SimpleRockets News

The Nav Circle in SR1 made it very easy to control rockets in a 2D game. It took me a while to figure out the best way to extend the Nav Circle into three dimensions. I ended up with basically two nav circles: one for heading and one for pitch. The end result is now called the Nav Sphere and it makes controlling rockets in 3D extremely easy.



The blue circle is for controlling the pitch of the rocket and the orange circle is for controlling the heading. You can click and drag the circles to adjust them or you can use keyboard inputs (or a gamepad) to control them. We will probably tweak the visuals a bit before release, but I'm really happy with how they've turned out.

Kevin just finished redesigning the launch site. He also built a new hangar, extended the runway, and added two additional landing pads for those of you who want to be like Elon.



With the effort invested in the new launch site, we didn't want to take any chances so we integrated some invisible sound suppression systems to protect the launch pads from the considerable acoustic force. Okay, that's not really true. We just added some volumetric smoke that is a purely visual effect. However, that combined with William's new camera shake has really enhanced the launch experience and I noticed after launching my Pigeon Heavy rocket that my socks were nowhere to be seen.



Has anyone seen my socks?

They said the Apollo 11 command module re-entered Earth's atmosphere at Mach 36 and temperatures of the air in front of the heat shield reached nearly 20,000° degrees Fahrenheit, which is well beyond the melting point of sanity. Today, I loaded up the latest build of SimpleRockets 2 with the new re-entry effects Philip and I have been working on and I hurtled my command pod at Smearth at nearly Mach 40.



The new, resizable Heat Shield part is protecting the command pod and if you have really good eyes you can see in the lower left that it reaches over 13,000° Celsius. The command pod is mostly protected, though it does take some damage from the excessive heat. The G-forces from the deceleration (which I did not measure) would undoubtedly turn any person into a pancake of squishy. So, while I am way hotter than Apollo 11, my astronauts would be far more deader. It's a good thing we don't have any astronauts in SR2 yet.

We're really excited about the new effects. Players have been asking for them for ages and we really struggled with how to tackle the visual effects. Philip did a great job with them and we're all really happy with how they turned out. We also reworked the drag model so we could monitor part temperatures. Amazingly, after implementing some thermodynamics equations discovered by really smart people, the model seemed to be about right without much tweaking. Of course, I'm sure when you all get your hands on it, you'll find all the hidden features (ie - bugs).

Our newest engine, the Apex I is an absolute beast. It's heavy, expensive, and drinks RP-1 like there's no tomorrow, but it will have the power to get even your most poorly engineered contraptions into space.



It dwarfs the Mage I engine in size, power, and visuals.



Here are the details:

• Thrust: 3,200 kN
• Mass: 3,500 kg
• Price: $8,500,000
• Height: 4.2 m
• Diameter: 3.0 m
• Max Gimbal Angle: 2.5 degrees
• Fuel Consumption: 1,350 L/s
• Specific Impulse: 298 s

Here's a bonus shot of it in a highly ill-advised use case.

Can anyone guess the inspiration behind this engine? I'll give you a hint, if you are on a PC, the name of the engine is on your keyboard...

SimpleRockets 2 now has a coming soon page on Steam along with a new teaser trailer to entice you to come check it out!

https://store.steampowered.com/app/870200/SimpleRockets_2

We're still shooting to release on Steam Early Access this summer. We plan to keep adding features and responding to player feedback until we feel the game is ready, at which point we will release the final version on all platforms at the same time. This includes iOS, Google Play, Humble, GOG, and of course Steam (Windows and macOS).