After far too many late nights of caffeine-infused coding and 3D modeling, we are proud to present SimplePlanes VR. Strap a VR headset to your face and grab the stick and throttle in front of you to fly. Flip switches, push buttons, crank levers, slide throttles, and so much more. Download community-made aircraft without leaving the comfort of your VR headset. SimplePlanes VR is the most feature-packed VR flight sim you'll find for the meager cost of a gourmet sandwich. We hope you enjoy your flight!

SimplePlanes VR is a standalone game and does not require SimplePlanes. However, if you own SimplePlanes, then purchasing SPVR will unlock VR mode in your original SimplePlanes so you can easily switch to VR mode and see how your builds are looking in VR.

• Fully immersive cockpits and virtual controls that you can reach out and grab with your hands
  
• Download and fly any number of crafts from SimplePlanes.com for free
  
• Escort a bomber, torpedo a WW2 destroyer, dogfight enemy aircraft, obliterate a convoy, and several more combat challenges are included
  
• Fly around in sandbox mode and engage neutral aircraft and ships or spawn enemy aircraft to dogfight whenever it suits your fancy
  
• Explore islands and airports to unlock secret locations
  
• Includes several air and car racecourses to compete against A.I. opponents
  
• One of the very few flight sims available for Oculus Quest, and the only one that includes helicopters and such a wide variety of aircraft!

We've got the caffeine covered. If you can help provide some positive energy then you can help keep the Jundroo machine running and churning out games and updates. Positive energy can take many forms:

1) Playing our games, of course!

2) Sharing SimplePlanes VR on social media

Thanks for playing and thanks for supporting our small indie game dev studio!

-The Jundroo Team

Even with the development of SimplePlanes VR going on we've managed to find some time to work on SimpleRockets 2, mainly polishing the game and adding some of the most wanted features that were simple enough for us to get in time.

The list of bugs fixed this time is quite large, but I think you'll especially appreciate the improvements in the aerodynamics physics, getting rid of some problems with lift forces on mirrored wings, transparency working again on the structural panels, the main launchpad supporting larger rockets without them exploding upon spawning...

On top of that, we've added some quality of life features, allowing cargo bay doors to have different types of doors (including none, which allows for custom fill amounts stacking two cargo bays), allowing the FoV in the camera part to be tweaked per part, and changing it in flight to zoom in and out as much as you want, and 2 more sliders.



Pedro has updated the textures in all the celestial bodies of the system, with some of them seeing a refresh in their biomes and terrain; and he also added a new, more detailed skybox, for all of you making telescopes to spot all the constellations in the sky.









A few of us will now focus 100% on SimpleRockets 2 to get the career mode update started while the rest of the team finishes SPVR. Once SPVR is finished, the rest of the team will join us to finish the career mode update. It will be an enormous update, so we want to make sure we get it right!

The full release notes are here.

The new update is now live on Steam and is rolling out to Google Play and iOS. It includes a new desert base, fuselage smoothing, several enhancements to Planet Studio, among other things.

The new desert base has two runways, several hangars, towers, a guard shack, and more.











The new bases have some new toys to play with as well. Now bases can support rigid bodies.

• Added new desert base.
• Added vector support to the Vizzy fUNk expression
• Added Fuselage Smoothing

New fuselage smoothing in action:

• Upgraded to Unity 2020.3.3f1
• Improved triangulation for fuselage meshes to improve lighting.
• Increased character limit of text inputs to 500.
• There is now a maximum number of encounters created, to prevent massive numbers of them from being created in certain circumstances.
• Target boxes in map-view will no longer fade out as the distance from the camera passes a certain point.
• You can now target your craft's parent planets, although no encounter prediction will be shown (since that doesn't make sense).
• Added help button to Vizzy that redirects the user to a new help section on the website.

