Universe Sandbox News

Immerse yourself in a universe more awe-inspiring and realistic than ever before with our next-generation graphics update! We've also added many interface improvements to make controlling the universe easier and more intuitive. You need to see it to believe it.


[h4]A More Realistic Graphics Engine[/h4]
We’ve completely replaced our 10-year-old graphics technology with a state-of-the-art system to make Universe Sandbox look more realistic with physically-based lighting. This new system has required us to update our minimum requirements. Learn more.


[h4]Edit Objects Simultaneously[/h4]
The properties panel now lets you edit multiple objects at once. Use the new Multi-Select tool to select multiple objects and try increasing the mass of every object in the Solar System simultaneously!

[h4]Automatic Interface Management[/h4]
Focus on manipulating the universe instead of managing panels with our new interface system that automatically positions, resizes, and closes panels so you can always see the simulation. This immersive system also provides better support for ultrawide monitors and small screens (like smartphones).

[h4]More Highlights[/h4]

Focus on realism
Making Universe Sandbox look as realistic as possible with physically-based lighting has made stars realistically bright, and collisions result in blindingly realistic hot spots. It turns out there’s a reason you’re not supposed to look at the Sun.


Light from hot planets
Hot objects now emit light based on their temperature so you can use intense impacts to light up your simulation. Previously, only stars could emit light.

Localized glow
Objects now bloom only in hot areas, like those created from lasers or collisions, instead of being surrounded by a single uniform glow.

Smoothly blending clouds
Gas and dust clouds now smoothly pass over planets instead of creating sharp intersections.

Realistic artifacts
The surfaces of human-scale objects, or artifacts like spacecraft, have shiny, reflective metals and rough, rugged edges that interact with light more realistically.

Math in text fields
All object properties now support basic math. Try typing “*42” into a property to multiply by 42 or “/3” to divide by 3, for example.


Explore planet surfaces
Move across the surface of a planet with the WASD keys after landing on it by zooming in for a closer look or using the Land action button in the planet's Overview tab.


Light intensity with distance
Objects are now always realistically lit based on their physical distance from a light source. Previously, objects were lit with the same intensity based on the camera's distance from a light source instead of the object's distance from a light source.

Light warping
Black holes now realistically warp the visuals from other black holes instead of blocking any black holes behind them from being seen. The images below are from the same simulation, with custom colors in the “Before” image that make the black holes easier to see.

Updated View Panel
We’ve improved the View panel with more intuitive controls and lighting options
You can now see and change the camera target from the View panel.
Space Goggles provide a more comfortable view that filters the brightness to show the action while preserving realism. Turning them off switches to an unfiltered realistic view where stars, hot objects, and collisions can be blindingly bright.

Before


After

Action Buttons
We’ve added all-new Action buttons at the top of every Properties tab. Quickly fly to a planet or explode it. Your call. (These buttons replace the Action tab.)


Save objects or learn more about real astronomical ones with our new Wikipedia button under Additional Actions.


Color maps
We’ve updated our Data View color maps to make them more perceptually uniform. We've also added colorblind-friendly color maps and the ability to invert them.


Inspecting the surface
Use the new Inspect tool to quickly see the temperature, material composition, elevation, and other properties of specific points on a planet’s surface.


Selectable Orbital Parent
It’s now easier to create binary systems orbiting a common center of mass (also called a barycenter). View and adjust an object's Orbital Elements around a binary by selecting the system's barycenter as the object’s Orbital Parent.

Choose your Startup Simulation
Choose the simulation that automatically opens when Universe Sandbox starts, from any of our included simulations to your own custom work in progress. Just go to
Home > Settings > General > Experience > Startup Simulation

New hotbar
The hotbar has been overhauled so you can add even more shortcuts to manipulate the universe. To edit your hotbar, go to Settings > General > Edit Hotbar or right-click on it and then select “Edit Hotbar.”


