Universe Sandbox

Giant Army

Released: Aug 24, 2015
Platforms: WindowsmacOS
Last updated: 03 Sep 2026, 17:20 GMT

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20 posts

20 Aug 2026Developer post
11-Year Steam Launch Anniversary
The 11th anniversary of Universe Sandbox’s Early Access launch on Steam is Monday, August 24, 2026! To celebrate this milestone, Universe Sandbox is on sale now through August 31. This year, we’ve already released the first part of our multi-year physics architecture overhaul , a
The 11th anniversary of Universe Sandbox’s Early Access launch on Steam is Monday, August 24, 2026!
To celebrate this milestone, Universe Sandbox is on sale now through August 31.
This year, we’ve already released the first part of our multi-year physics architecture overhaul, and added winds sweeping gases across planet atmospheres, atmospheric drag to simulate meteors, a simulation of the Artemis II mission, and more.
We have a packed roadmap for the rest of the year and beyond. Our team is actively building:
True-shape object collisions with rigid-body physics
The first version will only support basic shapes, like cubes and cylinders, but future versions will support all kinds of shapes and objects.
Foundational life simulation where life grows, dies, and can be eaten
Surface simulation performance enhancements powered by Unity's Data-Oriented Technology Stack (DOTS)
Mobile version of Universe Sandbox for your iOS & Android phones and tablets
Our long-term goals stretch years into the future and include:
Detailed planet surface so you can fly over mountains and through canyons.
More planet customization with custom maps or images, like a picture of your dog.
Constructing (and destroying) structures from small spacecraft to Dyson spheres with simulated parts and soft-body physics.
And so much more
Learn more about what we’re currently working on in our 2026 Roadmap post.
Being able to continue developing and improving Universe Sandbox for 11 years (and counting) has been a privilege, and all of the support we get from our community is humbling. Thank you all.
Universe Sandbox was first released on Steam in Early Access 11 years ago, and while we’re incredibly proud of our accomplishments so far, there are still so many exciting things to add, and we can’t wait to share them with you.
- The Universe Sandbox Team
Original post
19 Aug 2026Developer post
Crashing Craters | Update 36.3
Collision craters form and combine together more realistically. You can also duplicate objects, watch black holes evaporate, and explore a simulation of a newly discovered exosatellite. Creating Craters Craters from collisions with moons and small rock fragments alike are more re
Collision craters form and combine together more realistically. You can also duplicate objects, watch black holes evaporate, and explore a simulation of a newly discovered exosatellite.
Creating Craters
Craters from collisions with moons and small rock fragments alike are more realistic, blending naturally and better respecting an object’s elevation range and topography. Larger impacts now leave behind complex craters with a central peak.
Before
After
Duplicate Objects Duplicate Objects
Duplicate selected object with the new Duplicate button, or use the Copy and Paste keyboard shortcuts.
On Windows, use Ctrl+C and Ctrl+V. On Mac, use ⌘C and ⌘V.
Detailed surface data is not yet copied, so local surface features like liquid depth and temperature variations will be distributed evenly across duplicated surfaces and may need to be resettled.
Adding a copy of the Moon with the new Duplicate button.
Duplicating the Moon after selecting it with the keyboard shortcuts Ctrl+C and Ctrl+V.
Object Holograms
Objects now smoothly fade in and out of existence when an object is added to or removed from a simulation.
Before
After
More Highlights
Check out the recently discovered exosatellite that challenges the definition of an exomoon in our new simulation, Exosatellite Companion of Brown Dwarf CD-35 2722 b.
Black holes now realistically lose mass and evaporate due to Hawking radiation. This primarily affects tiny black holes, but all black holes experience some mass loss.
Graphs now stay open and retain their data, rather than closing, when the object they are tracking is destroyed.
Before
After
See material-specific data views, like Earth’s oxygen-only Gas Pressure data view, in 3D. Previously, these views were only available in 2D.
Check out the full list of What's New in Update 36.3.
Please report any issues on our Steam forum, on Discord, or in-game via Home > Send Feedback.
Original post
25 Jun 2026Developer post
Winds of Change | Update 36.2
Watch winds spread gases across planetary atmospheres, see the unique shape of any selected object with new stylized outlines, and adjust object compositions by percentage. We’ve also focused on eliminating issues with over 50 fixes and improvements. Atmospheric Winds Gases now s
29 Apr 2026Developer post
Back to the Moon! | Update 36.1
Artemis II Mission The recent Artemis II mission swept around the far side of the Moon, taking humanity farther than they’ve ever been from Earth. Experience it yourself in our new simulation, Artemis II: Humanity's Farthest Journey . Earthset created in Universe Sandbox. Check o
30 Mar 2026Developer post
Pale Blue DOTS | Update 36
Blast apart rings with lasers, deform moons as they become tidally locked, vaporize meteors, and more! We’ve reconstructed the physics simulation architecture of Universe Sandbox to provide a new base for improving performance, finding and fixing issues faster, and more easily ad
Blast apart rings with lasers, deform moons as they become tidally locked, vaporize meteors, and more! We’ve reconstructed the physics simulation architecture of Universe Sandbox to provide a new base for improving performance, finding and fixing issues faster, and more easily adding new physics features.
“To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known.” - Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot, 1994
New Simulation Framework
We’ve overhauled the physics architecture of Universe Sandbox to utilize the Data-Oriented Technology Stack (DOTS) from Unity, the game engine we use to build Universe Sandbox, to
Improve performance now and in the future.
Add new physics simulation, like stretched objects and atmospheric drag to simulate meteors.
Make our game code easier to maintain and build on.
