We started 2025 by releasing our major graphics overhaul, but we have much more planned for the year, including allowing meteors to burn up in an atmosphere, simulating basic life, and getting Universe Sandbox on mobile devices so you can create and destroy on the go. Before diving into details, let’s look back on some highlights from 2024.
Highlights from 2024
The Moon’s shadow passing over Earth during the total solar eclipse across North America on April 8, 2024.
We spent 2024 working on our major graphics overhaul, released March 2025, and many of the other in-progress features mentioned in this roadmap. In addition to the awe-inspiring realistic graphics, our March graphics update included many quality-of-life improvements. Our biggest accomplishments from the year include:
- Improving material simulation and manipulation with more realistic atmosphere colors and opacity and the ability to swap one material for another. (Update 34.1, March 2024)
- Replacing our 10-year-old graphics technology with a state-of-the-art system so you can immerse yourself in a more awe-inspiring and realistic universe. (Update 35, March 2025)
- Implementing a new interface system that automatically positions, resizes, and closes panels so you can focus on manipulating the universe instead of managing panels. (Update 35, March 2025)
The new graphics rendering and user interface systems were major milestones on our 2024 Roadmap.
What’s the Plan for 2025?
- ✅Finish our major graphics update.
- Released on March 3, 2025!
We plan to work on all these projects in 2025, but some, like getting Universe Sandbox on mobile devices, have been in the works for years. Additional challenges may arise that delay features, and our priorities may change.
Even More Graphics Improvements: The Saga Continues
A comparison of Earth and 100 Colliding Moons showing how much more realistic the scenario looks in our new graphics update.
Earlier this year, we released our major graphics update with hot, non-stellar objects emitting light, physically based lighting, and more. But we’re not done yet! We’re planning even more graphics features, including object selection highlights that are unique to the object’s shape and new point light object.
- But Wait, There’s More!
- Now that our new graphics rendering system is out, we’re planning to utilize it to add even more graphics features, including
- Redesigning object selection outlines to be more visible, useful, and unique to that object’s shape instead of always being a circle.
- Adding new Point Lights with customizable colors to light up your simulations without adding stars (and boiling Earth) for that perfect shot.
Work in Progress: Point Lights are a work in progress that allows you to customize your simulation's lighting further. - Simulating supernovas emitting light (Spoiler - they’re really really bright).
Work in Progress: A supernova lighting up a few different objects, including Jupiter and a very large banana. Space Goggles are On because the supernova is so bright.
Life Simulation: Let There Be Life!
Work in Progress: The work-in-progress life simulation interface tracks the mass of vegetation, herbivores, and non-living matter, and the habitability of each point on a planet's surface.
Last year, we began working on life simulation after adding materials like carbon dioxide and oxygen to planet atmospheres. Vegetation will grow, spread, die, and be eaten on planet surfaces, similarly to how we simulate temperature, liquid, and gas flow.
- Simulating Vegetation
- Life can spread to other planets on fragments from collisions.
- As vegetation grows and dies, the amount of carbon dioxide and oxygen in the atmosphere will change.
- Vegetation will grow, spread, and die based on the local conditions on the surface of a planet.
Work in Progress: All life on Earth is killed, only to reseed it with some vegetation using the Planetscaping tool. The vegetation slowly spreads back across Earth. - You’ll be able to customize the conditions needed for life on your planets so your plants can absorb methane and emit hydrogen, for example.
- You can even set the conditions to make life grow on Titan!
Work in Progress: Custom vegetation thriving on the surface of Saturn’s Moon Titan after setting the temperature range and atmosphere pressure to match Titan’s surface and having it take in methane and output oxygen.
Work in Progress: Kill all life on a planet with the press of a button.
Advanced Physics Technology
Work in Progress: Earth is orbited by eight Ceres, which get stretched and ripped apart by Earth’s tidal forces, forming rings around the planet.
Improving collisions with more realistic friction and craters, simulating atmospheric drag, which allows meteors to burn up in the atmosphere, and continuing to optimize our physics simulation are all things 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’re excited about the expected performance gains and future opportunities it brings. We plan to roll these changes out in multiple phases.
- Phase 1 replaces our current physics engine with a new DOTS-based system that will make Universe Sandbox easier to maintain and improve.
- Upgrading to DOTS in phase 1 lays the foundation for everyday, non-spherical object collisions (like two dice), building and flying spacecraft, and constructing megastructures like Dyson spheres.
Current
Work in Progress
Work in Progress: The red boxes show how the gravity tree used in Barnes-Hut simulation divides up space dynamically into chunks of particles to more efficiently simulate the intersections between thousands of particles instead of constantly brute force computing the gravitational interactions between all objects. You can see the boxes change as fragments are created and spread out in space.
Current
Work in Progress
Work in Progress: A small asteroid burns up as it travels through an atmosphere before crashing into the surface.
Current
Work in Progress
Universe Sandbox on Phones & Tablets
Universe Sandbox in portrait mode with our new dynamic interface system that automatically positions, resizes, and closes panels so you can always see the simulation.
Getting Universe Sandbox on mobile devices (iOS & Android) is a major focus again this year. We’ve made a lot of progress with our new graphics update and interface system, which significantly improves usability on small touchscreens, but there’s still a lot to do.
- Small Screen Interface
- Our new interface system automatically positions, resizes, and closes panels so you can always see the simulation. This system optimizes interface usability for any screen size, from small touch screens to ultrawide monitors and we’re planning to continue improving and polishing it this year.
Before
After
http://universesandbox.com/mobile/
And Beyond
Experimental Tests: Adding more detailed planet surfaces show the planet getting more detailed as you zoom in. This is a very early prototype.
Our future goals include adding detailed planet surfaces, simulating the life cycle of a star, and allowing you to use custom elevation maps and textures on your planets. These are in early development, and we don’t know when they will be released.
- 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.
We’re excited to bring so much to Universe Sandbox this year, and we can’t wait to share it with you!