Universe Sandbox 2 - New Screenshots - April 2012

[FiahOwl]

Welcome to the forum Goerg!

[ShoeUnited]

Well, we appreciate all the work you people are putting into it and thank you for your love of the project as much as our love of it.  Thank you guys. 

[bobross]

Is version 3 being done in Unity?   

[vh]

yes

Universe Sandbox 1 and 2 were made with Truevision3D and used Squid for its UI.
Click on the "Credits" link on the main menu for a full listing of what I used and who helped.

Universe Sandbox 3 is being made with Unity 3D and will use Squid for its UI.

[Unreal2004]

Will it be x64 or x86?  If its only x86 will it at least have LAA?  Loving US2 right now, just crashes often on my pc.

[Dan Dixon]

Universe Sandbox 3 will be x86 (not 64 bit).

What's LAA?

The new version is a full rewrite, so while that inevitably introduce new problems, I expect the new version to be much more stable than the current version.

[Astronomical]

LAA is Large Address Awareness. (It's related to the maximum RAM usage that a program can run.)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X86-64#Windows

[clockworks]

screenshots look fantastic as per

[Unreal2004]

LAA is Large Address Awareness. (It's related to the maximum RAM usage that a program can run.)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X86-64#Windows

Its not that US is ram intensive its just the nature of x86, if there is no LAA flag for the program it crashes much more often on my PC when I have other programs using the first 2GB, with the LAA flag that limit would go to 3GB and it would be much more stable I believe on my PC, I have edited the exe's of many games and programs that are x86 to let them access that extra 1GB (think Skyrim and the 2GB limit compared to 3GB) which makes them all much more stable on an x64 machine that can address more memory.  Also like molunbun said multithreading would be GREAT, as it is in US2xxx I dont see any difference when I have it checked than not other than it crashes (as stated) when objects collide.

[Desacabose]

Are these solar prominence I see   

[FiahOwl]

[Charlie22911]

Dan,

Are there any plans to utilize an API such as Open CL to offload some of the calculations to more capable hardware?

It would be great to see this implemented in US3 seeing as how even integrated graphics hardware is capable of greatly accelerating these calculations!

[Unreal2004]

It would be great to see this implemented in US3 seeing as how even integrated graphics hardware is capable of greatly accelerating these calculations!

Unless its made by Intel, they have almost zero support for Open GL and I doubt CL.  My HP laptop with integrated "graphics" cant even run Star Ruler properly since it doesnt support enough shaders.  Also since most integrated systems use the CPU for processing and RAM for their memory that might be a big drag on the whole program.  IMO integrated graphics systems are for the low end PCs that are not meant to be used for anything more than email and office programs much less a program as complex as this.

[Desacabose]

It would be great to see this implemented in US3 seeing as how even integrated graphics hardware is capable of greatly accelerating these calculations!

Unless its made by Intel, they have almost zero support for Open GL and I doubt CL.  My HP laptop with integrated "graphics" cant even run Star Ruler properly since it doesnt support enough shaders.  Also since most integrated systems use the CPU for processing and RAM for their memory that might be a big drag on the whole program.  IMO integrated graphics systems are for the low end PCs that are not meant to be used for anything more than email and office programs much less a program as complex as this.

If you can run it as is right now you most likely can run Ubox3. (Don't qoute me on that...)

[vh]

It shouldn't be a problem

Wow!  That is very impressive.  I'm curious what will be the system requirements.

Not sure exactly... but if you can run the current version (v2) then you'll be able to run the new version (v3). Although it is possible some graphical effects won't work on very old hardware, you'll still be able to run the core simulation.

That said... Your video card will do just fine.

[Dan Dixon]

Are these solar prominence I see

Yep.

I'm curious what will be the system requirements.

Some of the graphical effects may require newer video cards, but if you can run Universe Sandbox 2 (the current version), you'll be able to run Universe Sandbox 3.

Are there any plans to utilize an API such as Open CL to offload some of the calculations to more capable hardware?

We're setting up the code to make it easy for us to swap out the CPU physics code with a different library that uses the GPU (for example) in the future, but we don't expect that to be done for the initial release.

Also like molunbun said multithreading would be GREAT...

One of the latest code check-ins involved this very thing:
"Integrator development to... partition a large job into optimal sized blocks and solve those blocks on multiple threads."

[Kevin1994]

Any New pic? Dan >.> 

[Europa64]

THis looks so realistic. Like in one screenshot i can see earths atmosphere so in ubox 3 u can add atmospheres to planets?? Plus the star looks better than in ubox 2
And plus staurns rings instead of wut it is in ubox 2 crappy tiny balls in the picture the rings actually look like reel rings.

And here r my ideas wut should be added to universe sandbox 3
-more advanced collisions instead of a white mark and little dust in a asteroid collision if instead a crater would form and a fireball and fragments shooting out.
-PLanetary collisions. Instead of when a planet collides all that happens is that a gigantic white mark covers the planet and dust goes off. Can a planetary collision in universe sandbox 3 actually shatter off the crust or mantle of the larger planet?
-solar flares. If u can make stars shoot flares that would be cool.
-Supernovae. Why cant u make a star go supernova in universe sandbox 2?

[Dan Dixon]

so in ubox 3 u can add atmospheres to planets?

That's the plan.

... staurns rings instead of wut it is in ubox 2 crappy tiny balls in the picture the rings actually look like reel rings.

I appreciate your honest comment about how the rings look in v2.

And here r my ideas wut should be added to universe sandbox 3...

Collisions are a focus for us, although it's still up in the air how they will turn out. Either way... Universe Sandbox is a long term project. Regardless of how they turn out in the initial release of v3, we'll be iterating and improving collisions in future updates.

[atomic7732]

Wait... is that an Earth atmosphere I see on Venus? Kol.

[Darvince]

No it's greenish. And Mars's atmosphere is all reddish. or is that even venus

[atomic7732]

I meant the clouds.

[Darvince]

Holykol it is

[smjjames]

Wait... is that an Earth atmosphere I see on Venus? Kol.

No it's greenish. And Mars's atmosphere is all reddish. or is that even venus

Venus's atmosphere is more of a yellowish-white to me. And yes thats Venus, it's just the false color radar map and it's missing its usual atmosphere.

I meant the clouds.

I guess so. They just weren't able to make the usual atmosphere texture yet (or Dan, maybe just do a planetary skin texture with the atmosphere colors?).

[Europa64]

These asteroids actually look like reel asteroids.
PS: when will universe sandbox 3 come out?

[smjjames]

These asteroids actually look like reel asteroids.
PS: when will universe sandbox 3 come out?

Depending on their size though, an object with the mass of Ceres (or at least very close to it, the point where an object has enough mass to pull it into a sphere is somewhere between that of Ceres and Vesta) and up would look spherical, but anything below that mass would have an irregular shape.

[vh]

Universe Sandbox 3 will probably come out sometime this year

[Kevin1994]

any new Pic ??

[Dan Dixon]

There haven't been too many visual improvements over the last couple weeks.

We've been re-factoring the code to make it leaner and "future proof" and working on optimization and performance.

No worries... I'll share more screenshots soon.

[JayPix2012]

When will there be a beta for UBox3?