Simulation & rendering software that uses Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics (SPH) to simulate collisions of celestial bodies, accretion disks around black holes, or formation of galaxies in the early universe.
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To be announced
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General / Cinematic | SpaceSim Trailer
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Early Access Software

Get involved with this software as it develops.

Note: This Early Access software is not complete and may or may not change further. If you are not excited to use this software in its current state, then you should wait to see if it progresses further in development. Learn more

What the developers have to say:

Why Early Access?

“Early Access gives users the opportunity to use SpaceSim, share simulations with the community and provide feedback to the developer, even before the application is polished and optimized for all supported hardware.”

Approximately how long will this software be in Early Access?

“Given the current rate of development, I expect approximately 2 years of Early Access.”

How is the full version planned to differ from the Early Access version?

“The current goal is for the GPU solver to be robust and support all simulation capabilities of the CPU solver. Otherwise, it largely depends on the feedback from the community.”

What is the current state of the Early Access version?

“The software is already feature rich and able to run complex simulations, but some simulation systems are not yet fully implemented and it lacks the polish and stability of the full version.”

Will this software be priced differently during and after Early Access?

“Price will not change after Early Access.”

How are you planning on involving the Community in your development process?

“The community members are welcome to suggest features and report bugs, either on Discord or the Steam forum.”
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This game is not yet available on Steam

Planned Release Date: To be announced

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About This Software

SpaceSim is a particle-based simulation and rendering software, primarily focused on astrophysical applications.

Important!

  • This is a non-realtime simulator. Although low-resolution simulations are fast enough to be real-time, simulations with millions of particles can take several hours to finish.

  • This is not a game. It does not contain any game mechanics, progression, sandbox elements, etc. Please do not expect any gaming experience.

The goal of the project is to "de-mystify" scientific simulations and make them accessible to the general public. SpaceSim uses the same approach (albeit simplified and at lower resolution) as the research simulations typically run on supercomputers, but it can run on your desktop PC or laptop, comes with an intuitive user interface, and requires no extensive knowledge of mathematics, physics, or programming.

You can recreate some of the well-known simulations from the scientific literature, such as the Moon-forming impact, the formation of the ring system of Saturn, or the DART kinetic impactor. Or you can simply explore various initial conditions, both grounded and realistic, but also hypothetical "what-if" scenarios, such as the collision of two planets made of matter and anti-matter.

Fluid dynamics and gravitation

Each deformable object in the simulation is discretized into particles that interact with each other through collisions (by solving the Navier-Stokes equations) and gravitational attraction. Objects can also be rigid (non-deformable) - they retain their shape, which simplifies collisions between objects and optimizes simulation speed.

The particle-based solver is useful for simulating a number of astrophysical events, such as the formation of planets from protoplanetary disks or the mutual interaction of galaxies.

Object customization

The application has a number of object types - planets, stars, asteroids, disks, clouds, galaxies, and more. Each object has adjustable parameters that allow you to change its geometry, materials, appearance, and simulation behavior. The surface textures of planets and asteroids can be further tailored using procedural generation or by uploading custom images.

Or, if you need even more control, create your own objects using the Lua scripting language.

Black holes (and white holes)

The renderer includes the effect of gravitational lensing, bending the light rays that pass close to a black hole and creating realistic renderings of warped accretion disks, duplicated images of objects behind black holes (including other black holes) or Einstein rings of galaxies.

Particle colors and gravity visualization

SpaceSim provides additional insights into the simulation in a number of ways. It can color particles based on values of a specific quantity (velocity, pressure, material, ...), show the Roche limit indicating where satellites can have stable orbits, or draw the potential field to see the gravity wells around celestial bodies.

Key features:

  • CPU and GPU simulation solver

  • Optimized gravity simulation using the Barnes-Hut algorithm

  • Simulation history - store the entire simulation and replay it later

  • Two render engines - Real-time or Raymarcher

  • Customizable camera paths with object tracking

  • Lua scripting for custom objects and simulation systems

  • Built-in video recording (H.264 codec) and various export options (Alembic, OpenVDB)

System Requirements

    Minimum:
    • OS: Windows 10
    • Processor: CPU supporting SSE 4.1
    • Memory: 4 GB RAM
    • Graphics: GPU supporting OpenGL 4.6
    Recommended:
    • OS: Windows 10 or 11
    • Processor: CPU supporting SSE 4.1
    • Memory: 16 GB RAM
    • Graphics: GPU supporting OpenGL 4.6 with 4 GB VRAM
    • Storage: 10 GB available space
    • Additional Notes: CPU determines how fast the simulation can run. Generally, more cores = more speed.
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