Universe Sandbox News

Video: Saving an object and its Surface Grids data then adding it to the simulation.

Surface Grids & Lasers are not yet available in any official Universe Sandbox releases. But they are now available in the experimental version of Universe Sandbox! Learn how to take an early look at Surface Grids & Lasers.

If you haven’t seen them yet, check out the previous Surface Grids DevLogs in our News. Keep in mind these DevLogs document a work-in-progress feature. Anything discussed or shown may not be representative of future versions of Surface Grids.

What is Surface Grids? It’s a big, complex feature still in development. It simulates the surfaces of planets, moons, and other objects, adding much more detailed, dynamic, and accurate visuals. And as a bonus, it makes it possible to add tools like lasers, which are essentially just a fun way of heating up localized areas of a surface.


Since we released the first experimental version that included Surface Grids, we’ve released a few updates that have made a lot of improvements and bug fixes. Below are some highlights from the three major areas of the new Surface Grids feature: the interface, simulation, and visuals.
 
1. Interface improvements



• Better design for map interface
• New map legend

We moved around some buttons, turned others into drop-down menus, cleaned up some settings, and added a brand new color legend for all that wonderful data.


2. Simulation improvements

• Reimplemented tidal heating
• More stable heat diffusion (& new Thermal Diffusivity slider to adjust rate)
• Better water initialization for random planets
• Improved water flow

A lot of the individual simulation improvements, tweaks, and fixes can be harder to notice, because if everything’s working well, then they don’t draw much attention to themselves. Instead, they just work. But if you’ve been following along, hopefully you’ll notice that the surface simulation has been getting smoother and smoother.

 
3. Visual improvements



• Improved coastlines
• Improved lighting
• Improved terrain and vegetation rendering
• Improved visual noise (randomness) on ice edges
• Reduced texture seams
• Shallow water no longer fully opaque

Isn’t Earth looking georgeous? (...that’s what we call gorgeous things created by our graphics developer, Georg) On top of all of the visual beautification, which you can see with random planets as well, we’re pretty happy with how coastlines are now looking (these latest changes are not yet in the experimental build). They may not be as accurate as our real life home planet itself, but after lots and lots of tweaking and experimenting, we now have coastlines that are fairly accurate and work well with changing water levels.



Beyond the changes we’ve listed above, we’ve also added support for saving & loading objects, including retaining all of the Grids data (see video at top of post), performance improvements, and dozens of tweaks and bug fixes.

In the last update we also added a short, 15-second performance test that you’ll see pop up when you first run this version of the experimental build. Please run this test so we can learn more about how Surface Grids performs on different hardware!

If you want to stay up to date on the latest changes to the experimental version, join our Discord and check out the #experimental-build channel. We make announcements there whenever there’s an update.

 


As we continue to update the experimental build, we get closer to the official release of Surface Grids. Like before, this part of development is about balancing our work between continuing with all the other improvements and fixes we’ve had in mind and addressing community feedback as more and more people check it out — please let us know what you think!

Above are screenshots of some of Brendan’s newly generated heightmaps (detailed in DevLog #10) partially implemented in-game. There’s still more work to do on these, but we should hopefully have them in an experimental build soon.

We also are working on a tutorial about terraforming Mars. We’ve seen multiple users point out that terraforming is a lot more complex now, and that’s certainly true. This is easily seen when attempting to terraform Mars, which, it turns out, is a bit more involved than just spraying some water at it. Figuring out how to do it is part of the fun, but there are some tips and tricks that are good to know.

We’re super excited with how Grids is shaping up, and we hope that if you’ve been following along, you can see all the progress we’ve made. We look forward to sharing more. See you in the next DevLog!

Introducing the new Moon Champion of the Solar System, with a total of 82 known moons, it’s the great ringed gas giant Saturn!

Take a tour through the discoveries of Saturn’s moons, from the first discovered moon, Titan, in 1655, to the latest discovery of 20 new moons in October 2019:

Home > Guides > Science > History of Saturn’s Moons

With 82 moons, Saturn now has the most known moons, surpassing the previous record holder Jupiter and its 79 known moons.

This update also includes a refresh of our database and Saturn simulations to add its new moons, plus a few smaller fixes and improvements.

Check out a full list of What's New in Update 23.2



We're still hard at work on the next big features, Surface Grids & Lasers. Interested in trying them out? Take a sneak peek!

Today's Deal: Save 33% on Universe Sandbox !*

Look for the deals each day on the front page of Steam. Or follow us on twitter or Facebook for instant notifications wherever you are!

*Offer ends Tuesday at 10AM Pacific Time

Universe Sandbox is now 33% off on Steam!

This is your last chance to get Universe Sandbox on sale before we raise the price on Tuesday, October 22 to USD $29.99 (localized prices will be raised accordingly). We’ll definitely be on sale again after we raise the price, but this will likely be the best deal for a while.

We announced our plans to raise the price earlier in the summer. This is slightly different than the original plan of raising it once we released Surface Grids & Lasers, but it still fits into the October timeline we mentioned. And while Surface Grids & Lasers aren’t available in any official releases yet, you can try lasers now in the experimental build!