A Potentially Dangerous Asteroid
Watch the projected path of one of the most potentially dangerous asteroids ever detected, YR 2024, as it flies near Earth in 2032, or check out a What If? scenario of what the impact might look like under
Close Encounter of Asteroid YR4 2024 with Earth in 2032
And
What If Asteroid YR4 2024 Collides with Earth in 2032?

[h4]New Minimum Requirements[/h4]
Improving our graphics means we need to update our minimum hardware requirements to include
4 GB dedicated video memory (up from 2 GB). 8 GB is recommended.
4 GB RAM (up from 2 GB). 8 GB is recommended.
4 GB of free disk space (up from 2 GB).

Windows:
DirectX 12 
Windows 10 21H1+ (support for Windows 7 SP1, 8, 8.1, and older versions of Windows 10 will be dropped)

Apple:
Silicon (M1 or newer). Intel Mac will no longer be supported. Universe Sandbox may still run on Intel-based Macs, but we cannot guarantee good performance for every Intel-based Mac.
macOS 11.0+ (support for macOS 10.14 and 10.15 will be dropped)

While it is never fun to have support dropped, this new graphics system will allow us to improve performance and add new features to Universe Sandbox now and well into the future.

We’ll ensure all users affected by this change can always access the version of Universe Sandbox from before this minimum requirements update. Learn how.

Check out the full list of What's New in Update 35.

Please report any issues on our Steam forum, on Discord, or in-game via Home > Send Feedback.

Since our last sneak peek of the Universe Sandbox graphics update, we’ve put out a preview version of our new state-of-the-art graphics system that you can test now on Steam to immerse yourself in a universe more awe-inspiring and realistic than ever before. We've also made many interface improvements to make controlling the universe easier and more intuitive.

There's still more to do before this update is ready for release, but we wanted to share other improvements you can look forward to and test out right now.

[h4]Space in a New Light | Update 35 is now out![/h4]

Learn more about all the additions and improvements in this update.

Work in Progress

The properties panel now lets you edit multiple objects at once. We’ve even added a new selection tool to make it easier to select multiple objects.

We’ve implemented a new user interface system that automatically positions, resizes, and closes panels so you can always see the simulation and focus on manipulating the universe instead of managing panels.

All object properties now support basic math. Try typing “*42” into a property to multiply by 42 or “/3” to divide by 3, for example.
Work in Progress

Move across the surface of a planet with the WASD keys after landing on it by zooming in for a closer look or using the Land action button in the planet's Overview tab.
Work in Progress

It’s now easier to create binary systems orbiting a common center of mass (also called a barycenter). View and adjust an object's Orbital Elements around a binary by selecting the system's barycenter as the object’s Orbital Parent.

We’ve added all-new Action buttons at the top of every Properties tab. Quickly fly to a planet or explode it. Your call. (These buttons replace the Action tab)
Work in Progress

Save objects or learn more about real astronomical ones with our new Wikipedia button under Additional Actions.
Work in Progress

Use the new Inspect tool to quickly see the temperature, material composition, elevation, and other properties of specific points on a planet’s surface.


Stars and collisions can be blindingly bright. We’re overhauling the View panel with more intuitive controls and lighting options to show the action while preserving life-like accuracy and letting you customize your view of the universe. Learn more in our new guide under
Home > Guides > Tutorials > A Realistic View of Space Comparing Earth and 100 colliding moons with Realistic (Space Goggles off and no artificial lights) and Enhanced (Space Goggles on and no artificial lights) Object Visibility.

Work in Progress

We’ve updated our Data View color maps to make them more perceptually uniform, along with adding colorblind-friendly color maps and the ability to invert them.
Work in Progress

This preview version includes over 50 fixes and improvements related to all aspects of Universe Sandbox.

Our new graphics renderer and interface improvements are still in progress, and final appearances may look different. We’re excited for you all to test out the preview version and eventually share the full update with everybody.

Join our community discussions on our Steam Forum and our official Discord community.

Updated on March 3, 2025

Immerse yourself in a universe more awe-inspiring and realistic than ever before with our next-generation Universe Sandbox graphics update. We’ve spent the last two years completely replacing our 10-year-old graphics technology with a state-of-the-art system in our biggest update in years and our biggest visual update ever!

