A couple of suggestions

[FGFG]

If you decide to make trails multicolored according to the velocity and acceleration changes, it would be pretty easy to show these data in the chart mode. Maybe this way:



Let's explain:

The graph is composed by the bodies in the simulation and by normal trails disposed according to different data.

"Focus on": If you select for example the Sun all the trails will become the graph of the acceleration/velocity/distance from the Sun. The Sun will be locked on zero.

The "dimension" value will take you back to the normal chart mode, with the direct comparison of the objects.

The brown object is the result of the collision between the green and pink planet. After the collision the planets collided will remain in that position to let the user see the original objects.

It would be nice if the time and the other values could be scaled both automatically (like the actual time step indicator) and manually.

The time is basically the time needed to the trails to disappear, so if you increase the number of trail segments the graph would be longer.

It would be nice if the simulation could run in background so that you can see the evolution of the graph in real (= simulated) time.

Lastly it would be even nicer if you could make a 3d graph showing 2 values at the same time, like this:

[atomic7732]

Hmmm... I like it! 

Although, I don't see where the pink planet is.

[FGFG]

violet

[Magnetar]

I think the color range for the Velocity and Acceleration color mode should be flipped.
As far I know violet-blue colours are mostly used to indicate when something is high, while red-yellow colours indicate when something is low.

I think of red as fast and blue as slow... But I can imagine that this is not the standard. Can anyone find examples where color is used to show speed?

Here's an example where red is high:
http://mappery.com/map-name/Printable-World-Map-Elevation-Wik

Here's an example where blue is high:
http://mappery.com/map-name/Digital-Elevation-Map-of-Lunar-South-Pole

I think the first map might be based upon height data created by radiographic measurement of the earth. This would means that the surface parts who are close to the satellite (mountains) are coloured red and the rather distant parts blue. The second map looks rather demonstrational since it has a 0 point colour defined.

However I'm not entirely sure about the colour controversy. I think I've seen a lot of maps based upon radio data which used blue / violet as colour to indicate maxima.  But it might be that researchers just choose the way the color range goes after their personal preference.

Timed Screenshots

Universe Sandbox does this already, but it's not at all clear. If you right click, next to the movie button is a text box, this number is how frequently (in frames) to take a screenshot. If you set it to 1 then movie mode takes a screenshot every frame. Would you prefer that this was not frames, but simulation time?

But this only describes how much frames should be saved as screenshots per second, right?
What I'm rather thinking of is letting US take one screenshot after every 60 or 30 seconds, or any user wanted time intervall.

If you decide to make trails multicolored according to the velocity and acceleration changes, it would be pretty easy to show these data in the chart mode. Maybe this way:

http://i278.photobucket.com/albums/kk114/FGFG-23/GraficoUniverseSandbox.jpg

Wow I love your idea. However Dan, if you consider adding any time based stats tracking similiar to this also add an option to disable. I do suspect that I might cost a lot of performance in large system.

And some feature suggestions again:

The Event Log:
I suggest to introduce a simple event log, which simply logs objects collisions and mergings, as well as the time of the events. This would especailly help the user of keeping track of the events happening in large scaled systems.

Gravity Mapping:
The very interesting thing about the 2D grid is that it shows in acceleration mode during the first seconds a gravity map of all massy objects. You can even see the low gravity zones in which some of the lagrange points are situated It might be really interesting to introduce some sort of fixed and improved version of that 2D grid for gravity mapping.


The little yellow dot between the Earth and Moon is actually where L1 is situated.  

Thinking about including it, I think the first and simplest way would be simple to introduce a slice of very dense ordered but fixed particles. Like the current 2D grid. However it could be selected and simply moved around the dimension. Or rotated.

A bit like the slicing function in this demonstration of the magnetic force:
http://www.falstad.com/vector3dm/

[FGFG]

But this only describes how much frames should be saved as screenshots per second, right?
What I'm rather thinking of is letting US take one screenshot after every 60 or 30 seconds, or any user wanted time intervall.

The number is the number of frames that are calculated before the screenshot is taken.
If you set 1 every frame is a screenshot
If you set 5 there is a screenshot every 5 frames
...

[Chaotic Cow]

I like the gravity mapping idea!

I thought this would be cool to show with a grid effect too!

[Magnetar]

Thinking about including it, I think the first and simplest way would be simple to introduce a slice of very dense ordered but fixed particles. Like the current 2D grid. However it could be selected and simply moved around the dimension. Or rotated.

A bit like the slicing function in this demonstration of the magnetic force:
http://www.falstad.com/vector3dm/

[Magnetar]

Universe Sandbox does this already, but it's not at all clear. If you right click, next to the movie button is a text box, this number is how frequently (in frames) to take a screenshot. If you set it to 1 then movie mode takes a screenshot every frame. Would you prefer that this was not frames, but simulation time?

