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Our new graphics renderer will make hot spots, like those lasered into this planet. This graphics overhaul is a work in progress.
Demonstrating highlights from 2023, including a spherical cow and adding materials like methane and nitrogen to planets.
Work in Progress: Earth and 100 colliding moons after some of our graphics renderer changes.
Current: Dust clouds passing through a planet show sharp lines where they intersect. Our graphics overhaul hopes to remove these lines.
Current: Earth glowing at 2500 °C.
Work in progress: Earth glowing at 2500 °C.
Current: The Moon has lightly glowing craters after being bombarded by many small asteroids. Even though only parts of the object are hot, the entire edge glows red.
Work in Progress: The Moon has brightly glowing craters after being bombarded by many small asteroids. Only the hot impact areas glow.
Work In Progress: Moons collide and heat up. The hot spots glow, illuminating other moons in the simulation.
Work in Progress: Small moons collide and slide across Mars’s surface, creating a long crater and spraying fragments, which create more small craters.
Current: Ceres collides with Earth, creating a circular impact and spraying fragments outwards from the direction it came.
Work in Progress: Ceres collides with Earth, sliding across its surface to create a long crater and spraying fragments that impact and crater Earth.
Work in Progress: A meteor burns up as it flies through Earth’s atmosphere.
Before: 100 moons orbit Earth and collide, creating many fragments and dust clouds that are removed quickly to create new fragments from new collisions.
After: 100 moons orbit Earth and collide, creating many fragments and dust clouds that expand and fill the space while creating new fragments from new collisions. This was released in March as part of Update 34.1.
Work in Progress: Simulation panels are resized, hidden, and revealed as they open and close. This video was taken on a desktop with Universe Sandbox resized to the resolution of a smartphone.
Too much heat or gas kills vegetation. Currently, vegetation only appears where planets have a gas pressure between 0.5 to 2 bars and a temperature between -55 °C to 55 °C.
An automated test showing Neptune disrupting Saturn’s rings. At the end of this test, Universe Sandbox takes a screenshot.
Partial GitHub Actions
Earth and many moons collide. Our automated capture system took this screenshot, which was recently added to our Steam store page.
Work in Progress: Earth rotates so quickly that it starts to flatten out. This flattening is purely visual for development purposes and does not affect collisions or the heating effects from the stretching.
[h4]2024 Total Solar Eclipse[/h4]
[h4]Chaotic Collisional Aftermath[/h4]
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[h4]More Highlights[/h4]
All gasses in a planet's atmosphere now contribute to its color and opacity instead of just the 4 gasses with the most mass.
Before - Additional sulfur dioxide does not make the atmosphere more opaque or tint it orange.
After - Additional sulfur dioxide makes the atmosphere more opaque and tints it orange.
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The object properties panel has been greatly optimized, making it faster to open and switch objects. 
Completely swap one material on a planet for another with one tap. What would Earth look like if you switched out all the water for methane?
This update is brought to you by our completely new build system, which automatically creates different versions of Universe Sandbox whenever one of our team members updates the code it’s built on, allowing us to test and release new features even faster.
We’ve got a lot planned for 2024, including a massive graphics upgrade, collision and cratering improvements, getting Universe Sandbox on mobile devices (iOS & Android), and more! We’ll go into more exciting details in our upcoming 2024 Roadmap post, but first, let’s reflect on some achievements from 2023.
A moon bounces off a planet instead of colliding with it while testing new collision physics (new collision physics are work in progress).
Experimenting with new graphics rendering technology made Earth a bit lumpy (don’t worry, it’s a sphere again).
* Due to a change in our analytics system, we have extrapolated 2023’s numbers based on the total increase in player activity on Steam.
Universe Sandbox is now available to play on GeForce NOW
[h4]New Materials[/h4]
[h4]Planet Atmospheres[/h4]
[h4]Material Collisions[/h4]
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[h4]More Highlights[/h4]
Adding materials beyond water allows us to simulate Titan’s methane lakes. In the future, these new materials will also be the foundation for simulating life.
The 4 materials with the most mass will automatically be simulated across an object's surface, indicated by a dot, similar to how water was simulated. You can also override this and choose any 4 materials to simulate across an object’s surface.
We’ve added a collection of material simulations so you can compare how they change phase between solid, liquid, and gas
The simulation below shows Earth with different materials in each column and a different amount of that material as a liquid in each row. Some evaporate immediately, and some stay liquid under Earth-like conditions.
Easily change the atmospheres of custom planets, old and new, using atmosphere presets of known terrestrial planets. This interface is a work in progress.
Materials masses can be viewed and adjusted by phase (solid, liquid, gas) or collectively at once under an object’s Composition.
More accessible View toggles make it easy to turn on surface lock, illuminate the dark side of planets, or toggle the visibility of atmospheres and clouds.
City Lights and Vegetation now require a habitable gas pressure of 0.6 to 1.6 bars and a new habitable temperature of -25 °C to 55 °C (previously -55 °C to 55 °C) and to appear when set to “If Habitable.”