Provide a foundation for future big features, such as building and flying spacecraft and constructing (and destroying) megastructures like Dyson spheres.
Improved Lasers!
Blast multiple objects at once (instead of just one object at a time) with the updated laser! You can even push objects around by increasing light’s radiative pressure.
Atmospheric Fireballs
Objects now burn up as they travel through planet atmospheres with our new atmospheric drag force to simulate meteors. Trails are created as volatile material, like water, is burned off the object. Check it out in our new Meteor Shower from Earth’s Surface simulation.
More Highlights
Objects Stretching & Squishing
Simulate the stretching and flattening of objects in real life due to gravity or fast rotation. However, collisions and surface simulation will continue to simulate as perfect spheres even on stretched objects until this is improved in a future update
Customize Heat Glow & Luminosity
Want to make a whale glow with the brightness of the Sun? Now you can make any object emit any color light at any brightness, regardless of its temperature.
Tidal Locking
Gravitational interactions that change an orbiting object’s rotational period until the same side of one object always faces the other, as the Earth has done to the Moon, are now simulated. Visualize tidal locking by turning on Tidal Lag in the View panel to see the difference between the object’s orbital and rotational periods.
Lagrange Points
Mark the location of Lagrange points, points where the gravitational forces between all objects in the system are equal, with the press of a button. There’s even a handy Place Object at Lagrange Point option
Predicted paths
See the path an object will follow as we project its motion into the future. Checking for collisions along the way, this path will turn from yellow to red, showing the amount of predicted overlap. Turn on predicted paths under
View > Overlays > Predicted Paths
Non-spherical Gravitational Fields
Similar to flattening objects, we’re now fully simulating how an object’s gravitational field changes when it’s no longer a sphere by simulating its oblateness factor (also called J2). Previously, these factors, used to simulate the orbits of sun-synchronous satellites, had to be manually entered.
New Add Tool Views
Automatically turn on orbits, the simulation grid, or show the habitable zone with the Add Tool View options as you add objects to your simulation.
New Overlays
Use the new overlay options to easily see the predicted path an object will take, the orientation of its axes in the simulation, and more.
New Save File Structure
Simulation and object save files are now more versatile and capable. In the future, you’ll be able to save and share custom presets (like individual species of life). Previously saved simulations and objects will still open, but new saves will not work in old versions of Universe Sandbox.
Number Formatting
Show large numbers with commas, periods, half-spaces, or without separators. The initial number format will correspond to the selected language and can be adjusted under
Home > Settings > General > Number Formatting
Check out the full list of What's New in Update 36.
Please report any issues on our Steam forum, on Discord, or in-game via Home > Send Feedback.
Original post
19 Mar 2026Developer post
Universe Sandbox Roadmap: 2026 & Beyond
Our first planned major release of 2026 is our physics architecture overhaul that will simulate meteors (atmospheric drag) and improve lasers. We’re also continuing development on life simulation, bringing Universe Sandbox to mobile devices, and other grand plans. But before we g
Watch on YouTube
Our first planned major release of 2026 is our physics architecture overhaul that will simulate meteors (atmospheric drag) and improve lasers. We’re also continuing development on life simulation, bringing Universe Sandbox to mobile devices, and other grand plans. But before we get into those projects, let’s look back at some highlights from last year.
Work in Progress: Objects changing color based on their relative heating rate, heating up when blasted with the laser or crashing into each other.
Highlights from 2025
A supernova lights up, then boils away Earth in the Solar System.
Our first big release in 2025 included a major graphics overhaul, a new dynamic user interface, and multi-object editing. We also released four other updates throughout the year, with new simulations, supernova lighting, and object descriptions. Some of our biggest accomplishments include
Replacing our 10-year-old graphics technology with a state-of-the-art system for a more awe-inspiring and realistic universe, a project that took about 2 years. (Update 35, March 2025)
Implementing a new interface system that automatically positions, resizes, and closes panels so you can focus on the simulation instead of managing the interface (Update 35, March 2025)
Supernovas light up your simulation and leave behind a remnant if the exploding star is massive enough. (Update 35.2, June 2025)
Releasing a preview version of our physics architecture overhaul, including improved lasers, atmospheric drag, and more! Try it now (Update 36 Preview, December 2025)
Our major graphics overhaul and interface improvements were both major milestones from our 2024 Roadmap, and our next physics update has been a major milestone for the last few years.
What’s the Plan for 2026?
Finish our major physics overhaul.
The preview of this update is now available and is receiving updates as development progresses.
Add planet-scale life simulation where vegetation and animals grow, die, get eaten, and more.
More simulation improvements, including
Overhauling the tech behind our surface simulation to make it more efficient.
Updating our heating and cooling systems.
Lay the groundwork for constructing and simulating spacecraft and megastructures with improvements to our collision simulation and detection systems.
Bring Universe Sandbox to phones and tablets (iOS & Android).
We’re planning these projects for 2026, but additional challenges may arise that delay features, and our priorities may change.
Blast, Crash, & Smash - Physics
Many small moons bombard our Moon, heating up the surface as rocks and dust shoot into space as they collide.
At the end of last year, we put out a preview of our major physics simulation architecture changes, including improved lasers, atmospheric drag, and simulated visual stretching and flattening of fast-rotating objects. This year, we plan to release this update and begin improving the rest of our simulation.
