Solar system from scratch?

[MysticDaedra]

Is there an up-to-date guide on how to do this anywhere? The steam guides about this topic are all incredibly outdated, and I can't find anything on YouTube either. What I'd like to do is create a solar system out of nothing but raw materials/gas... I saw some comments from one of the devs several years ago saying this wasn't really possible, but... maybe it is now? Any suggestions?

[bshapiroalbert]

Thanks for asking about this. We don't yet simulate planets or objects forming from rings or clouds of just dust, gas, and rock particles, but it's something we're still actively working on.

For now, one things you can try is adding a couple of small asteroids to a ring of dust and debris and see if they start to slowly accumulate the gas and dust particles and grow in size over time.

[MysticDaedra]

Origineel geplaatst door bshapiroalbert:

Thanks for asking about this. We don't yet simulate planets or objects forming from rings or clouds of just dust, gas, and rock particles, but it's something we're still actively working on.

For now, one things you can try is adding a couple of small asteroids to a ring of dust and debris and see if they start to slowly accumulate the gas and dust particles and grow in size over time.

I've been doing this, and it actually works pretty well. Perhaps an interim option (not sure if this would be difficult to add or not) to automatically convert a small number of particles into *small* bodies? Right now it seems converting rings to bodies (other than the tedious option of selecting randomly and turning on attraction) only spawns moons, as in copies of the Moon.

For anyone else trying to do the same thing, I've had limited success with shooting materials (hydrogen, helium etc) into orbit around a body. This isn't "stable", meaning you have to aim properly, and the camera when close to a very small body is borked atm, you try to shoot materials at the body but it turns out you're shooting them behind the body, which is very annoying. So it's finicky and tedious, but possible.

What I'm really missing here is any possibility of an accretion disk or planetary disk. Right now, doing this requires so many particles of matter that it really bogs down the simulation. I'm sure there's a more efficient solution, I think the current physics model just isn't optimized for this use-case. So, devs, keep up the great work, and I can't wait to see this feature when it comes out! In the meantime, I've spent quite a few hours fiddling with this, and had a blast even if I wasn't able to successfully create a solar system this way. If anyone else tries, please share what worked and what didn't. For now I'm going to put this one on the back shelf until there's another update.

[bshapiroalbert]

Origineel geplaatst door MysticDaedra:

I've been doing this, and it actually works pretty well. Perhaps an interim option (not sure if this would be difficult to add or not) to automatically convert a small number of particles into *small* bodies?

I'm glad that you're enjoying playing with Universe Sandbox. You're correct that our current brute force N-body simulation isn't a great way to simulate protoplanetary disks in real-time, but we are looking into some other things to try to improve the way we simulate that.

In the meantime, you can now convert multiple selected ring particles into full objects (and even adjust their masses at the same time) by
1. Opening the Multi-Select Tool under: Tools > Multi-Select
2. Clicking on each particle you want to convert to a full object
3. In the Multi-Select Properties Panel, expand the Action buttons at the top of the tab
4. Select "Convert Fragment to Full Body"