• Our new graphics engine is a vastly improved realistic rendering system that’s more robust, easier to improve, and lets us better show you how the universe really looks.
  
• Doubling down on realism brought a new set of technical and design challenges for us to tackle to make every aspect of Universe Sandbox as realistic as possible.
  
• We’ve completely ripped out our old graphic engine replacing thousands of lines of code.
  

We’ve also included many non-graphics-related improvements with this update, including

• A new interface system that automatically positions, resizes, and closes panels so you can always see the simulation.
  
• Editing multiple objects at once in the Properties panel. To select multiple objects, hold down Control (⌘ on Mac) and click on each object you want to include.
  
  • All object properties now support basic math.
    
• New Action buttons at the top of every Properties tab instead of an Actions tab so you can quickly fly to a planet or explode it.
  

This graphics update is part of our plan to rewrite Universe Sandbox piece by piece with cutting-edge systems so we can continue to improve it for years to come. It’s like we’re gradually replacing every part of a spaceship out from under you while you’re actively piloting it.

[h4]Space in a New Light | Update 35 is now out![/h4]
Learn more about all the additions and improvements in this update.

[h3]A Brighter Future For All (Literally)[/h3]
While not exhaustive, some of the most visually apparent changes you’ll see in Universe Sandbox are

• Focus on realism
  Making Universe Sandbox look as realistic as possible with physically-based lighting has brought new challenges. For example, stars can now be realistically bright.
  

• Collisions can result in blindingly realistic hot spots. Showing the action while preserving life-like accuracy has been one of our biggest challenges.
  

Comparing Earth and 100 colliding moons with Realistic (Space Goggles off and no artificial lights) and Enhanced (Space Goggles on and no artificial lights) Object Visibility.

• Localized glow
  Objects now bloom only in hot areas, like those created from lasers or collisions, instead of being surrounded by a single uniform glow.
  

• Smoothly blending clouds
  Gas and dust clouds are now soft particles that smoothly pass over planets instead of creating sharp intersections.
  

• Light from hot planets
  All hot objects now emit light based on their temperature so you can use intense impacts to light up your simulation. Previously, only stars could emit light.
  

• Color temperature
  The color of hot objects is more accurately based on their temperatures.
  

• Realistic artifacts
  The surfaces of human-scale objects, or artifacts like spacecraft, have shiny, reflective metals and rough, rugged edges that interact with light more realistically.
  

• Light intensity with distance
  Objects are now always realistically lit based on their physical distance from a light source. Previously, objects were lit with the same intensity based on the camera's distance from a light source instead of the object's distance from a light source.
  

• Black holes warping black holes
  Black holes now realistically warp the visuals from other black holes instead of blocking any black holes behind them from being seen. The images below are from the same simulation, with custom colors that make the black holes easier to see.
  

• New and improved View panel
  We’ve overhauled the View panel with more intuitive controls and lighting options, including
  
  • Artificial Starlight switches between a realistic view, where only hot objects in the simulation emit light, and an enhanced view, where artificial lights also light the simulation.
    
    
  • Space Goggles switches between a realistic view, where stars and collisions can be blindingly bright, and an enhanced view, to show the action while preserving realism.
    

We’ve also solved some known visual issues, like the apparent “eclipses” you see after landing on a planet’s surface. Our new system solves the underlying problem - star glows (or bloom) being rendered on top of the atmosphere instead of behind it.



[h3]Under the Hood[/h3]
Universe Sandbox runs simulations by computing how data from every object, like temperature, mass, and composition, changes over time. We also use this data to realistically create and adjust the visuals you see on your screen (called graphics rendering) using shaders.

Shaders are pieces of code that run on your graphics cards and use game data to render our graphics as the simulation changes. Shaders let us show you the universe realistically, no matter the scenario, without relying on manually animated, hand-drawn images or textures.