Overhauling our Simulation Architecture
We’ve been working on rewriting large portions of Universe Sandbox using the Data-Oriented Technology Stack (DOTS) from Unity, the game engine we use to build Universe Sandbox, to improve performance, make our code easier to maintain, and provide a new foundation for features such as spaceships and megastructures.
Our next update applies the DOTS framework to our gravity, collisions, and fragmentation systems and includes
Objects burning up as they travel through planet atmospheres with our new atmospheric drag force to simulate meteors. Work in Progress
Improving lasers to blast multiple objects at once (instead of just one object at a time) and pushing objects around by increasing light’s radiative pressure. Work in Progress
Simulating the stretching and flattening of objects in real life due to gravity or fast rotation. However, collisions and surface simulation will continue to simulate as perfect spheres even on stretched objects until this is improved in a future update. Work in Progress
Future updates will incorporate the DOTS framework into other simulation systems, including
Surface simulation, which simulates temperature, liquid, and gas flow, and all parts of the surface.
The graphics rendering system, to eventually enable us to smoothly simulate visual transitions between object types, such as rocky planets becoming gas giants.
These improvements will not change our overall visuals.
Our composition and heating systems, which manage the internal structure of objects, phase changes, and sources of heating and cooling.
Gravity Simulation Optimizations
We’re looking into adding an additional method of N-body gravity simulation, called Barnes-Hut simulation, that can allow more simulated objects at the cost of slightly reduced accuracy. This will enhance our ability to simulate rock fragments and dust clouds attracting and merging to form planets & moons.
Work in Progress: The red boxes show how the Barnes-Hut gravity tree dynamically divides space into groups of particles to more efficiently simulate the interactions between thousands of particles, avoiding the need to brute-force compute the gravitational interactions between all objects. You can see the groupings change as fragments are created and spread out in space.
Detailed Dynamic Collisions
Adding spin to fragments as they fly through space and roll across planets. Right now, fragments do not rotate when created. Work in Progress
Simulating collisions of objects with their true shape (called rigid-body physics). Currently, all objects, from dice to celestial objects deformed by spin or tidal forces, are always simulated as spheres.
Unifying celestial and non-celestial object collisions, including rigid body physics, into a single system.
It’s Alive! - Life Simulation
Work in Progress: Creating a habitable planet and filling it with life in just a few clicks.
Make worlds habitable with the click of a button, create custom species, and watch populations rise and fall across dynamic planet surfaces. Simulating life is a big focus this year, and we're making good progress.
Growth & Death
Vegetation will grow, spread, and die based on local surface conditions, such as surface temperature and concentrations of gases and liquids. Work in Progress: Life grows and spreads after being added to the surface of a habitable planet.
Herbivores can also be simulated on planetary surfaces, and their populations depend on their food sources. If you kill all the grass the cows eat, they won’t live very long. Work in Progress: The cow population decreases quickly when all the grass they eat dies.
Life is simulated on the same planetary scale as surface materials (like water and oxygen), so while you’ll see growth from space, you won’t see individual organisms on the surface.
Creature Creation
Species will be customizable, so you can set the conditions required for any life you can imagine. Make your own custom methane-based life on Titan! Work in Progress: Simulating a custom methane-based microbe that can live in the cold, hostile environment of Saturn's moon Titan.
In addition to preset species, like grass, cows, and dinosaurs, you’ll be able to save and share your custom species and add them to any simulation. Work in Progress: Loading a preset dinosaur species to live on Earth. Custom saved species will also be settable here.
Let There Be Life (and Death)
Creating a habitable planet is hard, but we’re making it easier. You’ll be able to make any planet habitable for a specific species with the click of a button (or two). Work in Progress: Quickly making the conditions on the planet habitable for our grass and cow species.
Life can take a long time to grow and spread, but if you’re impatient, Stabilize Life will instantly populate your species on a planet based on local conditions. Work in Progress: Stabilize Life on the planet based on the local surface habitability conditions to set population levels.
Because life varies across the surface of an object, we’ll determine the maximum possible population of a species on each part of the surface based on local habitability conditions, rather than with the old planet-wide Life Likelihood value. More vegetation will grow in forests than in deserts, for example.
New data views will help you monitor habitability, population, and more. Work in Progress: New Data Views will show the mass or population density of a species at each point on an object's surface, along with the habitability of that point for that species.
You’ll even be able to see the specific population, in individual count, of each species alive on each planet. Work in Progress
Future Plans
Increase the complexity of the food chain by adding carnivores.
Simulating two distinct species per planet instead of having only two species in the simulation. Earth could have grass and cows, while the Moon could have fungus and beetles.
Looking Good - Graphics
Work in Progress: A purple star and a very large, very bright pigeon illuminate a planet.
Customizing objects to emit light with any brightness and color, improving object selection to use shape conforming outlines, and implementing upscaling to improve frame rates (especially on slower computers) are all in active development.
Your Light, Your Way