Ok, I didn't knew that the movie mode was working the way FGFG described it.
I think it's fine how it currenlty is. So there is no need for sceen caps based on simulation time.

And a few new ideas again:

Friction through Particle Consumption:
This idea is based upon the idea of simulating solid objects moving through gas clouds and rings. The title already explains the idea pretty well. Basically everytime a moving object is hit by a particle it gets slowed down. To allow the user how strong objects are slowed down, I think a simple slider in the settings would be enough.

Spherical Light Pulse:
An alternative light pulse mode which spawns a particles ordered in the shape of a sphere instead of a circle.

Additional Camera Functions:
I'm actually being inspired by Celestia for this. It might be interesting to be able to make the camera parented to a an object, capable of being tilt, synchronized to the rotation of an object, as well as centered on a selected object. However since these would be just camera functions, they wouldn't have any other practical use than adding new possibilites of making screenshots, videos or just looking around.

[Bla]

Your new ideas are great! Reading about the friction through particle consumption, and about the slider below, I got this idea:

Particle consumption:
When one of the massless particles you can make in US hits a massive body, it could add X mass to the body. The extra mass could be determined by a slider.

And

Protobodies:
When you make objects like rings, there could be an option to make a (small) percentage of the particles into small bodies with mass. With the particle consumption idea above, the rings could form small bodies and in protoplanetary discs they could also form small bodies that could perhaps end up as protoplanets. Whee.

[Magnetar]

A few ideas, I don't really know if they are useful and if there is interest in it:

No Collisions Mode:  
Collisions between objects are ignored and don't have an impact on the velocities.

Sprite Mode:
The idea behind this is to include a sprite mode. When it's turned on it visually replaces spherical 3D objects with circular sprites of the same size. But I don't know if that mode would make any sense, since the only use for it would be performance improvement, and I can't make an estimation if it would be helping or not.

[FGFG]

Sprite Mode

You can already turn bodies off and highlighs on

[Magnetar]

Sprite Mode

You can already turn bodies off and highlighs on

There's a difference to what am I talking about.
The highlight mode is mainly there to help you detecting planets in unclear systems.
Highlight circles also stop to scale down at large distances and also overlap all objects.

I thought of a sprite mode which visualizes planets like particles. As 2D object which can
cover each other,  scale completely down on large distances and are sized according to the radius of the planet.

[monmarfori]

Lets try: Galaxy Merge mode
A galaxy collision that can be merged.

[Dan Dixon]

If you decide to make trails multicolored according to the velocity and acceleration changes, it would be pretty easy to show these data in the chart mode. Maybe this way:

Awesome idea. No promises for version 2, but it's on the must do next year list.

I'll write up more commentary and respond to the other ideas in the thread tomorrow.

I've also been experimenting with a new feature that I think everyone's going to love playing with.

[Chaotic Cow]

Darn it, Dan. Making us all anxious. xD

[SuperNova]

If you decide to make trails multicolored according to the velocity and acceleration changes, it would be pretty easy to show these data in the chart mode. Maybe this way:

Awesome idea. No promises for version 2, but it's on the must do next year list.

I'll write up more commentary and respond to the other ideas in the thread tomorrow.

I've also been experimenting with a new feature that I think everyone's going to love playing with.

DOMG! DO YOU MEAN THE ''watch everything building up'' UPDATE?!!! OR THE COMET IMPACT UPDATE OR THE miamdoashdisoahdkasd overreacting! nadundtyubdnakdbbshkdiahhndkasndakj overreacting!! maduisnamldanmdsa......overrea......*turned off*

[Magnetar]

Thanks for all the support everyone.

One of my goals for the next year is to get Universe Sandbox into some schools.

To make it really tasteful for schools I think US would need....

What am I missing from this list?
- Show acceleration vectors of a body
- Show velocity vectors of a body
- Distance measurement between any two bodies
- Gravity field strength view - a fixed grid showing the force of gravity (like the diagram from your other post)
- Global system properties list: # of bodies, total mass, total energy

What do you mean by diagram modes?

It was some years ago as I had access to some content made especially for schools.
As I remember there were semi-dynamic applets, which allowed you to change some stuff.
A lot of things were especially made in a presentational style, almost like an animation.
 
Vectors dynamically scaled according to their absolute values and as I remember there were dynamic diagrams which changed according to the happening on the screen. I do think we already brought up alot of ideas which are very supportive for the use in schools, however there are still some things which might be worth thinking of for the versions after US 2.0. I personally miss some sort of teacher guy in this forum, who would come up with some helping ideas. Anyways, I'll let me try to come up with some stuff:

Dynamic Energy Diagrams:
A bar chart which can be activated for an object and represents two bars showing the kinetic and potential energy in comparison. This would be especially interesting for elliptic orbits. Since the kinetic rises depending from the point of the orbit same for the potential energy.

