I said at the end of last month's update that by the end of the month, we should be back to normal. I was wrong! Although, Dan is very happily creating again! :D
Dan found that while he was putting the galaxy back together, it would be easier to get the volumetric areas designed before locking in the finished build. If you've seen the videos already, you know how awesome the first iterations of stars and gas giants are looking! He has now also created volumetric rings but that will all be in next months update.
Update 13/08/2026
As most of you know I'm currently going through a bit of a rebasing with the project, migrating our two Galaxy/System Gen systems into a unified Genesis system for creating the whole galaxy. The improvements this has already brought are too many to mention, but here are the headlines ( I know a lot of you had issues with some of these things) ;
Generation speed is now practically instant.
The per-ly CPU hammering/hitching is gone. 300ly/h is no longer the speed limit. We can support any flight speed.
Galactic view distances for large/bright objects are now upwards of 2,000ly (The old system was 150ly).
Every star visible to the naked eye from Earth is now in the data, and all the constellations are present.
In total we now have over 21 million real world stars in Genesis
(Not yet in) The Genesis data includes hundreds of known HII regions, Planetary Nebulae, Open Clusters, Globular Clusters and Dwarf Galaxies.
(Not yet in) The entire NASA confirmed-exoplanet catalogue is also in the data.
Stars can now cast light and show VFX beyond their 1ly cube, making for more realistic stellar neighbourhoods.
Star systems can now have multiple light-casting stars.
Star systems are now born and grow 100% organically using all the latest peer-reviewed science.
Atmospheric chemicals are now properly modelled.
Ocean chemicals are now properly modelled.
Tectonics and subsurface oceans are now properly modelled, including gas giant tidal forces on moons.
Abiogenesis and the organic growth of life is now properly modelled up to surface mammals stage.
And the best thing is, you can try it out for yourself here;
https://starshipsimulator.co.uk/files/genesis_demo_v2.zip
The controls are WASD to move around, Mousewheel to change the flight speed, H to toggle the on-screen hud, and Esc to quit. I'm going to release a few versions of this before the next dev build, because I want to get Genesis polished and at-parity with our existing galaxy visuals before I go all-in with tying it up to the sensors and ship flight system. You'll notice planets lack surface textures, atmospheres and rings. The nebulae all look the same, and black holes are not there yet. I'm working hard to get all of that ported over to the new system at the moment.
Important note:
Turn off Steam when you try this version of Genesis, because it will mess with your Starsim Cloud Saves! I'll stop it doing that for V3. And on the subject of saves, as of this being released in the next full dev build I will be resetting the website data and everyone's save files. It's a whole new galaxy, so none of the existing saves will be relevant. You'll keep your ship and crew, it will just reset the save back to Sol with no scanning data. Have fun! And remember, this is a WIP so expect weirdness. Or turn off cloud saves while you play with it.
21/08/26 Update
I'm still working my way through the new Genesis system components at the moment, and as I add each piece I'm also doing a quality pass on it as well. To that end, I've built a core volumetric shader that's going to drive every volumetric object in the game. That's going to be Stars, Atmospheres, Clouds, Gas Giants, Rings, Black Holes and Nebulae. One shader to rule them all. The volumetric star is now pretty much done, and I'm currently polishing the volumetric atmosphere/clouds. Next up will probably be Gas Giants, because they're largely just an extension of the new Atmosphere/Cloud system. The star is fully volumetric all the way to its core, so we should be able to do similar for gas giants with multiple cloud decks. Once all these individual pieces are polished I'll add them to Genesis properly, and then put out a new test build for everyone to try it out.
New Volumetric Stars:
Volumetric clouds:
Storms:
Volumetric Gas Giants:
Have fun with the Genesis build but remember not to overwrite any save games with it.
There will be another update for that build very soon. Dan is currently putting the Genesis build back together with the rest of the game, so a new main dev build should be out very soon too.