Check out the Aerospace Engineer Bundle for an additional 15% discount on SimpleRockets 2.



This update includes Vizzy, an automated visual programming system that you can use to program your craft to execute a wide variety of flight oriented tasks. Just click the EDIT PROGRAM button in the menu while building your rocket to get started. I also put together a tutorial video showing how to automate a rocket from the launch pad all the way to orbit. You can watch it here:

https://youtu.be/EGi0tbFhA_M

There are several basic building blocks that can be combined in endless combinations to create very complicated programs. The user interface is very similar to Scratch, Snap!, and Turtles. So, if you are familiar with those, you'll be right at home with these building blocks. You can easily combine the blocks together to build complicated statements. For example, if you want to set your Slider 1 input equal to the sin of your craft's AGL times 0.25, you can do that. I don't know why you'd want to do that, but it's totally possible:



Here are the building blocks currently available:

• Craft Instructions
  
  • Activate Stage
    
  • Set Input - Roll, Pitch, Yaw, Throttle, Slider 1, Slider 2, Translate Up/Forward/Right
    
  • Set Heading - Heading angle or Pitch angle to angle in degree
    
  • Set Target (ie - Set Target to Luna)
    
  • Enable/Disable Activation Group
    
  • Lock Nav Sphere - Prograde, Retrograde, Current, BurnNode, Target, None
    
  • Set Time Mode - Slow Motion, Normal, Fast Foward, Time Warp 1-10
• Craft Properties
  
  • Altitude - ASL and AGL
    
  • Orbit - Apoapsis, Time to Apoapsis, Periapsis, Time to Periapsis, Eccentricity, Inclination
    
  • Atmosphere - Air Density, Air Pressure, Speed of Sound, Temperature
    
  • Performance - Engine Thrust, Max Engine Thrust, Mass, TWR, Current Isp, Stage Delta-V, Stage Burn Time
    
  • Velocity - Surface, Orbit, Angular, Lateral, Vertical, Mach Number, Acceleration, Gravity
    
  • Input - Roll, Pitch, Yaw, Throttle, Slider 1, Slider 2, Translate Up/Forward/Right
    
  • Misc - Grounded, Solar Radiation
    
  • Activation Group State
• Control flow instructions
  
  • While, Repeat, Wait X Seconds, Wait Until, If, Else If, Else, Display Message
• Binary Operators
  
  • Add, Subtract, Multiply, Divide, Exponent
• Bool operators
  
  • And, Or, Not, Equal, Less Than, Greater Than
• Math Functions
  
  • Random, min, max, Abs, Floor, Ceiling, Sqrt, Sin, Cos, Tan, Asin, Acos, Atan, Ln, Log
• Events
  
  • On Start - Called when the craft enters the flight scene
    
  • Receive Message - Called when the flight program receives a message
    
  • Broadcast Message - Executes all matching Receive Message events in the same flight program
    
  • Broadcast Message to Craft - Executes all matching Receive Message events in any flight program in the entire craft.
• Variables
  
  • Support for custom variables
    
  • Set Variable
    
  • Change Variable by amount

To create a flight program, just open the menu in the designer and click Edit Program. This will create a flight program on your primary command pod. If you want to add a flight program to a different part, just select it and open Part Properties and in the Tinker Panel there is now a button to add a flight program.



The program editor works very similar to the rocket designer. You can pull new building blocks out from the flyout panel on the left. Connect instructions together to form your program. Expressions can be dragged into the open slots on instructions or even other expressions. Note that each program must start with the On Start event, so make sure to connect your instructions below one of those.

When you are done editing your program, open the menu and click Save to Craft. This will store the program in your command pod (or whatever part you are using). You can also save your program to file if you want to use the same program on another rocket. Lastly, you can import an existing program into your current program if you want to leverage some code you've already created elsewhere.



Thanks for reading and we can't wait to see what you build with Vizzy!

I just pushed out a new beta version of SimpleRockets 2 that includes the new Automated Flight Programming System, currently nicknamed Vizzy. It's available on the Public Beta Testing branch on Steam. I'm keeping the beta restricted to Steam for now so that I can respond more quickly to player feedback.

There is still a lot of work left to do, but I wanted to get a beta out so you could experiment with it and give us feedback as early as possible before the official release.