Any object, from stars to pyramids, can be set to emit light no matter its temperature. Customize the light color and luminosity under the object’s Heat Glow, and make a whale as bright as the Sun. Previously, only hot objects could emit light. Work in Progress: A very bright pyramid illuminates Earth.
Check it out in the latest preview version of our physics simulation architecture changes.
Selecting Objects
Objects will have stylized outlines that conform to their on-screen shapes, rather than always being circles, even for human-scale objects like teapots.
Current
Work in Progress
Behind the Scenes
Adding more efficient upscaling methods (like DLSS and FSR) that resize lower-resolution images to higher resolutions will help increase performance across all platforms.
Experimenting with different anti-aliasing methods, which smooth out jagged lines and images, will help make Universe Sandbox look even better without sacrificing performance.
A Universe on the Go - Mobile
Watch on YouTube
Work in Progress: Loading the Earth & 100 Colliding Moons simulation, then watching chaos ensue on an iPhone 14 Pro.
We’re still polishing our user interface and improving performance, but we’re closer than ever to bringing Universe Sandbox to mobile devices (iOS and Android). This has been a major focus for a few years, and we’re continuing to prioritize it and the required features this year.
Big Simulation, Little Computer
Boosting performance across all platforms is a major mobile requirement for us. Our physics simulation architecture overhaul (currently available as a preview) will deliver necessary performance gains for both mobile devices and desktops.
We’ve been scouring our codebase to identify and implement performance improvements, including better caching for textures and the user interface.
Internal graphics improvements, such as new upscaling methods, will enhance performance on mobile devices.
How to Control the Universe
We’re continuing to improve our interface system that automatically positions, resizes, and closes panels so you can spend less time moving the interface around and more time interacting with the simulation.
More Information
Universe Sandbox on mobile is built from the same codebase as the desktop version and will have the same features.
The mobile release date is still to be determined.
We expect to release the mobile version as a one-time paid app with no ads or in-game purchases. We haven’t yet finalized pricing.
While we want to support as many devices as possible, the minimum hardware requirements are not finalized.
Sign up for our mobile mailing list to receive updates about mobile development http://universesandbox.com/mobile/
Behind-the-Scenes Changes
Work in Progress: An early version of our new development tool for comparing screenshots from different versions of Universe Sandbox to identify changes and possible issues.
Flashy new features are always fun to share, but we’re also constantly improving our development process. These under-the-hood changes may not be obvious, but they can make a big difference over time.
Save Files
Simulation and object save files are now more versatile and capable in our physics simulation architecture changes preview. In the future, this will allow you to save and share custom presets (such as individual species of life).
Testing, Testing, 1, 2, 3
We’re continuing to improve and standardize our suite of automated testing tools for quantifying and comparing collision physics, simulation performance, and graphical changes.
Continued improvements to the system we use to build, test, and distribute new versions of Universe Sandbox have made it even easier to release updates, patches, and preview versions. What used to take one person a few hours is now as simple as a couple of clicks.
And Beyond!
Experimental Test: An exploratory mock-up of how different tools could look in Universe Sandbox when using a gamepad.
Our plans extend beyond 2026 and include adding detailed planet surfaces, simulating stellar life cycles, and adding gamepad support. Some features are in early development, while others are still in the planning phase, and we don’t yet know when they will be released.
Spaceships & Megastructures
From small spacecraft to Dyson spheres, we want you to be able to construct (and destroy) structures with simulated parts and physics. Adding rigid-body physics is the next major step toward making that happen.
Detailed Planet Surfaces
Imagine flying over mountains and through canyons on planet surfaces in Universe Sandbox. We’re still experimenting with adding procedural detail and terrain to planet surfaces.
Planet Customization
Satisfy your world-building desires and create a planet using custom maps or images (like a picture of your dog).
Stellar Lifecycles
Realistically simulating how stars burn hydrogen into helium (and heavier elements) and die violent deaths is complex, but we’re thinking about how to rebuild our star simulation so we can bring stellar evolution to Universe Sandbox.
Gamepad, Steam Deck, and Home Consoles
What could be better than playing Universe Sandbox from the comfort of your couch? We want to add gamepad support so you can control your universe in more ways. This will improve our Steam Deck support and could enable support for other gamepad-based consoles in the future.
We’re excited to bring so much to Universe Sandbox this year, and we can’t wait to share it with you!
Original post
18 Dec 2025Developer post
Pale Blue DOTS Preview Now Available | Physics Simulation Overhaul
For the last four years, we’ve been working on a major overhaul of Universe Sandbox to utilize the Data-Oriented Technology Stack (DOTS) from Unity, the game engine we use to build Universe Sandbox, to Improve performance now and in the future. Add new physics simulation, like vi
For the last four years, we’ve been working on a major overhaul of Universe Sandbox to utilize the Data-Oriented Technology Stack (DOTS) from Unity, the game engine we use to build Universe Sandbox, to
Improve performance now and in the future.
Add new physics simulation, like visually deformed objects and atmospheric drag to simulate meteors.
Make our game code easier to maintain and build on.
Provide a foundation for big features in the future, like building and flying spacecraft, and constructing megastructures like Dyson spheres.
For this preview version we’ve only overhauled our physics simulation architecture, but we also plan to convert surface simulation, temperature and composition simulation, graphics simulation, and more over to DOTS in the future.