What is Surface Grids?
It's the next big, complex feature coming to Universe Sandbox. It simulates the surfaces of planets, moons, and other objects, adding much more detailed, dynamic, and accurate visuals.

And as a bonus, it makes it possible to add tools like lasers, which are essentially just a fun way of heating up localized areas of a surface.

Learn more about Surface Grids & Lasers in our latest DevLogs

Surface Grids & Lasers are not yet available in any official Universe Sandbox releases. But they are now available in the experimental version of Universe Sandbox! Continue reading to learn more about how to try this version.

If you haven’t seen them yet, check out the previous Surface Grids DevLogs #1, #2, #3, #4, #5, #6, #7, #8, #9, and #10. Keep in mind these DevLogs document a work-in-progress feature. Anything discussed or shown may not be representative of future versions of Surface Grids.
 

Surface Grids is a big, complex feature still in development. It simulates the surfaces of planets, moons, and other objects, adding much more detailed, dynamic, and accurate visuals.

How? It uses a grid of data to keep track of thousands of points across an object’s surface. Each point stores local data, like temperature, elevation, and composition, for that spot.

It also simulates how this data changes and moves from one point to the next across the surface. This allows us to simulate water levels, water and vapor flow, heat diffusion, material states, and more. These are complex phenomena that we simulate with simplified models based on geophysical and climate science.

And as a bonus, it makes it possible to add tools like lasers, which are essentially just a fun way of heating up localized areas of a surface.
 

Surface Grids & Lasers are not yet available in official releases of Universe Sandbox. But you can now try them out in the experimental build! This experimental build has an incomplete version of Surface Grids & Lasers. You’ll see areas of the simulation and interface that are works in progress. And you’ll see plenty of bugs. Part of trying out the experimental build now is helping us make these features better as we continue development.

To opt into the experimental build:

1. Right-click ‘Universe Sandbox’ in your Steam Library
   
2. Click ‘Properties’
   
3. Select ‘Betas’ tab
   
4. Set dropdown menu to ‘experimental’
   
5. Close Properties
   
6. Once updated, launch Universe Sandbox
   

Check out What’s New | Experimental Builds for an overview of changes, tips, known issues, works-in-progress, and other notes.

Recommended sims:

1. Earths Around Sun x10 Tidally Locked
   
2. Bombardment of Moon
   
3. Earth & 50 Colliding Moons
   

Recommended experiments:

1. Laser the Earth! (Tools > Laser)
   
2. Throw water at a cold planet (Tools > Material)
   
3. Terraform a Random Rocky Planet
   
4. Tidally lock planets close to a star
   
5. Dock Temperature and Displacement maps during a collision
   

We shared this experimental build recently on our Discord and we’ve had great responses so far, with plenty of feedback on what’s good, what’s broken, and what could be improved. Now we’d love for you try it out and give us feedback. The best place for feedback? Discord! Just keep in mind this isn’t the final version and there’s still work to do.
 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QlqFMrMNzN4
You’re welcome to enjoy Surface Grids & Lasers however you want, but if you ask us, we think the lasers are small potatoes compared to everything else that is now happening on object surfaces.

The Surface Grids map not only looks cool, but it also provides a lot of insight into what’s going on with Surface Grids. To see all of the available options, check out the very top of the Properties panel in the new Surface tab.

You can switch to Temperature, Elevation, Displacement (Impacts), Water Level, Lapse Rate, Vapor, and Ice, and you can dock multiple maps so you can watch them all at once. The most interesting data to watch depends on what is happening in the simulation, but you’ll also find that they’re all connected -- for example, a collision will affect all of these as the temperature rises and craters form, which in turn changes the elevation and may displace or add water, depending on the composition of the impacting object.

 

Video: Surface Grids data, such as temperature and water depth, shown directly on an object’s surface (work in progress).

Moving forward with these experimental builds, we’re balancing our development between addressing feedback from the community and continuing with everything we had already planned for the release of Surface Grids.

One issue that has come up for some users is performance. Surface Grids is the first big Universe Sandbox feature that relies on the graphics card (otherwise known as graphics processing unit or GPU). Previously, the heaviest calculations were from the physics side of the simulation, and these were all performed on the processor (CPU). Now with more emphasis on using the GPU, not just for visuals but for running all of the calculations involved with simulating surfaces, we’ve better balanced out the simulation calculations across a user’s hardware. But this means that users with older integrated or mobile GPUs (usually found in older laptops) may see worse performance than before. We’re doing our best to squeeze out all of the performance we can get on older hardware, but ultimately there’s a limit to what we can do, and the unfortunate reality is that we’ll likely be raising our minimum and recommended requirements soon to include more dedicated video memory.

Beyond that, our focus is on fixing any bug that comes our way and improving the new interface, all to make these features as fun and easy to use as possible. Plus there are some of the more involved projects, like implementing Brendan’s heightmap generator for random planets (see our last DevLog), visual improvements and polish, the ability to see data maps directly on object surfaces (see video directly above), and more tools for surface interaction, all of which we’ll talk about more in future posts. See you then!