Use object Markers (formerly called Icons) to clearly see the position and movement of objects and particles in a simulation, like nebula in a galaxy, under
Check out the full list of What's New in Update 34
The Composition tab shows material properties, including total mass, the percentage and mass in each phase (solid, liquid, and gas), and more. This feature and interface are a work in progress.
Titan with realistic lakes of liquid methane in turquoise at its poles. The Liquid Depth Data View shows the depth and location of the methane lakes.
Phase diagram for water shows what phase water has at different temperatures and pressures. The Freezing and Boiling points are the temperatures at which water freezes and boils on Earth, and the triple point shows at what temperature and pressure water can exist as a solid, liquid, and gas at the same time. A supercritical fluid
The phase diagram for water to be implemented in Universe Sandbox. This diagram has been simplified compared to the scientific phase diagram for water above for performance. It has also been edited for clarity.
This graph shows the calculated density of Earth based on depth (or radius, 0 km being the core and 6,371 km the surface) in our in-game model (top) compared to a scientific model of Earth’s density (bottom; from A. M. Dziewonski, D. L. Anderson (1981). "Preliminary reference Earth model
The cut-away view of Earth shows the individual materials (upper left), temperature (bottom), and phase (upper right) of each material from the inside out. We can see the model of Earth’s interior in Universe Sandbox has a very hot, solid iron core, a layer of molten liquid iron above it, and a layer of hot, solid silicate that cools as it gets closer to the crust.
Planetscaping materials onto the surface of a blank planet while they flow together. As the simulation speed increases, the liquid methane, nitrogen, and sulfur dioxide start to evaporate, creating opaque atmospheres above their liquid surfaces. Planetscaping materials and the Planetscaping tool interface are works in progress.
Ceres, a dwarf planet in the asteroid belt, collides with Earth. The surface heating on impact causes the ocean to boil, creating an opaque patch of atmosphere above the impact region. The small fragments colliding with Earth push the atmosphere upon entry, creating holes and dense shockwaves that create ripples in the atmosphere.
Planetscaping gaseous oxygen into Earth’s atmosphere creates an opaque area that expands outwards. Adding materials to planet atmospheres and the Planetscaping tool interface are works in progress.
Many small moons orbit close to Earth, colliding with each other and Earth. Collisions with Earth cause superheated patches of ocean to evaporate and transfer the material from the small moon to Earth.
Making our user interface work in portrait mode is an added challenge when adapting it for small screens.
Dynamically resizing panels (this tool panel is cut off) and automatically moving the center of your view so you can always see what you're looking at (moving the Sun hidden behind the tool panel to the empty space on the left) is just one example of the user interface work we still need to do. This is a work in progress.
One new design we have is a step to confirm placing an object, helping it end up where you want it. This is a work in progress.
[h4]Gravity Simulation[/h4]
Many simulations can now be run at noticeably higher simulation speeds. Try increasing the simulation speed of the Solar System simulation or your own custom simulation.
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[h4]More Highlights[/h4]
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We’ve combined our two previously separate collision methods improving collisions so shockwaves now realistically eject fragments as they spread across gas giants during collisions. Interface panels, such as graphs, data maps, and object properties, are now remembered when you open saved simulations. We’ve also added new astronomical discoveries to explore, like the galaxy-sized detector used to find new evidence of supermassive black holes.
[h4]Unified Collisions[/h4]
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[h4]More Highlights[/h4]
We’ve also added a simulation of the dwarf planet Haumea’s rings
Manipulate the temperature of the universe and learn about the cosmic microwave background
Display settings have been updated to include more options for exclusive fullscreen, fullscreen borderless, and windowed resolutions
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Default temperature unit can now be changed to °F, only °C, or only K under
Check out the full list of What's New in Update 32.3
The Milky Way galaxy with a trail for every nebula in the galaxy using our upcoming physics architecture improvements. Currently, trails are only shown for some nebulae due to performance limitations. The colors show how many times the orbit of a nebula must be computed to maintain physical accuracy. Blue means fewer computations, while red means more.
Demonstrating highlights from 2022, including the Force Spin tool, Settle Water button, and Auto Simulation Speed.
Titan with realistic lakes of liquid methane. Titan’s properties include the amount of methane and the percentage in each phase (solid, liquid, and gas). Material colors are manually adjusted to help see the lakes. This feature and interface are a work in progress.
This graph shows the calculated density of the materials of Earth based on their depth. You can see the density of Earth increases as you move towards its core. The cut-away view of Earth shows the individual materials, temperature, and phase of each material from the inside out. This feature and interface are a work in progress.
Liquid materials added to the surface of a planet with the Planetscaping tool will blend over time. Artificial coloring is used here to help differentiate materials. This feature and interface are a work in progress.
While many moons orbiting Earth and colliding are beautiful, the more objects in a simulation, the more computationally demanding it is.
Before - Our current gravity simulation has small inaccuracies, so the trails of these moons don't show a fish.
After - Improvements to our gravity simulation allow these moons to orbit with trails that clearly show a fish.
As moons collide, they get hot enough to glow and emit light on the surrounding moons. Non-stellar objects emitting light is a work in progress.
A habitable planet with vegetation that dies off after an asteroid impact. Vegetation response to temperature is already implemented, but in the future, additional factors beyond collisions will impact vegetation habitability.
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