• New base parts
  
  • Air Traffic Control Tower Basic
  • Basic Stairs
  • Concrete Sphere
  • Garage Door
  • Hangar Bunker
  • Hangar Reinforced Small
  • Hangar Reinforced Large
  • Hollow Cylinder
  • New windows
  • New Barrel PS part
  • Pallet
  • Railing parts
  • Strut Tower
  • Shipping Crate
  • Wooden Crate
• Tweaked some existing base parts to support custom colors
• Fixes to Outpost materials and fuel tank materials.
• Added Mass property to sub-structures. When positive, it will turn the sub-structure tree into a rigid body. Note:
  
  • Children with mass will not be a separate rigid body, but instead will affect the center of mass of the parent.
  • Children will use the LOD of the parent rigid body sub-structure.
  • Concave colliders are not supported and they will be automatically converted by Unity to a convex collider.
• Added Launch FX objects
  
  • Launch FX - controls child launch FX objects.
  • Launch FX Light - Lights launch particles
  • Launch FX Pad - Particle FX for a flat surface
  • Launch FX Trench - Particle FX for a flame trench.
• Added angularVelocity attribute to sub-structures.
• Moved base primitive objects to the Terrain Feature layer so the camera can clip through them in the flight scene.
• Only show Update Launch Locations button on sub-structures that actually have launch locations in them.
• Improved performance of Planet Objects flyout.
• Structures now cast shadows in Planet Studio.

We just released a small update that fixes some of the bugs that snuck in on the Planet Studio update.

Here are the changes:

• Updated the stock Juno System to version 2.2, with a redesign of Brigo, the first Droo moon
  
• You can now target your craft's parent planets, although no encounter prediction will be shown (since that doesn't make sense).
  
• There is now a maximum number of encounters created in Map View to prevent massive numbers of orbit lines from being created in certain circumstances
  
• Target boxes in map-view will no-longer fade out as the distance from the camera passes a certain point.
  
• Disabled shadows in the designer and added a quality setting to re-enable them if they are important to you.
  
• Launch locations are now added at the camera focus point (if there is one) otherwise, it's placed at the player's camera position.
  
• Structures now cast shadows in Planet Studio.
  
• Allow rotating camera view with any mouse button when there is no camera target.
  
• Fixed a bug where a camera part would never become visible again after selected in flight.
  
• When a docking port is detached, it should no-longer impart a torque that could spin the resultant crafts.
  
• When a docking port is de-activated, any in-progress docking will be aborted.
  
• When multiple docking ports are "fighting" for connections, one port will win instead of being in an infinite tug-of-war.
  
• Fixed a bug where a structure would not be placed at the correct focus point in Planet Studio when the planet was rotated.
  
• Fixes to raised launchpad and Hangar 5 UVs
  
• Added new loading screens and updated logo.
  
• Changed Droo stock image.
  
• Changed ordering of items in Add Structure dialog to be alphabetical and changed names on certain parts.
  
• Changed taxiway and road geometry to be symmetrical.
  
• Made fuel tank pipe fitting match other pipe geometry.

We did plan to get this update out sooner, but we fell into the trap of "let's just add this one last thing." Before we knew it, Kevin and Pedro had completely redesigned the Droo Space Center with a new raised launch pad, sixteen hangars, new runways, taxiways, a vehicle assembly building, dock, and a bunch of other new stuff. Planet Studio has been retooled to allow building up structures using a hierarchy of sub-structures so now you can customize and build your own bases on your planets. It's completely changed the feel of the game. I no longer have a compelling desire to blast off and leave Droo. Now I kinda want to hang out close to the ground and check out all of the nooks and crannies, of which there are plenty now.



Here are the highlights from the update:

• Planet Studio for Windows/Mac
  
• Added 20 new celestial bodies:
  
  • Completely redesigned Droo, Cylero, Luna, Tydos, Urados, and Juno
    
  • Added two new planets: Vulco and Sergeaa
    
  • Added eleven new moons
    
  • Added one new comet
• Added new runways, buildings, and launchpad.
  
• Added new gauge part.
  
• Added new launch steam visual effects.
  
• Added Screen Space Ambient Occlusion.
  
• Atmospheres now render in the main menu, map-view, and planet studio.
  
• Allow targeting launch sites during flight

Pedro has been insanely busy in Planet Studio working on new planets. He's completely redesigned the existing five planets and then added two additional planets, eleven new moons, and a controversially named comet. Pedro has an extraordinary eye for detail and the new planets really show it. They are packed full of details and it will breathe new life into your explorations.