This physics update, like our graphics overhaul from March 2025, 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.
You can learn more about all the additions and improvements that are part of this preview version in our preview What’s New.
Try the preview of Pale Blue DOTS | Update 36 right now!
Learn how to opt-in to this preview version on Steam, now available for testing and feedback on the !preview-version Steam beta branch.
https://universesandbox.com/support/previewversion
How does this make Universe Sandbox better?
New Features
Most of this update focuses on rewriting existing features, like gravity and Roche fragmentation, so you may not notice any immediate differences at first glance. But don’t worry, we’ve added a few new things to check out.
Simulate Meteors
Objects now burn up as they travel through planet atmospheres with our new drag force. Check it out in our new Meteor Shower from Earth’s Surface simulation.
Improved Lasers!
Blast multiple objects at once with the updated laser! Objects will now block the beam from hitting hidden objects. Increase the force from radiation pressure to push planets and their rings.
Objects Stretching & Squishing
The stretching and flattening of fast-rotating objects and extreme gravitational forces are now simulated. Until we release our planned collision shape update, surface simulation and collisions will continue to simulate all objects as spheres, even if they do not appear spherical.
Non-spherical Gravitational Fields
Similar to visually flattening objects, we’re now fully simulating how an object's gravitational field changes when it's no longer a sphere by simulating its oblateness factor (also called J2). Previously, these factors, used to simulate the orbits of sun-synchronous satellites, had to be manually entered.
Tidal Locking
Gravitational interactions that change an orbiting object’s rotational period until the same side of one object always faces the other, as the Earth has done to the Moon, are now simulated. Visualize tidal locking by turning on Tidal Lag in the View panel to see the difference between the object’s orbital and rotational periods.
Predicted Paths
See the path an object will follow as we project its motion into the future. Checking for collisions along the way, this path will turn from yellow to red, showing the amount of predicted overlap. Turn on predicted paths under
View > Overlays > Predicted Paths
Lagrange Points
Mark the location of Lagrange points, points where the gravitational forces between all objects in the system are equal, with the press of a button. You can also quickly place objects at a Lagrange point with the Place Object at Lagrange Point option.
Future Plans
There are many more features we’re planning to build on top of this new framework, including
Gravity Simulation Optimizations
We’re looking into an alternative method of gravity simulation, called Barnes-Hut simulation, that can improve performance and allow more simulated objects, at the cost of slightly reduced accuracy. This will improve our ability to simulate rock fragments and dust clouds attracting and merging to form planets & moons.
Everyday Object Collisions
From dice to spacecraft, non-celestial objects will eventually collide according to their true shapes instead of simplified spheres, using rigid-body physics.
Maintenance & Performance
The structure of Unity’s Data-Oriented Technology Stack (DOTS) simplifies our code by breaking it into smaller parts while maintaining the complexity required to simulate the universe. This restructuring makes it easier to maintain, build on, and identify and address issues as we add new features.
Moving as much of our simulation as possible to this new structure will let your computer perform calculations faster. Eventually, these performance improvements will allow us to simulate more objects, collisions, and fragments at once on desktop computers and mobile devices alike.
The code we previously used to determine the phases of a material on an object in Universe Sandbox. It utilized references to other functions and determined output based on multiple “if” statements.
The new method for determining the phases of a material on an object in Universe Sandbox. This code is streamlined with half as many lines and is easier to maintain and follow with no “if” statements.
What is DOTS?
DOTS (Data-Oriented Technology Stack) is essentially Unity’s version of a data-oriented design for game development within the Unity game engine. Okay, so what’s a data-oriented game design?
A data-oriented design means focusing on operating directly on the data within the game. This optimizes the main thing a game does: take some input data, do something to it, and then output the transformed data.
This might sound obvious, but it’s different from traditional object-oriented game design, which is what Universe Sandbox previously used.
Object-oriented game design focuses on game objects, like Earth in Universe Sandbox. With an object-oriented approach, you take data from an object, like Earth, do something with it, like determine its position and velocity as it orbits the Sun in the next frame, and then apply the data to the object. Typically, this approach works on one object at a time and takes longer when there are more objects.
In contrast, data-oriented design focuses on how we transform the data on each object. For example, we know that all objects in the Solar System have a position and velocity, and they’re all influenced by gravity. Each object has different properties, but the math used to find each object's position and velocity is the same.
Since the math is the same, instead of computing the position and velocity of each object in the Solar System one at a time every frame, our data-oriented design lets us compute them all at once. Then we apply that transformed data back to each object whenever the data is requested. This design optimizes the data calculations and uses fewer computational resources.
How Does DOTS Work?
DOTS is really made up of three pieces: the Entity Component System, the Burst compiler, and the Job system. The most important things to know are
Unity’s Entity Component System makes us strictly structure our code so that all of our data is laid out in a specific way in the computer memory.
Because data is stored in a fixed layout in the computer memory, we don’t waste any computing time finding it since we know where it all is.
Unity’s Burst compiler optimizes how our code accesses and processes data after we make a new version of Universe Sandbox, since we know where it is in memory, making our computations faster.
With all our data laid out in a specific way, Unity’s Job system determines which computations can run simultaneously, enabling us to perform more computations in less time.
How is DOTS Different?
Previously, there was no specified layout for where data was stored in computer memory, so it took extra computation power to locate the data before we could use it for our computations. The Entity Component System forces us to structure our code in a specific way so that data is stored in a specific layout in computer memory. Rewriting our simulation code in this format took a lot of time and effort, but it not only allows us to improve computation performance but also makes our code more uniform, easier to maintain, fix, and build on.
DOTS also makes it easier to run our simulation across all available CPU cores. Unity’s Job system determines which computations can run simultaneously so we can perform the most computations in the least time without introducing errors in the simulation. And the Burst compiler enables these computations to be run in the most efficient way, leading to more performance gains.
Why Move to DOTS Now?
In short, the technology is now ready and mature enough to use.