Our old graphics system utilized Unity’s Built-in Render Pipeline. To create realistic graphics with this pipeline, we manually wrote all the shaders in Universe Sandbox using a shader-specific programming language. This code was dense and hard to read when we wanted to update it, and every time we wanted to test a change, we needed to recompile the code to test it. This was often a time-consuming process.
A snippet of custom shader code for rendering planet atmospheres. This 1100-line shader defines variables, does some math, and is tricky to parse when looking for issues.

We’re transitioning our graphics rendering to Unity’s Universal Render Pipeline (URP) because it

• Includes more features we can use for realistic, physically-based lighting while still providing the flexibility to add custom mathematical modes.
  
• Actively gets updates and new features so we can continue improving Universe Sandbox well into the future. While Unity still supports our old graphics rendering system, it no longer receives new features.
  
• Comes with the latest version of Unity’s Shader Graph, a node-based visual programming language that is still receiving updates for creating our shaders.
  

Shader Graph also includes more built-in lighting models so we can experiment quickly by breaking the graphs into small pieces and providing visual previews without recompiling the code, reducing development time.

Work in Progress - Top: The Shader Graph for rendering planets. Following the graph flow is easier than reading code, inputs are simpler, and the nodes show visual previews. Middle: Close-up of the Shader Graph node for rendering liquids on planets. This shows all the inputs and outputs of the node needed to render the liquid. Bottom: Close-up of two preview nodes that show what the planet's surface will look like that can be used for quick testing and debugging (no object is selected for these previews, so they are colored black and pink, respectively).
[h3]New Minimum Requirements[/h3]
Improving our graphics means we need to update our minimum hardware requirements to include

• 4 GB dedicated video memory (up from 2 GB). 8 GB is recommended.
  
• Windows:
  
  • DirectX 12
    
  • Windows 10 21H1+ (support for Windows 7 SP1, 8, 8.1, and older versions of Windows 10 will be dropped)
    
• Apple:
  
  • Silicon (M1 or newer). Intel Mac will no longer be supported.
    
    • Universe Sandbox may still run on Intel-based Macs, but we cannot guarantee good performance for every Intel-based Mac.
      
  • macOS 11.0+ (support for macOS 10.14 and 10.15 will be dropped)
    

While it is never fun to have support dropped, this new graphics system will allow us to improve performance and add new features to Universe Sandbox now and well into the future.

We’ll ensure all users affected by this change can always access the version of Universe Sandbox from before this minimum requirements update.

[h3]What’s Next[/h3]
We’re doing more testing to track down the last remaining issues to ensure Universe Sandbox looks realistic and runs smoothly in every scenario. Many parts of our simulation already look amazing.



There are still a handful of issues we need to work out. These include issues like this one we solved a few months ago, where our backgrounds weren’t being rendered quite right with some graphics cards.



And like any new feature, there may be issues we have yet to find and fix – and you can help!

[h4]Try the preview of our next-generation graphics update right now![/h4]
Learn how to opt-in to this preview version on Steam, now available for testing and feedback.

https://universesandbox.com/support/previewversion

[h3]And Beyond[/h3]
This graphics update is just the beginning of the changes to come and includes many other improvements. The first updates to our user interface system are already a part of this preview version, and we’re actively working on a complete replacement of our simulation architecture so we can continue to make Universe Sandbox even more realistic.

Unless otherwise noted, all work-in-progress images are taken using our default “Enhanced” Object Visibility mode.

Join our community discussions on our Steam Forum and our official Discord community.

Updated on March 3, 2025

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]
Prepare to immerse yourself in a universe more awe-inspiring and realistic than ever before with our next-generation Universe Sandbox graphics update. Over the past year and a half, we've been replacing our decade-old graphics technology with a state-of-the-art system that sets the stage for future enhancements.

While there's still more to be done before it's ready for release, we're excited to give you a sneak peek at our progress.

Stay tuned to our Steam Forum and Discord server where we’ll be announcing a preview version you can try before it’s released to everyone. In the meantime, you can check out our 2024 Roadmap to learn more about what we have planned.



The color of hot objects is more accurately based on their temperatures.


Spacecraft and other human-scale objects will interact with light more realistically.