So far, I'm happy with how things are turning out. There are several basic building blocks that can be combined in endless combinations to create very complicated programs. In just a few minutes, I was able to create a program that does the step-by-step directions from the Flight Tutorial to achieve orbit. I've uploaded it here. Here's a screenshot of the first few instructions:



The user interface is very similar to Scratch, Snap!, and Turtles. So, if you are familiar with those, you'll be right at home with these building blocks. You can easily combine the blocks together to build complicated statements. For example, if you want to set your Slider 1 input equal to the sin of your craft's AGL times 0.25, you can do that. I don't know why you'd want to do that, but it's totally possible:



Here are the building blocks currently available:

• Craft Instructions
  
  • Activate Stage
    
  • Set Input - Roll, Pitch, Yaw, Throttle, Slider 1, Slider 2, Translate Up/Forward/Right
    
  • Set Heading - Heading angle or Pitch angle to angle in degree
    
  • Set Target (ie - Set Target to Luna)
    
  • Enable/Disable Activation Group
    
  • Lock Nav Sphere - Prograde, Retrograde, Current, BurnNode, Target, None
    
  • Set Time Mode - Slow Motion, Normal, Fast Foward, Time Warp 1-10
• Craft Properties
  
  • Altitude - ASL and AGL
    
  • Orbit - Apoapsis, Time to Apoapsis, Periapsis, Time to Periapsis, Eccentricity, Inclination
    
  • Atmosphere - Air Density, Air Pressure, Speed of Sound, Temperature
    
  • Performance - Engine Thrust, Max Engine Thrust, Mass, TWR, Current Isp, Stage Delta-V, Stage Burn Time
    
  • Velocity - Surface, Orbit, Angular, Lateral, Vertical, Mach Number, Acceleration, Gravity
    
  • Input - Roll, Pitch, Yaw, Throttle, Slider 1, Slider 2, Translate Up/Forward/Right
    
  • Misc - Grounded, Solar Radiation
    
  • Activation Group State
• Control flow instructions
  
  • While, Repeat, Wait X Seconds, Wait Until, If, Else If, Else, Display Message
• Binary Operators
  
  • Add, Subtract, Multiply, Divide, Exponent
• Bool operators
  
  • And, Or, Not, Equal, Less Than, Greater Than
• Math Functions
  
  • Random, min, max, Abs, Floor, Ceiling, Sqrt, Sin, Cos, Tan, Asin, Acos, Atan, Ln, Log
• Events
  
  • On Start - Called when the craft enters the flight scene
    
  • Receive Message - Called when the flight program receives a message
    
  • Broadcast Message - Executes all matching Receive Message events in the same flight program
    
  • Broadcast Message to Craft - Executes all matching Receive Message events in any flight program in the entire craft.
• Variables
  
  • Support for custom variables
    
  • Set Variable
    
  • Change Variable by amount

To create a flight program, just open the menu in the designer and click Edit Program. This will create a flight program on your primary command pod. If you want to add a flight program to a different part, just select it and open Part Properties and in the Tinker Panel there is now a button to add a flight program.



The program editor works very similar to the rocket designer. You can pull new building blocks out from the flyout panel on the left. Connect instructions together to form your program. Expressions can be dragged into the open slots on instructions or even other expressions. Note that each program must start with the On Start event, so make sure to connect your instructions below one of those.

When you are done editing your program, open the menu and click Save to Craft. This will store the program in your command pod (or whatever part you are using). You can also save your program to file if you want to use the same program on another rocket. Lastly, you can import an existing program into your current program if you want to leverage some code you've already created elsewhere.



Some of the next things I have planned to work on next are of course more instructions and properties. Also, I'd really like to add custom instructions and custom expressions. If things go well, we could potentially get the official release of this update out before Christmas, but of course, that depends on the feedback we get from all of you.

Vizzy is the nickname we've been using for this Automated Flight Program, but we are considering changing its name. Does anyone else have any suggestions on what you think it should be called?

The highly requested light part is now available in the newest update for SImpleRockets 2. Nathan and Kevin worked this part and they went above and beyond. There are actually two separate parts: a spotlight and a beacon light. The spotlight part has several customizable features that make it really easy to work with. It has settings for Extension Distance, Rotation, Spotlight Angle, Range, and Intensity.

The beacon light has options to customize its blink pattern, such as Blink Style, Blink Frequency, and Blink Offset. Also, you can change the color of a beacon light or spotlight by changing its Primary color with the Paint Tool.



Some care should be taken with the new spotlights as too many can cause the game's performance to suffer as additional lights in the scene require the GPU to do a lot more work.