Here's a before/after comparison of the original five stock planets.



The two new planets, Vulco and Sergeaa. Vulco is a tidally locked ball of very dark rock completely melted in the face pointing at Juno. The danger of the hot lava and its pitch black dark side makes this planet a very mysterious place to explore.

The second planet, Sergeaa, has a very rough surface that goes from huge volcanoes to gigantic lava lakes. It's covered in very dense green clouds, with an atmosphere so dense that traveling across its surface won't be a trivial task.



Our tilted gas giant isn't alone anymore in his journey through space:

Jastrus is a small ice moon sitting inside the last gap in Urados' rings.

Boreas is a much bigger ice moon covered in craters and very long cracks that run from pole to pole.

Taurus is a rocky moon with a very thick atmosphere. Its rough surface is home to some really large methane lakes.

Hypatchion is a very old ice and rock moon, and although the looks may point at it, it's not pumice, it's just covered in thousands of craters.



Check out the SRC Discord server and you can find more sneak peeks under the #updates channel. Or, just grab the new update and see them firsthand.

The full release notes are here.

We are still working hard on Planet Studio. It's taking every ounce of our souls to get this thing ready for player consumption, but we are getting closer and we hope to release it in early December. After that, we will focus on the Career Mode as we work toward leaving early access on Steam next year.

Planet Studio has been a behemoth project and it should be since it sets out to allow the player to build things like small rocky asteroids, terrestrial planets with oceans and an atmosphere, gas giants with rings, suns, and anything in between. Nathan has been developing this terrain generation system for nearly four years and it is truly incredible what it is capable of doing, not to mention that is insanely optimized and can even run well on mobile devices!

We have had trouble really using the terrain generation system to its fullest until Pedro came along. He has been blowing our minds with his creativity in finding ways to model realistic terrain features. Fortunately for players, they can easily leverage Nathan and Pedro's hard work by selecting from a set of templates, or any planet from the community, as a starting point for their planet and then adjusting basic settings and randomizing values to alter the planet's terrain.



However, creating truly unique planets will require some knowledge of how to use the built-in noise functions, which can be quite complicated. Fortunately, there will be many planets available that can be used as a reference.



Now that the planet templates are nearly finished, Pedro will start from scratch to rebuild and expand the stock planetary system. He will be maintaining the general feel of the existing planets but will be giving them more interesting features and make them more visually appealing. While we continue finishing this project up, we thought you might be interested in seeing some sneak peeks of a few of the new planet templates that Pedro has been working on.

The update is finally done! Five new space capsules, a jet cockpit with a glass canopy, part transparency support, animated waves, a programmable multi-function display part, a new label part, and so much more. Thank you for your patience with this update. This might be our biggest update yet with over five months of development and nearly 2,000 commits to our repo. This update also took longer as we were trying to figure out how to work during the pandemic. I think we have our workflow mostly figured out now, so we're hoping to start getting updates out a bit sooner than every five months!

• Five New space capsules
  
• Space Capsule - Visual overhaul of previous Command Pod
  
• Komodo Capsule - Sleek capsule which includes a small amount of fuel and built-in engines. Includes a neat rotating nose cone.
  
• Patriot Capsule - Space capsule that has a bit more legroom than the alternatives. Great capsule if you love your country and if you have the money.
  
• Vroz Space Capsule - Soyuz inspired space capsule.
  
• Vroz Orbital Module - Spherical space capsule that fits quite nicely on top of the Vroz Descent Module in case you want to bring more people into space.
  
• Cockpit with glass canopy
  
• Added a new Label part. Now you can slap custom text onto your craft and it can even dynamically update to display craft properties. It's intended to be used in the cockpit, but we know that players are going to use it everywhere, so be forewarned that it doesn't conform to the geometry it is attached to. It is always flat and you can't change its mind.
  
• Added Multi-Function Display part that can execute Vizzy programs so now you can provide custom, interactive user interfaces in your crafts.
  