Unity didn’t start working on DOTS until 2019, 8 years after we started development on Universe Sandbox, so building Universe Sandbox with this technology wasn’t even an option. Unity also didn’t officially release the last pieces of the DOTS until June 2023 (though we’d been looking into making this transition since 2021). With that last release, we were finally able to begin our restructuring of Universe Sandbox in earnest.
What’s Next?
Our core physics simulation has now been migrated to the DOTS framework, including our gravity simulation, collision physics, and spin and Roche fragmentation. This transition really is a complete restructure of our entire physics simulation, and we’re in the final stages of testing and bug fixes.
And this is just the beginning. So far, we’ve only moved our physics simulation to take advantage of all that DOTS has to offer. We’re also planning to move our other simulation systems, including our surface simulation, material composition system, and graphics rendering, over to Unity’s DOTS system. With each piece, Universe Sandbox will get more and more efficient so that you can simulate more with the same computational power.
For now, we want to do a thorough job testing our physics simulation. After all, we simulate the universe, and it would be bad if we broke physics.
And, like any new feature, there may be issues we haven't yet found or fixed – and you can help!
Try the preview of Pale Blue DOTS | Update 36 right now!
Learn how to opt-in to this preview version on Steam, now available for testing and feedback on the !preview-version Steam beta branch.
https://universesandbox.com/support/previewversion
And Beyond…
Future updates will unify our collision simulation to allow for more realistic collisions of celestial objects like planets and everyday objects like pigeons, colliding according to their unique forms instead of as spheres, also called rigid-body physics.
This transition also lays the groundwork for us to eventually allow you to build and fly spacecraft, and construct megastructures like Dyson spheres. We’re excited for what’s already here and for what this will let us bring to Universe Sandbox in the years to come!
Join our community discussions on our Steam Forum and our official Discord community.
Original post
24 Nov 2025Developer post
Nominate Universe Sandbox for the “Labor of Love” Award
Every year, Steam gives the “Labor of Love” award to games that have been out for a while and continue to receive new content and support year after year. If you feel we are worthy, please nominate Universe Sandbox for the "Labor of Love" award! This year, we celebrated the 10-ye
Every year, Steam gives the “Labor of Love” award to games that have been out for a while and continue to receive new content and support year after year. If you feel we are worthy, please nominate Universe Sandbox for the "Labor of Love" award!
This year, we celebrated the 10-year anniversary of Universe Sandbox’s Early Access launch on Steam. We're proud of what we've accomplished in the last decade and are excited about the future.
Features we’re actively working on include:
Improving collisions with more realistic friction, craters, and simulating atmospheric drag, which allows meteors to burn up in the atmosphere. (A preview version with these features is coming soon)
Adding basic life simulation where life responds to the environment, spreads, dies, and can be eaten.
Better collisions of objects, from simple shapes like dice to complex shapes like spacecraft, according to their unique shape, using rigid-body physics.
Learn more about what we’re currently working on in our 2025 Roadmap post.
We're so grateful that we've been able to continue improving and developing Universe Sandbox for over 10 years. Thank you all for the amazing support and the opportunity to make this crazy game.
- The Universe Sandbox Team
Original post
23 Oct 2025Developer post
Planet Nine’s New Nemesis | Update 35.4
Learn about the recently discovered sednoid 2023 KQ14 and why it challenges the Planet Nine hypothesis. Enjoy a handful of bug fixes and quality-of-life improvements like the ability to quickly fly to planets just by selecting an already selected object. We’ve also updated our ga
21 Aug 2025Developer post
10-Year Steam Launch Anniversary
The 10-year anniversary of Universe Sandbox’s Early Access launch on Steam is this Sunday, August 24, 2025! To celebrate this milestone, Universe Sandbox will be on sale now until August 28. Over the last 10 years, we’ve added so many new features to make Universe Sandbox better
The 10-year anniversary of Universe Sandbox’s Early Access launch on Steam is this Sunday, August 24, 2025!
To celebrate this milestone, Universe Sandbox will be on sale now until August 28.
Over the last 10 years, we’ve added so many new features to make Universe Sandbox better than ever, from simulating liquids and gases flowing over planet surfaces and lasers in 2019, to realistically simulating planet atmospheres and accurately terraforming planets in 2023, and our major graphics update just a few months ago.
And we have so much planned. We’re currently working on
Improving collisions with more realistic friction and craters and simulating atmospheric drag, which allows meteors to burn up in the atmosphere.
Adding basic life simulation where life grows, dies, and can be eaten.
Bringing Universe Sandbox to phones and tablets (iOS & Android).
Our long-term goals stretch years into the future and include
Detailed planet surface so you can fly over mountains and through canyons.
More planet customization with custom maps or images, like a picture of your dog.
Colliding everyday objects, including simple shapes like dice and complex shapes like spacecraft, according to their unique forms instead of as spheres, also called rigid-body physics.
And so much more!
Learn about what we’re currently working on in our 2025 Roadmap post.
We’re incredibly grateful that we’ve been able to continue developing and improving Universe Sandbox over the last decade, and we're humbled by the ongoing support of our community. Thank you all for giving us the opportunity to make this crazy game.
We’re proud of what we’ve accomplished since Universe Sandbox was first released on Steam in Early Access 10 years ago, and we’re so excited about everything that’s still to come.
- The Universe Sandbox Team
Original post
20 Aug 2025Developer post
Another Interstellar Visitor | Update 35.3
Watch the third-ever discovered visitor from outside our Solar System, 3I/ATLAS, fly past the Sun and see how it compares it to other known interstellar interlopers. We’ve also improved the view that shows what parts of the surface of a planet are illuminated, updated our scienti
17 Jun 2025Developer post
Blinded by the Light | Update 35.2
Watch the boiling surface of a star, then set off a supernova and light up your worlds (before your planets are vaporized anyways). Massive stars now leave behind a neutron star or black hole when they end their life with a bang, and much more! Super(nova) Lighting Supernovas now
28 Apr 2025Developer post
Describing the Universe | Update 35.1
Describe Your Worlds Add rich details to any object and the simulation itself with the new description properties. Include your favorite facts about each planet in the Solar System, or give a detailed backstory to your custom Tatooine! Add them under Object Properties > Overvi
31 Mar 2025Developer post
Universe Sandbox Roadmap: 2025 & Beyond
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 div
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!
Add basic life simulation where vegetation grows, dies, and gets eaten.
Optimize and rewrite our simulation using Unity’s Data-Oriented Technology Stack (DOTS).
Bring Universe Sandbox to phones and tablets (iOS & Android).