• Added Quick Mirror, Mirror Selected Part, and a new Mirror Tool to help simplify building aircraft.
  
• Added a Light part and a Beacon Light part
  
  • Added a new quality setting "Quality->Craft->Max Craft Lights" to limit the number of active lights at any given time. Lights can be costly to performance, so this can be used to reduce the impact. Priority is give to the most recently activated lights.
    
  • Added a new quality setting "Quality->Shadows->Craft Lights Cast Shadows" to enable/disable shadow casting by craft lights. Shadows are very costly to performance, so we recommend turning this off unless your device can handle it well.
• In flight, a right mouse click on a part toggles that part's activation state and a middle mouse click on a part toggles camera focus on that part.

• Reorganized the Gizmos part category in the designer
  
• Performance enhancements to drag calculations.
  
• Removed "AutoDiscrete" from wing/fin input options.
  
• Several bug fixes and modding enhancements.

The full release notes can be found here

We decided to have ourselves a good old fashioned Halloween space race to see who could build the best Halloween themed spacecraft. Put a pumpkin in orbit, send Pennywise to the moon, or build a haunted house on mars. Let's bring Halloween to the Simple-Verse! Points will be awarded to the top three players with the highest-rated submissions from the community. I will act as a tiebreaker for the top three by casting my vote. Make sure to upload your craft as a successor to this craft to enter.

The deadline for the competition is 11-4-2019 by 7:00 am CT.

• 1st: 1500 points
  
• 2nd: 500 points
  
• 3rd: 250 points

• Creations that are spooktacular that embody the spirit of Halloween.
  
• Multi-stage madness that gets the blood flowing.
  
• Spacecrafts that get you howling to the moon and back.
  
• Try to keep things G rated, and have fun!

We just released an update for SimpleRockets 2 that includes planetary rings for Urados, auto-pilot control for airplanes using the nav sphere, and several designer enhancements.

Here are the new features:

• Added auto-pilot functionality for airplanes so they can now be controlled by the nav sphere. Important info about airplanes and auto-pilot
• Added ring system to Urados.
• Added the ability to group/weld parts together in the designer.
• Added Part Connections panel that allows manually editing connections between parts.
• Improved re-entry effects with camera shake, audio, and "intense" music track.
• Enabled realtime reflections on MacOS
• Added "Default" option to Overall Quality Setting, which resets all quality settings to their default values.
• Added option to show all parts in the search panel in the designer.
• Added context menu option to Resume Crafts list view to remove all non-resumable crafts.
• Added option to assign brake and throttle to wing control surfaces because u/pedro16797 asked for it.

• When creating a new craft in the designer, it will prompt you if you want to build a rocket, or a plane.
• Added warning when saving/loading crafts which are set up as a rocket, but appear to be an airplane.
• Improved error handling when loading a craft and part modifiers fail to load.
• Allow keyboard input in spinner elements in part properties on mobile if the tinker panel is enabled.
• Mobile won't bind 1-2 finger taps or dragging to an input.
• Added a popup on mobile the first time you open control settings dialog, stating that you don't need extra peripherals, but can bind them there.
• Default Android devices with mid range GPUs to 75% resolution scale.
• Default iOS device with low end range GPUs to 75% resolution scale.

