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VS 2.3 – Wheels
You already know that for VS2.3, we are working on wheels as one of the main features.
This is not just “add wheel block and done.” The physics team is implementing a custom friction estimator instead of using the default Havok one. We are also testing new wheel colliders that can behave either like cylinders or spheres – depending on the situation.
Watch on YouTube
The reason is terrain. Ramps, slopes, and uneven surfaces can make wheels behave badly if the collider is too simple. So we are testing a hybrid approach and iterating/refining in Havok demos before we will release the wheels in-game.
Wheels are a tricky physics feature in a sandbox game where gravity and terrain can vary a lot, so we are taking the time to build a solid foundation.
Hangar Doors
Andre Lopes, Art Team: “The first main idea for the Hangar door was to avoid weird gaps and make the interior more detailed, in case the player placed the door sideways. So all parts should look properly connected and, when closing, they all should fit correctly like a puzzle. With this in mind, I tried to nail the puzzle part first, and then worked the interior details around that, by creating some mechanics and a logical structured frame.”
Watch on YouTube
“After that, the second idea was that players could have a bit of liberty with their door design, since for now it is just 1 block. So now you can play around with these simple “vertical lines” patterns, by just rotating each block 90 degrees, when stacked.”
“The last idea was inventing a sort of visual locking mechanism between each door and the base, so that it looked even more industrial and realistic.”
LCD Screens
LCDs in our internal builds already include the formatting options from Space Engineers 1, plus a simplified markdown subset for headers, bold, and italics. They also support localized strings, so text can be displayed in the player’s language. You will be able to customize background colors, fonts, and choose from a catalog of project-defined images. Blocks can also support one or more customizable screens, and these screens can be signaled as on or off through the terminal UI.
Each screen can have its own aspect ratio and texture resolution, for example 512×512 for square panels or 1024×512 for wide panels. This helps prevent content distortion. SE2 Control Seat currently has eight individual screen slots, and our artists have created several LCD panel configurations.
Players can also access a block’s inventory directly through its LCD screen terminal dummy!
Grass Clustering
The grass in SE2 will look so good, I can’t even believe this is our game 🙂 If you’re wondering why grass visuals matter in a space engineering game – honestly, I don’t know. It just feels important, and if you can make something more beautiful, it’s your duty to make it more beautiful. Also: “need to create,” all the way.
Mirko Bartolini, Art Team: “This is our new grass clustering tech, which allows us to scatter grass in a more natural and realistic way. It lets us combine many more grass types in the same biome and distribute them using splat masks that control both spawn probability and scale. It also gives us better control over sparse tufts, especially in more arid biomes.”
Other
- We started detailed planning for VS4 NPCs and Coop multiplayer. This is fun, because we are finally working on NPC user stories for our game! NPCs will make Almagest so much more alive, challenging, and surprising!
- Hinges for VS2.3 are something special… I can’t wait to share something with you soon!
- Event Controller for VS2.3 is starting to look like an amazing addition to the game.
- On today’s playtest we checked exploding warheads — the balancing and visuals are coming together nicely.
- With sound designers we reviewed some of the new SFX. This time I actually said the opposite of what I usually say – for the warhead arm/disarm event, I asked them to make it less aggressive and tune the volume down. (Usually I push the other direction.)
- A few weeks ago we had a nice review with Karel Antonin about the music updates. Some small things will come in VS2.3, but most of the music updates are coming in VS3 and VS4 – especially the “water music,” both for the OST and as ambient tracks that change based on depth.
Full Dev Diary: https://blog.marekrosa.org/2026/05/mareks-dev-diary-may-14-2026/
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