions and tectonic plates shifting below their immensely thick gassy atmospheres. For planets like Earth, it would be amazing to simulate tectonic plates so that continental drift progress can be seen for millions of billions of years into the future and even the past. Imaging how cool it would be to turn back the clock many millions of years to see Pangea on Earth in Universe Sandbox by simulating the time backwards.


Users must also be able to automatically create custom made tectonic plates by crushing planets together. For example, crashing a Moon sized iron ball into Earth to create a hot iron-nickel metal core.


Yeah, of course, all planets and moons have tectonic plates, volcanes from various substances and even a hot or frozen liquid core. Please add tectonic plates and volcanic eruptions in future builds of Universe Sandbox.

[Lord DC]

This is something that would have to be implemented far after Surface Grids, and seeing how much work they put into that alone it would likely make your computer plot to murder you. Simulating dynamic or even randomized tectonic plate movement on multiple bodies at once and simulating what gravity does to them etc etc would tax the hardware way too much for it to be viable, at least that is what I think. Perhaps they have it in their view, perhaps not. But it seems unlikely.

[Darvince]

Tectonic plates are a wonderful feature for random planet generation, and not for live play. Yet even in random planet generation, the implementation of tectonic plates is still immensely complex. Just see how fast this runs on your machine:
http://davidson16807.github.io/tectonics.js/
It is not very fast, because tectonics is very non-random and complicated. Any implementation of it that does the concept any justice would be completely unplayable.

[Cesare]

Well, if tectonic plates causes hardware lags, I would suggest to have them as texture visuals. Developers could make a version of Earth with the Pangea continent on it.

[Cesare]

The tectonic plates simulation on the link you gave me works very well and fast on my PC. http://davidson16807.github.io/tectonics.js/

[Lord DC]

it aint gonna run so smoothly when its being simulated with literally thousands to millions of other things at once

[Cesare]

Developers would probably by then develop another more sophisticated technology that would prevent lag and make it possible to simulate tectonic plates.

[Lord DC]

The developers cannot magically rush the development of computer technology.

[Cesare]

I know, but there shall be ways to further improve development and features of Universe Sandbox to cope with the pace of increasingly more and more powerful computers.