• Fixed an issue with the sun being visible through planets
• Fixed a bug where crafts could be slightly inside the ground when loaded into the flight scene. Note: This does not fix the bug related to custom launch locations.
• Fixed bug with Landing Gear which could cause it to act like it is under-water if the landing gear has the bay disabled, and to lose velocity upon reload when quick-saving/loading.
• Fixed a bug where AGL could be incorrectly reported for some custom planets
• Fixed a bug with incorrect lighting at the launch site under certain conditions.
• Fixed a bug with the 'Retry' button failing to work correctly in some circumstances.
• Fixed a bug that could cause tire tracks to shift positions under certain circumstances.
• Fixed a bug that caused tire tracks to change positions when entering warp
• Fixed bug that prevented nearby craft switching when the current craft is destroyed.
• Fixed a bug where wheels failed to register as in contact with the ground, preventing the entering of warp mode.
• Reduced flickering of the foamy shorelines
• Fixed a bug where a fuel tank would not correctly indicate that it was empty in some cases.
• Improved precision of fuel code to prevent bugs related to unpredictable fuel usage.
• Fixed an issue with the depth of field effect not working on mobile devices.
• HDR related settings (HDR/Bloom/Re-entry) are now disabled on Android devices that do not support HDR textures.
• Fixed the launch steam showing up as untextured gray blobs on some Android devices.
• Fixed a bug where redoing all undo steps would not restore the craft exactly as it was before the player had clicked Undo.
• Fixed landing gear icon in the designer.
• Fixed a bug where image effects such as contrast, saturation would be reset after switching to the map view and back to the flight view.
• Invalid collision related warnings are no longer logged when loading some crafts (typically involving pistons).
• Fixed an issue with shadows disappearing for solar panel arrays
• Fixed an issue where the camera would bob up/down quickly when quickly rotating view sideways.
• Fixed bug where test dummy could float in the air after craft has exploded.
• Fixed bug causing errors after craft is destroyed that has test dummies.
• Fixed a bug where a rocket engine would not update the fuel tank's fuel type if connected through an intermediary part with its fuel line option enabled.
• Fixed a bug where the look at command pod option on cameras would not work in some cases when the camera part was detached.
• Fixed a bug where velocity could overflow if it was larger than 2^31-1.
• Fixed a bug where water physics used incorrect calculations for parts scaled via the tinker panel.
• Heading lock via input based activators should now only function for the player's current craft.
• Fixed a bug where the game would continue to show active engine thrust and camera shake even after the engines ran out of fuel.

Read the full release notes here

After more than three years of development, SimpleRockets 2 is now available on the iOS App Store and Google Play. You can get it here.



As usual, here's a new trailer we put together for this special day. There is an absurd number of features in the game and the mobile version has the same feature set as the PC and Mac versions. The only difference is that the graphics are dialed back slightly, but don't get the wrong impression as the game still looks amazing on mobile devices!













SR2 has been available on Steam for almost a year now, so we've had time to add tons of new features and fix a lot of bugs to get it ready for this mobile release. But, we're not stopping here! You can check out our Roadmap for the list of stuff we are planning to work on. If you have a suggestion, feel free to submit it and make sure to upvote the suggestions that you favor. We take player suggestions into consideration with every update and it has led to great enhancements to the game such as the procedural rocket engines and jet engines.

If I could go back three years ago to when we started this project, I never would have imagined that we would get a fully 3D space simulator with seamless ground-to-space transitions and unprecedented craft customization working on a mobile device. I'm really proud of the team and the work we've done in creating what is now the most comprehensive simulator on mobile for building and flying rockets. I hope you will enjoy the game as much as we've enjoyed making it!

Thank you for reading and we hope you enjoy the game!

-The Jundroo Team

We are releasing SimpleRockets 2 on the iOS App Store and Google Play on September 19th, 2019. It will be the most comprehensive simulator on iOS/Android for building and flying 3D rockets and airplanes.

We have put a tremendous amount of effort into optimizing the game for mobile and we have completely reworked the user interface to make it as natural as possible on a touch device. We are really excited about how the game has come together and we can't wait for you to try it out!

In the meantime, here are some teaser screenshots:














Launch Price
$4.99 USD

iOS App Store page
https://apps.apple.com/us/app/simplerockets-2/id1294032921?ls=1

Google Play page
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.jundroo.SimpleRockets2

• Fully 3D Rocket Designer that allows building anything from basic rockets to very complicated multi-stage rockets, airplanes, rovers, satellites, robotic mechs, etc.
  
• Design custom rocket engines and jet engines.
  
• Realistic rocket physics and orbital mechanics.
  
• Simple to get started, but advanced players can dig into the technical details if they are interested in the math behind rocket engines and orbital mechanics.
  
• Highly procedural parts that can be resized and reshaped into endless combinations, such as the resizable fuel tank and the cargo bay.
  
• Map View to navigate the solar system that displays predicted orbits and encounters.
  
• Fully 3D, rotating planets that support water and multiple biomes, such as desert, grasslands, tundra, etc.
  
• Players can upload their rockets and sandboxes and share them with other players.
  
• Flight model dynamically updates drag and lift characteristics of your craft as it changes.
  
• Crafts can dock together in orbit and transfer fuel.
  
• Performance Analysis window makes it easy for advanced players to see how their craft's Delta-V, TWR, engine Isp, etc are changed as they build their rockets.

We just released version 0.8.106 on the beta test branch.

• Added camera part.
  
• Added new camera modes available during flight.
  
• Enabling re-entry effects on mobile.
  
• Gizmo for adjusting burn node position can be accessed by long-pressing on the center of a burn node.
  
