Help Us Test Our Engine Upgrade | Update 20.5 Community Test

[Jar]

Opt In
This is an opt-in, community test build of Update 20.5 intended for testing purposes only. It is not yet an official release.

To opt-in with a Steam copy of Universe Sandbox ²:

• Right-click on the game title in your Steam Library
• Click on ‘Properties’
• Select the ‘Betas’ tab
• Set the dropdown menu to ‘*community-test’
• Close the Properties window
• Steam will now update Universe Sandbox ² to the experimental
• Once updated, launch Universe Sandbox ²

What's New
This is a small update in terms of content, but there have been some significant under-the-hood changes with our upgrade to Unity 2017.2. If you run into any unusual issues, please let us know on our forum or via Home > Send Feedback.

If you are providing a log file for a reported issue, please note that the file is now located here on Windows:
%USERPROFILE%\AppData\LocalLow\Giant Army\Universe Sandbox ²

This update also includes a database refresh for objects in our Solar System, as well as a number of bug fixes and smaller improvements. See full list of What's New


Update 21
We are making great progress on Update 21, but we unfortunately can’t provide a release date yet. Update 20.5 is just a step on the way to make sure everything is running smoothly. Thank you for remaining patient!

[Cesare]

We are now in February, and I still don't see any updates. The updates that I am expecting are bug fixes. There are so many bugs and glitches with Update 20.4. Those bugs involve the following.

1. Planets turn black when colliding with each other.

2. Large terrestrial planets disappear when colliding with small gas planets (gas giants) or (gas dwarfs).

3. Earth's textures are poor.

4. Earth ocean levels are too high in some places and too low in others. Please update Earth sea levels and texture. Examples are Florida is flooded, and Australia and New Guinea are joined together by low sea level.

5. When changing the luminosity of stars and their mass and radius, the star either resets back to default of disappears completely. Some stars don't like it when changing only the mass or the radius. That means when locking either the mass or radius, one or the other changes as well. Please add an option to lock both mass and radius for planets, gas giants and stars.

6. The color and texture of Uranus does not look right. Uranus should look like this in Universe Sandbox 2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uranus

7. Planets that are warm remain frozen when loading or adding them back into new simulations. For example, custom made planets have frozen water when the temperature is above 0 degrees Celsius.

8. Earth's rotational period is 23.9 hours. That's wrong. It should be 24 hours long - 1 day.

9. When saving solar system planets in user objects, the mass and radius shrinks.

10. Played simulations sometimes crash, or are not marked with a tick meaning that it has been opened and played before.

11. Planets lose mass and radius even when they are frozen and very far from their host star. That's not right and this terrible bug must be fixed as soon as possible.

12. The graphics of Universe Sandbox 2 are poor. Please update the overall graphics as to make them look like real celestial objects.

Those bugs are the most annoying and occurring bugs and glitches that have been in Universe Sandbox 2 since Alpha 19 updates. Please find and fix them for good.

[Cesare]

I am looking forward to Update 21. First of all, what I expect Update 21 to include is a mega list of bug fixes, because currently, Universe Sandbox 2 has far too many bugs and glitches. The 12 bugs that I reported in the post above is just to name a few, more occurring bugs, but there are many more bugs as well.

I am not happy at all that Universe Sandbox 2 has so many bugs now. Most of the time, I go back to use Alpha 16 because it has almost no bugs in simulations. For me Alpha 16 seems to be more perfect than Update 20.4.

I am very happy for the exciting features that developers have put in to continuously develop Universe Sandbox 2. I hope that Update 21 will make it possible to customize the colors of gas giants, stars, atmospheres and water. I am looking forward to a much better version of Universe Sandbox 2 when Update 21 comes out.

[Austritistanian]

8. Earth's rotational period is 23.9 hours. That's wrong. It should be 24 hours long - 1 day.

23.9 hours is the siderial day of Earth, 24 hours is the solar day of Earth. Earth completes a single rotation every 23.9 hours, but the earth has to rotate a few degrees more so that, at noon, the sun would appear in the same position as yesterday

[Cesare]

The developers need to change the Earth's rotational value to 24 hours because a fully complete day is 24 hours from 0:00 am to 0:00 am (midnight).

[tkulogo]

As Austritistanian tried to explain, the Earth needs to rotate slightly more than once to complete a day so it needs to rotate slightly faster than 1 once per day.

[Cesare]

I do not understand why the Earth needs to rotate slightly more than once for a complete 24 hour day. That is unusual.

[tkulogo]

The position of the Sun in the sky determines our day. Since the Earth goes around the Sun once a year, we lose 1 day per year. The Earth actually spins 366.25 times for every trip around the Sun.

[Cesare]

It is clear that Universe Sandbox 2 must now have an engine upgrade to make simulations run faster, smoother, and with more accuracy and performance. Also a huge demand by me and other people on this forum is that Universe Sandbox 2 must also have much better graphics. The graphics look like graphics from the 1990s computer games. I really find it so strange that now in 2018 we still have graphics similar to the 1990s era.

I am aware how tough and difficult it is for those brave developers working behind the scenes to create and further develop Universe Sandbox 2, but I would really appreciate if Universe Sandbox 2 had much, much better and shaper graphics, plus eliminating all of the annoying bugs and glitches that this universe simulator currently have. The quality of graphics is the number one important aspect to a good universe simulator so, I hope that much better and sharper graphics will be implemented in Update 21 hopefully.

[Cesare]

I am so excited for the upcoming release of Update 21. For those of you who are aware of the news features, please can you explain to me in detail what kind of features are expected to come in Update 21.

I just want to learn more about Update 21.