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.

Animals & the Circle of Life

Herbivores, like vegetation, will also be simulated on planet surfaces. The overall herbivore mass will be tracked and will also depend on how much vegetation there is on the planet to support them.
The names and life requirements of the two species will be customizable as well, so you can let your imagination run wild to simulate your favorite plants and animals, like cows, trees, whales, dik-diks, skunk cabbage, aliens, unicorns, you name it (literally)!
Future Models

We plan to make our food chain even more complex with carnivores in the future.
You’ll be able to quickly cause catastrophic events leading to mass extinctions. For now, we have a simple Kill All Life action. 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.
Phase 2 will unify our collision simulation to allow for more realistic collisions of celestial objects like planets and everyday objects like pigeons. This phase will allow

Objects to physically deform due to craters, fragmentation, laser impacts, and more, influencing how they collide.
Everyday objects, including simple shapes like dice and complex shapes like spacecraft, to collide according to their unique forms instead of as spheres, also called rigid-body physics.

DOTS optimizes our simulation by efficiently running more computations simultaneously on the CPU, allowing for more objects, collisions, and fragments.

Current Work in Progress

New Gravity Simulation

We’re experimenting with a new method of gravity simulation, called Barnes-Hut 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. 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.
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.
Visually Deformed Objects

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 this stretching visually.

This will not affect the object's physical shape, collisions, or surface simulation until after Phase 2 of our restructuring our simulation with DOTS is complete.

Current Work in Progress

Atmospheric Drag

To simulate meteors, we’re working on adding a drag force so objects burn up while traveling through a planet’s atmosphere. Currently, objects pass through atmospheres unchanged. Work in Progress: A small asteroid burns up as it travels through an atmosphere before crashing into the surface.
Tidal Locking

We’re planning to simulate objects becoming tidally locked, where the same side of one always faces the other as they orbit each other, like the Moon to the Earth.

Current Work in Progress

Mathematical Points

We’re planning to add more visualizations of useful mathematical points and boundaries, including
Lagrange Points - the points where the gravitational influence of two objects is equally strong. Objects placed at these points orbit in a stationary position relative to the two objects like the James Webb Space Telescope is to Earth and the Sun.
Hill Spheres - the boundary within which a moon is gravitationally bound to a planet.
Roche Limit - the boundary where the tidal forces pulling on an orbiting object are stronger than its self-gravity, ripping it apart.
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

Running the Universe

Boosting performance across all platforms is another mobile requirement. We’ve been improving interface responsiveness, resource utilization, and optimizing start-up times.
Rebuilding our simulation architecture will also bring necessary performance boosts to desktop and mobile devices alike.
Automated Test Suite

We’re expanding our automated tests, which cover collision physics, simulation performance, and more, and the ways we compare their results, to help us catch and fix bugs across desktop and mobile devices faster.
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/
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.
Planet Customization

We want to give you even more control over planet appearances. Satisfy your world-building desires and create a planet using custom maps or images, like a picture of your dog.
Stellar Lifecycles

Realistically simulating how stars burn hydrogen into helium (and heavier elements) and die violent deaths is complex, but we’re planning to rebuild our star simulation so we can bring stellar evolution to Universe Sandbox.
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.
Gamepad and Steam Deck

What could be better than playing Universe Sandbox from the comfort of your couch? We’re working on adding gamepad support for more ways to control your universe. This will improve our Steam Deck support and has the potential to support other gamepad-based consoles in the future.

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

03 Mar 2025Developer post

Space in a New Light | Update 35

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. A More Realistic G

A More Realistic Graphics Engine

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.

Before

After

Edit Objects Simultaneously

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!

Before

After

Automatic Interface Management

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).

Before

After

More Highlights

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.

Before

After

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.

Before

After

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.

Before

After

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

Before

After

Before

After

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.

Before

After

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.

Before (Realistic Object Visibility): Planet sizes have been exaggerated to show how planets are all lit at the same intensity, no matter how far they are from the Sun.

After (Realistic Lighting with Space Goggle On): Planet sizes have been exaggerated to show how planets are lit more realistically based on their distance from the Sun.

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.

Before

After

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.

Before

After

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.

Before

After

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?

New Minimum Requirements

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.

Original post

19 Dec 2024Developer post
But Wait, There’s More: Improvements Beyond Graphics
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
26 Nov 2024Developer post
Space in a New Light Preview Now Available | Major Graphics Update
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
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.
Space in a New Light | Update 35 is now out!
Learn more about all the additions and improvements in this update.
A Brighter Future For All (Literally)
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.

Current Work in Progress

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.

Current Work in Progress

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

Current Work in Progress

Current Work in Progress

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.

Current Work in Progress

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

Current Work in Progress

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.

Current Work in Progress

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.

Current Work in Progress

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.

Current Work in Progress

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.

Current Work in Progress

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.