• The game auto-saves every 5 minutes in flight. If the game crashes or exits mid-flight, upon resuming it will ask if the mid-flight auto-save should be kept or reverted to the pre-flight state.
  
• Android and iOS now save the current flight state or designer craft when the app loses focus. Progress should be restored when resuming the app after the OS has killed it. If a crash, Alt-F4, or other means exit the game abnormally while a flight is in-progress, the main menu should prompt the player to keep or undo the in-progress flight (from the last save point).
  
• Added ability to the resolution of orbit lines in Map View. Reducing this value can greatly improve performance when a lot of orbit lines are shown.

• Added an explosion effect when a part overheats from re-entry heat damage and display a message informing the player that their part was destroyed from excessive heat damage.
  
• Added a 'Very High' setting for 'Shadow Distance' that uses higher resolution shadows if the GPU supports it.
  
• Shadow quality settings have been updated and a shadow distance setting has been added. At high quality, shadows are drawn much further than before. At lower levels, resolution and distances have been reduced. Mobile shadow quality has been improved.
  
• Minor texturing tweaks to the low quality water.
  
• Burn node gizmos can now be retracted by clicking on the center icon.
  
• Burn node adjustor handles now extend further to make them easier to use.
  
• Added Save Location button to menu in flight scene.
  
• Updated the input based activator part modifier to be able to lock heading/prograde/retrograde/target/node.
  
• Show the map view inspector when a non-player craft is selected.
  
• Added close button to inspector panels.
  
• Reset finger tool position after dropping part in trash can or subassembly.

• Reducing shadow artifacts by reducing shadow draw distance (and thus increasing shadow resolution) when zoomed in close to the camera target.
  
• Fixed issue causing some orbits to be unnecessarily updated.
  
• Fixed issue casing some orbits to have unmodifiable burn nodes (unless the game is paused).
  
• Reduced z-fighting on shores.
  
• Fixed bug with the sun appearing to have a black hole in its center.

We just released version 1.8.10x on the Steam, iOS, and Google Play beta channels. This is the first round of beta testing for SR2 for iOS and Android. If you were selected to join in on the mobile beta testing then you should have received an email with further instructions.

This version also brings a few changes for the Steam version, most notably some performance improvements. Here is the full change list:

• Ported SR2 to iOS and Android.
  
• Performance improvements for all platforms from optimizing the game for mobile.
  
• Reduced overall memory consumption.
  
• Added Overall Quality setting to the Settings dialog.
  
• Added an anisotropic filtering display quality setting.
  
• Added Refresh Rate setting to limit refresh rate, which can improve battery life and reduce overheating on laptops and other mobile devices.
  
• Added High Dynamic Range quality setting.
  
• Added a lighting quality setting.
  
• Upgraded to Unity 2019.2

• Settings categories now save whether they're expanded or not.
  
• Changed ToggleFPS to just show the FPS on first toggle. Toggling again will then show the detailed information.
  
• Moved AF and Lighting Quality to Visual Effects.
  
• Added a flashing green indicator to the nav sphere in the tutorial to show the player where to position their pitch.
  
• Reduced unnecessary memory overhead when taking screenshots (about 33% less memory allocation at 1080p).
  
• Tweaked the UI so that it can work well on both desktop and mobile screens.

• Fixed a bug where the test pilot would throw exceptions when it was disconnected from a craft.
  
• Fixed a bug with the Wasp 2.0 where it's landing gear and engines were not activated at start.
  
• Fixed a bug where fuel tanks would not drain in the correct order when priority was overridden in some circumstances.
  
• Low quality lighting now uses vertex lighting for the secondary light in the designer.
  
• Fixed Required Mods dialog so that it would not extend beyond the top and bottom edges of the screen.

• Created Date/Time of downloaded sandboxes is wrong on Android

It's no small feat to get a fully 3D space sim with custom craft building and realistic orbital mechanics to work well on a device that fits in your pocket, but we've about got this licked.

At this point, we are hoping to release in September. Since that's right around the corner we went ahead and set up the store pages and you can show your support by pre-ordering on the iOS App Store or Google Play!



Technical Note:
We are still continuing to improve performance on mobile, but as of right now you will need a device with at least 2GB of RAM. For iOS users, this means you will need at least an iPhone 6s or 6s Plus. It's possible that we might figure out how to get it working well on older devices, but we cannot guarantee it. The good news is that PC and Mac players should expect a bit of performance boost as well from all the work we're doing to get SR2 ready for mobile.