But after more discussion, we decided we didn’t want to compromise the quality of these features - let’s delay a bit, work on this better version, and release something that we’re very proud of. That makes it sound like a clear choice, but there were a couple of drawbacks: there were some technical compromises with this proposed new system, and pursuing it meant that we’d have to further delay the release of these features, something that we knew both we and our fans would not prefer. We could either continue to work through all of the issues that remained and end up with something that met most of our high-level design goals but fell short on performance, or we could take everything we had learned and reimplement it in an entirely new system that would meet even more of our goals, be exponentially faster, bypass some of the issues we were trying to solve, and have much more room for future expansion. While we were continuing to make progress on development, we were also continually running into problems and were pushing the technical limitations of the system we had implemented, all with diminishing returns. The features weren’t quite living up to our expectations and standards. Long VersionĪnd if you’re curious, here’s the longer version: Last month we sat down for a team meeting on the status of Surface Grids and Lasers and had to make a difficult decision. Thank you for your patience!Īnd in the meantime, we hope to release some new simulation features: improved physics and new galaxies. We are now applying our work to a completely new approach that we think will be well worth the wait. If you’re a fan of treating bad news like a bandaid that needs to be ripped off, here’s the short version: We chose to further delay the release of Surface Grids & Lasers because our implementation was not meeting our expectations. It also makes possible tools like the laser, which is essentially just a fun way of heating up localized areas of a surface. In effect, it allows for more detailed and accurate surface simulation and more dynamic and interactive surface visuals.

Not familiar with Surface Grids? It’s a feature we’re developing for Universe Sandbox that makes it possible to simulate values locally across the surface of an object. We believe these features will be an awesome addition to the core Universe Sandbox simulation and experience, and we know from your excitement that you agree.

We know many of you have been patiently waiting for two of our next big features, Surface Grids & Lasers.

Universe sandbox 2 laser