When I was a kid, I used to go to the school library in Elementary school and pick out books about the solar system. I loved reading all about how "Mercury's orbit and rotational period are exactly 88 days so that it always keeps one face toward the sun" and stuff like that. Of course most of that is wrong/outdated information, but again, I was reading books published 20 years before I was born so that's to be expected.

Well, anyway... what we have here is a nice little tour of the Solar System and you can get pretty up-close and personal with every single planet (and a few of the major moons and other dwarf planets).

They start you out with a scale you can appreciate and then as the tour continues you get to see exactly how big (relative to Earth) Jupiter and Saturn are... Everything is shrunk down to 1/1000000th of its size but it's still pretty massive. While the graphics aren't SUPER amazing, they're still jaw dropping in scale...though that effect is lost when you reach out to grab the planet to look at it closer and now it looks like a toy on the end of a stick.

Each planet and some of the moons have trivia you can read about them. It's probably the kind of thing that 20 years from now we'll learn is wrong and/or outdated and kids in the future will roll their eyes as us when we tell them stories about how Neptune is a darker blue than Uranus even though they're both comprised of a lot of methane. "No Grampa, it's the distortion from the graviton flux caused by a disturbance in the weak force that makes it APPEAR darker... Pfft!" or something like that.

Anyway, it's not a game, there's no objective to complete. It's just a nice little guided tour through the solar system. It's still very educational, and they're still working on it in Early Access so there's a chance that there could even be updates to some of the informaton as we learn new things.

If you have an interest in Astronomy but don't care to delve into it too deeply, this is a great way to see our local neighborhood.

When I was a kid, I used to go to the school library in Elementary school and pick out books about the solar system. I loved reading all about how "Mercury's orbit and rotational period are exactly 88 days so that it always keeps one face toward the sun" and stuff like that. Of course most of that is wrong/outdated information, but again, I was reading books published 20 years before I was born so that's to be expected. Well, anyway... what we have here is a nice little tour of the Solar System and you can get pretty up-close and personal with every single planet (and a few of the major moons and other dwarf planets). They start you out with a scale you can appreciate and then as the tour continues you get to see exactly how big (relative to Earth) Jupiter and Saturn are... Everything is shrunk down to 1/1000000th of its size but it's still pretty massive. While the graphics aren't SUPER amazing, they're still jaw dropping in scale...though that effect is lost when you reach out to grab the planet to look at it closer and now it looks like a toy on the end of a stick. Each planet and some of the moons have trivia you can read about them. It's probably the kind of thing that 20 years from now we'll learn is wrong and/or outdated and kids in the future will roll their eyes as us when we tell them stories about how Neptune is a darker blue than Uranus even though they're both comprised of a lot of methane. "No Grampa, it's the distortion from the graviton flux caused by a disturbance in the weak force that makes it APPEAR darker... Pfft!" or something like that. Anyway, it's not a game, there's no objective to complete. It's just a nice little guided tour through the solar system. It's still very educational, and they're still working on it in Early Access so there's a chance that there could even be updates to some of the informaton as we learn new things. If you have an interest in Astronomy but don't care to delve into it too deeply, this is a great way to see our local neighborhood.