Gas clouds no longer create sharp intersections when passing over planets.


Objects will only glow in areas where they’re hot instead of the entire object glowing based on average temperature.




Hot objects will emit light based on their temperature.


More accurate lighting at a distance for more realistic and cinematic views.


Explore the beauty of the universe more awesomely than ever.


We fixed that annoying issue where stars look like they’re being eclipsed when seen from the surface of a planet.


Stars appear brighter, realistically obscuring surface detail.


Our new graphics renderer is still a work in progress, and final appearances may look different. We can’t wait to share space in a new light with you.

Join our community discussions on our Steam Forum and our official Discord community.

Our new graphics renderer will make hot spots, like those lasered into this planet. This graphics overhaul is a work in progress.

This year's plans include a major graphics overhaul, more realistic collisions & craters, and putting Universe Sandbox on mobile devices so you can create and destroy on the go. Before getting into the details, here’s a brief recap of last year.

[h2]Highlights from 2023[/h2]
Demonstrating highlights from 2023, including a spherical cow and adding materials like methane and nitrogen to planets.

In 2023, we put out 4 feature-packed updates. Some of our favorite new additions include

• Massive improvements to our gravity simulation's accuracy, stability, and performance.
  
• Adding 8 new materials, including oxygen & carbon dioxide, to realistically simulate, construct, and terraform planets and atmospheres.
  
• Rolling a Spherical Cow into Universe Sandbox. This refers to a joke that physicists sometimes oversimplify real-world problems to make them easier to solve.
  

The gravity simulation improvements and additional materials were major milestones from our 2023 Roadmap post. Check out our 2023 Retrospective post for more on what we did last year.

[h2]What’s the Plan for 2024?[/h2]

• Using a new graphics renderer to immerse you further in the universe with bright glows, smoothly drifting dust clouds, and more.
  
• Optimizing our simulation performance with Unity’s Data-Oriented Technology Stack (DOTS).
  
• Doubling down on our efforts to bring Universe Sandbox to phones and tablets (iOS & Android).
  
• Begin adding basic plant-based life simulation.
  
• Continue improving our development tools to find and fix issues quickly.
  

We plan to work on all of these projects in 2024, but some, like our new graphics renderer, have been in the works for a while. Additional challenges may arise that delay features, and our priorities may change.

[h3]New Graphics: A Visual Glow-Up[/h3]
Work in Progress: Earth and 100 colliding moons after some of our graphics renderer changes.

It’s time for a glow-up, literally. We’re rebuilding our graphics rendering from the ground up. After our overhaul, only the hot parts of the objects will glow instead of the entire object, dust clouds will blend smoothly with other objects, and more.

• New Graphics Renderer
  
  • Last year, we started transitioning our graphics rendering to Unity’s Universal Render Pipeline (URP). This system allows us to use more true-to-life light properties and easily add and maintain new graphical elements. We’re expecting a performance boost too.
    
    • Dust clouds passing through planets currently show sharp lines at their intersection. URP will let us render transparent clouds that blend smoothly with planets, called soft particles.
      Current: Dust clouds passing through a planet show sharp lines where they intersect. Our graphics overhaul hopes to remove these lines.
  • Planets will glow only where their surfaces are hot, with hot spots from lasers and colliding objects only glowing at the impact site. Currently, planets glow uniformly based on their average temperature.
    
    
    

    
    

    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.
    

    
    
  • Eventually, we’ll simulate objects casting shadows on themselves, like the solar panels on a spacecraft casting a shadow on its body.
    
• Lighting Up Space
  
  • Light – it’s not just for stars anymore. Hot planets will emit light based on their temperature so you can light up your simulation with intense impacts.
    Work In Progress: Moons collide and heat up. The hot spots glow, illuminating other moons in the simulation.

[h3]Physics: Collisions, Gravity, & Performance (Oh My)[/h3]
Work in Progress: Small moons collide and slide across Mars’s surface, creating a long crater and spraying fragments, which create more small craters.