Gravitational Voltage / Work Diagramm:
Demonstrating which voltage is needed and how much work has to been done to move an object from point A to point B.

Overall I think about opening Work Group threads, in which people thinking about different aspects / goals of US can post their ideas.

[hbmp88]

I wish i was still in physical science... 

[Magnetar]

Two ideas to increase performance in ring and galaxy simulations:

A. Particle Termination Radius:

A radius which can be set to a parent object, which automatically removes every particle which travels across a specified radius. Since this way particles which left the system would be removed while at the the same time the performance of the simulation would be boosted.

B. Particle Termination on Escape Velocity:

As soon as a particle has reached the escape velocity of the system it automatically becomes removed. This basically prevents the existance of particles which won't interact with the system again. However unlike A) this would still allow the existence of particles with a very large orbit.

[bessy]

maybe with the predicted path have a bar that makes it the more to the right the more accurate it is and to the left the less

for eg you know how it is now when a object will pass close to another object the prediction line goes all jagged and bad as the points in time it snap shots are only 1 or 2 as the body's are close maybe have it so it will take more snapshots for better accuracy but keep it at the same speed thru time as i have a amd phenom x4 2.5ghz bfg 8800 ultra 8 gig of ram and i only see slow down when there are extreme amounts of particles on screen but even when there are 2 body's id like it to be really accurate but keep it at a fast speed

also I'm looking to upgrade my graphics card to the ATi HD 5870x2  when it comes out will it make any dif to the speed and accuracy of US as it supports physics in games

orbit speed
eg in fig 1

better accuracy control for predicted path
or if you can make it smooth
eg in fig 2


orbit problems in the current version as you may already be aware when click on a body and click orbit parent it only goes in a predetermined way but you may all so know that if you put a object higher or lower along this path the orbit parent doesn't work as it tries to make it go in that direction so if you had it at the simulation top if a object it just falls to the object and doesn't go into orbit

id like it if when you click orbit parent the camera zooms behind the object so the parent is behind it and give you a wheel so you can pick which direction you want it to orbit and it sets the object off in that direction at the exact speed needed for a perfect circular orbit

this feature could be good for ring making as well as that follows the same principle

[Magnetar]

Might be a thing for US 3.0:

Planetary B-Fields & Charged Particle Emitters:

Objects could have a magnetic field. Other celestial objects could be turned into emitters of charged particles, meaning that the interaction of planetary b-fields with solar particle storms could be simulated in their basic appearence.

Selection Box & Multiple Planet Selection:[/b]

Just allow it users to draw selection boxes (with a tool?) and simply allow users select multiple objects by holding shift and clicking on multiple objects.

[Dan Dixon]

I will definitely be improving the accuracy of projected paths in the next version.

Thanks for the diagrams bessy.

Selection Box & Multiple Planet Selection:[/b]

And I've been waiting for someone to mention multiple selection of bodies... I've been thinking about it for some time... I'm thinking about it for version 2, but no promises yet.

Planetary B-Fields & Charged Particle Emitters:

That could be interesting. Definitely thinking about it.

[monmarfori]

You like Past time instead to go future? it will decrease the date like 10/17/09 to 10/16/09 in a time step of 1 day in 1 second

[atomic7732]

DO YOU MEAN THE ''watch everything building up'' UPDATE?!!!

Do you mean the...

[Naru523]

Hm..?

[atommo999]

how about a timeline so stars turn red giants and go nebulae or supernovae deoending on gtheir masses and eventually become white dwarfs, black dwarfs, neutron stars or black holes. i think a feauteure like this should be optional though because not everyone wants their system to explode! 

[Naru523]

Pulsar Stars

Gases are released on their poles. Shinier then the star.

Black Hole Update

When the object gets "sucked" in, the black hole haves Extragalactic Jet going off at its poles. Also, I just want the black hole in a regular way (meaning that when objects get sucked in, I dont want it to be bigger), and the Accretion disk.

[atomic7732]

Evolving Life

They are simple and can grow on habitable planets, take off in their ships (once they build up to that level) and explore the solar system.

[SuperNova]

Evolving Life

They are simple and can grow on habitable planets, take off in their ships (once they build up to that level) and explore the solar system.

i came up with that too
its almost impossible to make, and its realy hard to script/make that.
if it would be in Universe Sandbox 2 or later, it would be awsome!
but its even more harder to simulate a good impact

if you realy want to simulate it, play OMNI IV.
its fun and cool

[Chaotic Cow]

I think monmarfori means is that time steps should be able to go in reverse!

I like the idea.

This would be useful with a Saving system probably.

Be cool to see a collision over and over.