Professional simulations by cosmologists cannot precisely simulate n-body Newtonian gravity either, even on thousand-node supercomputers.

(To onlookers: this a famously difficult technical problem, certain aspects of which have been proven to be impossible, and remaining aspects of which are technically chaotic, which means that simulations are inherently problematic).

So although I agree that you're right to have certain doubts, I don't consider it inherently damning. The question is whether they are smart about their approach, and I think they were, so although it may not be *as* good as whatever the best professional grade simulators are achieving, it may well be as good as (say) 20 year old professional simulators, and in any case certainly need not be assumed to be merely "art"-grade simulation -- although even that would be interesting.

P.S. I own it (and its predecessor) on Steam, and I recommend it to anyone with an interest in...well, the universe.

Wasn't this the news about Universe Sandbox ² (squared) yesterday?

I'm also confused about this. Yesterday it definitely said "Universe Sandbox ²". Apparently on Steam it was renamed, too.

Universe Sandbox is the old one, released in 2008.

Universe Sandbox ² is the one currently in development.

I didn't know that this kind of game existed (my bad). I would like to create systems and universes but not destroy them.

Are there other games as this? Or Universe Sandbox is the one in its kind?

Meanwhile they also silently changed the header text of the link on the front-page from Universe Sandbox ² to Universe Sandbox.

i noticed that too. i wonder why?

Yeah; random Unicode characters tend to make searches fail. The superscript 2 *looks* good, but "Universe Sandbox 2" would have far fewer failed searches.

They could have made Galaxy's search handle this, but I guess coding is harder than changing titles. :S

interesting..
im here cause of old games but this thing is impossible not to consider getting it. i would play with it like "baby god" :D

Drat! A week until payday. Oh well. Wishlited for now.

Seems it's a recent change. When I use the Wayback Machine to the last snapshot of the official website http://universesandbox.com/ of Jan. 19th, it still says Universe Sandbox ².

In their forum the old versions are now called "Universe Sandbox Legacy", "Universe Sandbox 2010 Beta" and "Universe Sandbox 2008".

Might really be in order to avoid search problems with special characters.

Well a couple of hours in and both me and my 5 year old kid are loving it :) Thanks GOG and Devs for bringing it here.

ah interesting. so "2" is essentially a very very updated version universe sandbox 1.

It looks like an amazing tech demo and still wishlisting it.

So, after playing around with it for the past 2 days, I can highly recommend it.

Must be my best purchase on GOG since Return of the Obra Dinn.

It's really fun to play with. I can try all the crazy stuff I've always wondered. What if the moon were much closer to earth? What if there was a Jupiter orbiting the earth? How would earth look like if it was tidal-locked? What happens if you shoot a moon of the Mars surface?

If you're a bit interested in astronomy and/or physics, try it out.

Probably the only time I'll ever say this, but I think this game needs puzzles. I like the concept, but I find that games without a goal, where you just muck around aimlessly, don't hold my attention for very long.