Improving collisions and their aftermath, like impact craters and ejecta, and continuing to optimize our physics simulation are all improvements we’re working on this year.

• Advanced Game Engine Features
  
  • We’re continuing to reconstruct our simulation architecture using the Data-Oriented Technology Stack (DOTS) from Unity, the game engine we use to build Universe Sandbox. We made good progress last year and are excited about the expected performance gains.
    
    
  • DOTS optimizes our simulation by efficiently running more computations simultaneously on the CPU, which means simulating more objects, collisions, and fragments at once.
    
    
  • This transition will effectively combine parts of our simulation, like how different types of objects are defined, making it easier to maintain without sacrificing complexity.
    
• Grinding to a Halt
  
  • Our new friction model will simulate craters stretching out as objects skid across each other's surfaces during collisions. In our current simplistic model, craters are always circular.
    
    
    

    
    

    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.
    

    
    
• To simulate meteors, we’re working on adding a drag force so objects burn up while traveling through a planet’s atmosphere. We’re also exploring ways to apply this force to objects passing through gas clouds and liquids. Currently, objects pass through atmospheres unchanged.
  Work in Progress: A meteor burns up as it flies through Earth’s atmosphere.
  
  
• Chaotic Consequences
  
  • Rock fragments and gas clouds are created when planets collide or are vaporized, but computer limitations mean we sometimes need to remove the old ones to create new ones. We’re testing better removal methods to immerse you in the chaos. This was released in March as part of Update 34.1.
    
    
    

    
    

    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.
    

    
    
• New Gravity Simulation
  
  • We’re experimenting with a new method of gravity simulation to allow rock fragments and dust clouds to attract and merge, forming planets & moons. Currently, these particles can only be pulled on and cannot form planets independently.
    
• Smooth Object Transitions
  
  • If the Sun gets too massive in Universe Sandbox, it instantly shrinks into a black hole. In real life, this shrinking and compression takes time. We’re updating our simulation so these transitions can occur on realistic timescales.
    
    • We hope to simulate the answer to the question, “What if you filled the Solar System with soup out to Jupiter?” (Spoiler: The soup would contract into a supermassive black hole in about 30 minutes.)
      

[h3]Universe Sandbox on Phones & Tablets[/h3]
[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]
Collisions and surface simulation already run smoothly in Universe Sandbox on mobile devices. This video was taken before Terraforming | Update 34. Universe Sandbox on mobile will have the same features as on desktop.

Getting Universe Sandbox on mobile devices (iOS & Android) is a major focus. We’re continuing to optimize our interface for small touch screens, and you can read about the latest mobile developments in our second Mobile DevLog.

• Small Screen Interface
  
  • Unity’s cross-platform capabilities let us easily bring the same simulation changes to mobile devices and desktops.
    
    
  • Our biggest challenge with mobile development is adapting our interface to work well on small touch screens (like a phone). Development is underway to intelligently resize, hide, and reveal panels as needed so you can focus on cosmic creation instead of managing the user interface.
    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.
• Running a Universe
  
  • Another requirement for mobile is boosting performance across all platforms. Alongside our new graphics renderer and rebuilding our simulation architecture, we're improving interface responsiveness and resource utilization and optimizing start-up times, among other things.
    
• More Information
  
  • Universe Sandbox on mobile is built from the same codebase as the desktop version and will have the same features.
    
  • There is no mobile release date yet.
    
  • We plan on it being a one-time paid app with no ads or in-game purchases.
    
    • Price is not finalized.
      
  • Minimum requirements are not finalized.
    
  • Sign up for our mobile mailing list to receive updates about mobile development
    http://universesandbox.com/mobile/

[h3]Surface Simulation: Let There Be Life[/h3]
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.

Now that we’re simulating materials like oxygen and carbon dioxide on planet surfaces, we can begin working on basic life simulation. Life will grow (and die) on these surfaces in real-time, the same way we simulate temperature, liquids, and gasses flowing.

• Basic Beginnings
  
  • Initially, we plan to simulate just plant life, with vegetation growing, spreading, and dying based on the planet's temperature, atmosphere pressure and composition, and more.
    