Current Work in Progress

Under the Hood
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).
New Minimum Requirements
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.
What’s Next
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.

Current Work in Progress

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.

Before After

And like any new feature, there may be issues we have yet to find and fix – and you can help!
Try the preview of our next-generation graphics update right now!
Learn how to opt-in to this preview version on Steam, now available for testing and feedback.
https://universesandbox.com/support/previewversion
And Beyond
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
Original post
27 Jun 2024Developer post
Next-Generation Graphics Coming Soon
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 t

18 Mar 2024Developer post

Universe Sandbox Roadmap: 2024 & Beyond

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 ca

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.

Highlights from 2023

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.

What’s the Plan for 2024?

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.

New Graphics: A Visual Glow-Up

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.

Physics: Collisions, Gravity, & Performance (Oh My)

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.)

Universe Sandbox on Phones & Tablets

Watch on YouTube

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/

Surface Simulation: Let There Be Life

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.

Upgrading Our Developer Toolkit

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.

Updating Our Minimum Requirements

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.

And Beyond

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!

Original post

05 Mar 2024Developer post

Eclipsed Improvements | Update 34.1

2024 Total Solar Eclipse Watch the Moon completely block out the Sun across parts of Mexico, the United States, and Canada in our simulation of the April 8, 2024 total solar eclipse. Check it out under: Home > Open > Total Solar Eclipse on April 8, 2024 Learn more about thi

2024 Total Solar Eclipse

Watch the Moon completely block out the Sun across parts of Mexico, the United States, and Canada in our simulation of the April 8, 2024 total solar eclipse. Check it out under:
Home > Open > Total Solar Eclipse on April 8, 2024

Learn more about this eclipse.

Chaotic Collisional Aftermath

Immerse yourself in chaos as gas clouds expand and rock fragments collide in the aftermath of collisions. We've updated our particle system to preserve performance while simulating fuller, more realistic collisions.

Before

After

Custom Habitable Range

Customize the habitable temperature and atmospheric pressure of your planets for more unique vegetation and city lights coverage.

More Highlights

Explore the chaos of the fictional planetary system of Trisolaris from The Three-Body Problem. The number of objects gravitationally interacting makes it impossible to predict the planet's orbits, called the three-body problem.

All gasses in a planet's atmosphere now contribute to its color and opacity instead of just the 4 gasses with the most mass.

Before - Additional sulfur dioxide does not make the atmosphere more opaque or tint it orange.

After - Additional sulfur dioxide makes the atmosphere more opaque and tints it orange.

An object's material composition now just shows the list of materials currently in the object by default. We’ve also added an Add New Materials button.

Before

After

Use the new Hide Dust Clouds toggle to look at planet surfaces and see collisions through thick clouds of dust.

The object properties panel has been greatly optimized, making it faster to open and switch objects.

Completely swap one material on a planet for another with one tap. What would Earth look like if you switched out all the water for methane?

This update is brought to you by our completely new build system, which automatically creates different versions of Universe Sandbox whenever one of our team members updates the code it’s built on, allowing us to test and release new features even faster.

Listen to your favorite Universe Sandbox track over and over again by looping them under
Settings > Audio > Music Controls > Loop Track

Check out the full list of What's New in Update 34.1

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

Original post

Updates & announcements

Creating Craters

Duplicate Objects Duplicate Objects

Object Holograms

More Highlights

Atmospheric Winds

Shapely Object Outlines

More Highlights

Artemis II Mission

Orion Spacecraft

More Highlights

New Simulation Framework

Improved Lasers!

Atmospheric Fireballs

More Highlights

Highlights from 2025

What’s the Plan for 2026?

Blast, Crash, & Smash - Physics

It’s Alive! - Life Simulation

Looking Good - Graphics

A Universe on the Go - Mobile

Behind-the-Scenes Changes

And Beyond!

Try the preview of Pale Blue DOTS | Update 36 right now!

How does this make Universe Sandbox better?

New Features

Future Plans

Maintenance & Performance

What is DOTS?

How Does DOTS Work?

How is DOTS Different?

Why Move to DOTS Now?

What’s Next?

Try the preview of Pale Blue DOTS | Update 36 right now!

And Beyond…

A New Sednoid In the Outer Solar System

Updating Our Engine

More Highlights

In the Light of Day

Comets from Beyond the Solar System

Scientific Notation

More Highlights

Super(nova) Lighting

See Stellar Surfaces

Zombie Stars

More Highlights

Describe Your Worlds

Choose Your Startup Simulation

Visualizing Planet Data

More Highlights

Highlights from 2024

What’s the Plan for 2025?

Even More Graphics Improvements: The Saga Continues

Life Simulation: Let There Be Life!

Advanced Physics Technology

Universe Sandbox on Phones & Tablets

And Beyond

A More Realistic Graphics Engine

Edit Objects Simultaneously

Automatic Interface Management

More Highlights

New Minimum Requirements

Space in a New Light | Update 35 is now out!

Space in a New Light | Update 35 is now out!

A Brighter Future For All (Literally)

Under the Hood

New Minimum Requirements

What’s Next

Try the preview of our next-generation graphics update right now!

And Beyond

Highlights from 2023

What’s the Plan for 2024?

New Graphics: A Visual Glow-Up

Physics: Collisions, Gravity, & Performance (Oh My)

Universe Sandbox on Phones & Tablets

Surface Simulation: Let There Be Life

Upgrading Our Developer Toolkit

Updating Our Minimum Requirements

And Beyond

2024 Total Solar Eclipse