Universe Sandbox ² VR now avaliable

[Dan Dixon]

We've requested to have this added to the list of titles available to all the devs with an HTC Vive. In the meantime, if you already own Universe Sandbox ² you can just select 'vr-experimental' from the Steam Beta tab to switch to this version.

If you'd like a Universe Sandbox ² Steam code, just email us at:
[e-mail]
... saying you'd like to try the VR version.

There's still lots to do and lots of needed polish... the UI is still very rough and the extreme interactivity available in VR has also revealed limitations in our collision simulation that we're working to address.

We welcome your feedback and thoughts...

[Bryan LoneCoder - Legend of Luca]

Wait, Westros is a dual star system? How come they never talk about having two suns?

I zoomed in to 1/3 scale and the planet squished me out of my play area. Very cool sunset though from orbit. Then I somehow stopped the planet in it's orbit and it was promptly ejected. Sorry Starks!

Really needs a label on the controllers to tell me what mode I'm in.

[Dan Dixon]

You probably grabbed the planet with the move power... which doesn't have any smoothing on it which makes accidently throwing them too easy. Our plan is to connect them to the controller with an invisible tether and fix it with physics.

Are you seeing any labels on the controllers? You should be able to cycle through: Move/Fly, Laser, Launch (bodies), and Dispense (material) by clicking on the left or right side of the trackpad.

[Bryan LoneCoder - Legend of Luca]

I tried it again and they showed up. I must have not made it all the way thru the tutorial.

[GameFace Labs]

Looks incrediable, just finished watching Cosmos. I would love a key, just sent you an email. Many thanks!

[poke50uk]

Cool stuff : )
I like the concept

So a few things;

1. I want to be lie on the floor looking upwards, but when I open the menu it struggles with that orientation, it should be just straight attached to my controller rather than trying to guess and line up with always being 'up'

2. Menu is way too big, with too much stuff and too small text - it really needs work in bringing it into VR properly. Check out Tiltbrush for ideas how you could do that

3. I kept accidentally grabbing objects rather than moving, which was really annoying me.

4. I should be able to open the menu with any hand, but once I opened it with the left, it stayed on the left.

5. That frame rate on my beast machine, of 980GTX etc. was below 60 much of the time, with nothing else running. You really need to bring this into line some how.

6. You need more than colours to be able to differentiate between the tools (colour blind people will struggle). I kept up getting the modes confused and accidentally frying my planet

7. I tried to increase the frame rate by making the shared screen window tiny. This worked - but then the menu doesn't open! It's probably based on the canvas of the screen still.

8. Having no floor was off putting

9. The skybox looks really fake to me in VR, try to do something like giving it some sparkle, slight movement or something. Make it feel alive.

10. I couldn't seem to rotate or scale using 'touch screen like' controls

that's a few things that'll keep you going anyway : )

[Dan Dixon]

Wow... thanks so much. This is all really great feedback.

1 - Haven't tried that. We'll fix it.
2 - Good point
3 - Yeah, I'm not happy with a dual fly/move tool.... doesn't work well in practice.
4 - We're going to make it attach to the hand that opened it
5 - Also good to know
6 - We're changing the whole tool selection method
7 - Ahh, thanks for pointing this out
8 - You're the 3rd person to mention this
9 - Also a good point
10 - the grips will move and scale the scene... by may only work in move/fly mode... which doesn't make sense.

In short... we're working on it and will post again when we've addressed some of these issues.

Thank you again.

[Fr0z3nR]

After playing with it for a little bit, I agree with what poke is saying.
To add to it though, I feel like the menu is a dash clunky? It's a 2D menu in a 3D space, if that makes sense. It's nice because I can activate it and hold it up and put it where I want, I have great control over it... but it's big. Also, since I need to use one controller to hold the menu up, thats annoying because it leaves only one hand to actively drop and place things into the sim with. Being able to use two hands would just make things a lot more streamlined I feel.

Also, there's a texture bug with the Pre controllers where it's just dev C3/C2/C1 texture squares on it, rather than actual textures. (Everything else works though)

Beyond that, I'm really excited to see where this goes, I have a degree in planetary science and astronomy, so when I saw that you added VR to this, I jumped right into it to check it out!

[Dan Dixon]

We just posted a new VR build with many improvements and a notable change to the way the controls and UI work.

We welcome feedback. Thanks!

[mikehildo]

Originally posted by Dan Dixon:

We just posted a new VR build with many improvements and a notable change to the way the controls and UI work.

We welcome feedback. Thanks!

Oops just realized I accidentally emailed you twice. Only need one key. Still looking for testers? I emailed you back on Friday I think.

[FlyinJ]

Is there somewhere that describes the Vive VR controls for this? I can't for the life of me figure out how to select anything but the moon to introduce into the simulation...

[mikehildo]

Check your right controller's touchpad, there's a "Select Body" button

[FlyinJ]

Ah, it's actually a modal thing. Depending on what tool you have selected, down on the touchpad opens that tool's options.

This is pretty damn amazing. Is there a shortcut to putting yourself at the general scale of a selected object?