    
  • As life develops, we’ll simulate how it affects the oxygen and carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, also known as a biosignature.
    
• An Evolving Model
  
  • Long term, we plan to add more varieties of life, like herbivores and carnivores, and simulate their interactions as a food chain develops.
    
    
  • Eventually, you’ll be able to cause catastrophic events leading to mass extinctions and customize life conditions, like the amount of oxygen required for life to develop.
    
    
  • Life will spread across planets' surfaces after being Planetscaped onto a planet or appearing spontaneously. It will even spread to other planets on fragments from collisions.
    

[h3]Upgrading Our Developer Toolkit[/h3]
An automated test showing Neptune disrupting Saturn’s rings. At the end of this test, Universe Sandbox takes a screenshot.

We’ve also been improving the tools we use to create and test Universe Sandbox for faster updates and bug fixing.

• Parallel Sandbox Construction
  
  • Our newest automatic build system, which creates a new version of Universe Sandbox in the cloud whenever one of our team members changes the code, can make up to 10 versions at once.
    
    • When many of us are making changes, this automation lets us test any new version within 30 minutes.
      Partial GitHub Actions flow chart of our new system to build new versions of Universe Sandbox. Each step records what it’s doing, how long it took, and if it’s complete.
  • Each store that sells Universe Sandbox has slightly different requirements, so making multiple versions at once lets us release new updates almost simultaneously to all stores, like Steam and Epic. This process previously took a few hours.
    
    
  • This new system will also create and deploy Universe Sandbox to mobile devices for testing on phones and tablets (iOS and Android).
    
  
  
  
• Automation
  
  • Expanding our automated test suite, which covers collision physics, simulation performance, and more, helps us catch and fix bugs faster.
    
    • We’re exploring programmatic ways to compare test results to accelerate issue identification.
      
  • Producing and capturing game trailers and screenshots entirely in-game with a single button lets us easily show off the latest developments, like our upcoming new graphics renderer. New screenshots generated this way are already on our Steam store page, and we’re planning to release our updated trailer as an in-game guide.
    Earth and many moons collide. Our automated capture system took this screenshot, which was recently added to our Steam store page.

[h3]Updating Our Minimum Requirements[/h3]
To adopt the latest technologies needed to restructure our simulation architecture and use our new graphics renderer, we plan to update our minimum requirements this year to include

• 4 GB dedicated video memory (up from 2 GB). 8 GB will be recommended.
  
• Apple: Silicon CPU (M1 or newer), meaning that Intel Mac will no longer be supported.
  
• Windows: Direct X version 12
  

While it is never fun to have support dropped, these new technologies will allow us to improve performance and add new features to Universe Sandbox now and well into the future.

We’ll ensure all users affected by this change can always access the version of Universe Sandbox from before this minimum requirements update.

[h3]And Beyond[/h3]
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.

Our future goals include realistically colliding everyday objects, like a watermelon and a sledgehammer, adding detailed planet surfaces, and properly simulating comet tails. These are in early development, and we don’t know when they will be released.

• Stretch it Out
  
  • Most objects in Universe Sandbox are spheres, but in real life, some rotate so quickly that they stretch and flatten, like the dwarf planet Haumea. We’re working to simulate that stretching.
    
• Everyday Object Collisions
  
  • Currently, when objects collide, they’re treated as spheres. We’re working on adding new physics so that everyday objects, including simple shapes like dice and complex shapes like spacecraft, will collide according to their unique forms. This is often known as rigid body collision physics.
    
• Detailed Planet Surfaces
  
  • Imagine flying over mountains and through canyons on planet surfaces in Universe Sandbox. We’re still experimenting with ways to add more details to planet surfaces, but we’re excited about the possibilities.
    
• Volatiles
  
  • To simulate comet tails streaking through space, we plan to overhaul our volatile system, which determines how gas escapes from a planet’s atmosphere into space.
    

We’re excited to bring so much to Universe Sandbox this year, and we can’t wait to share it with you!