• Added Part transparency
  
• Other planets should now be visible through the atmosphere of the current planet during the day.
  
• Added ability to zoom the camera when in first-person view with the astronaut.
  
• Added a physics distance quality setting.
  
• Added Occlusion spinner to Tinker Panel to allow specifying that a part should never be occluded, always be occluded, or automatically calculate its occlusion state (the default setting).
  
• Animated waves with physics on PC and Android (Sorry, iOS).

• Reworked the way terrain physics are loaded. The new approach should be better optimized and more importantly, it should prevent craft from falling through the terrain in some cases.
  
• Planets in flight and map view now have geometry resembling their shape rather than showing up as perfect spheres.
  
• Better LOD logic to reduce polygon count of distant planets in flight and map view.
  
• The sun flare now fades out when the camera goes underwater.
  
• Command pods now have an option to automatically default to the suggested pilot orientation whenever the part is rotated.
  
• Added Customize button for stock themes to allow copying them to the Custom theme.
  
• Changed default fuselage radius to 1m
  
• Reorganized part list into new categories: Command, Control, Structure, Propulsion, and Electronics.
  
• Added some crash detection logic and crash-loop prevention when starting the game.
  
• Large GPU optimization when image effects are enabled and the water exit effect is not active.
  
• Added water quality setting options to disable underwater blur, underwater distortion, and the water exit effect.
  
• New space capsules support surface attachment
  
• Added transparency to part shape tool outline

Full change notes are here.

The new update is now available. The key new feature is the new FDAI (Flight Director Attitude Indicator), also known as a navball. Nicky worked this feature and he did a great job. The navball supports all the things you would expect along with maybe a few things you wouldn't expect. The default view gives you crucial attitude information and a view of the relevant markers such as velocity prograde, retrograde, etc.



The map button opens a map display with options to zoom in/out and also an option to toggle its rotation.



Here are the other highlights from this update. The full release notes can be found here.

* Updated to Unity 2019.3.15f1. This includes an update to the physics engine.
* Added additional navigation heading locks, such as radial and normal.
* Updated instrument panel to include battery and mono. Removed fuel bars from mobile throttle slider.
* Astronaut walk-speed on super-low-gravity planets has been increased, as has the speed that they get up when fallen over.
* No-longer enforcing minimum altitudes for warp modes.
* Changed primary font from Anita Semi Square to Roboto.
* Show filename and resolution of an image when selected in the texture picker / photo library dialog.
* Added button to take you back the title screen.
* Added a sound volume property to the cargo bay.
* Allow overriding yaw and pitch inputs while heading is locked to allow the player to make small adjustments.
* Allow searching by part ID in Search Parts flyout in designer.
* Default altitude to AGL mode.
* Hide flight view inspector by default when entering flight, but remember player's preference when re-entering flight scene.
* Added lighting/shading to equirectangular map generation when uploading planets.
* Added Nicky Pike to the credits.

Official support for downloadable custom planetary systems is here! The website has been updated with pages to allow you to view and download celestial bodies and planetary systems that players have created and uploaded. When starting a new sandbox, you now have the option to select which planetary system to use.

This update is our first big step on the path to implementing 'Planet Studio', which is currently the most upvoted suggestion on our website. Currently, planet studio is only accessible from the developer console and is just a tool used for viewing celestial bodies and uploading custom bodies and systems. Actually creating and modifying custom content is still just an XML only capability at this time, but we are hard at work on a future update which will bring more in-game editing capability.

A few players have already been hard at work editing XML to create custom systems and bodies and the results are awesome. Please take a look at at their creations and feel free to toss them an upvote (both systems and bodies can be upvoted).
https://www.simplerockets.com/PlanetarySystems/Best
https://www.simplerockets.com/CelestialBodies/Best

For those of you interested in creating custom celestial bodies and/or planetary systems with XML right now, planet studio has received some updates in this release. Details on changes and some basic instructions on how to use planet studio in its current state can be found here.

The full release notes can be found here with a list of all bug fixes and tweaks in the new version.

You've done it. Thanks to all the meticulous building, test launches, orbital insertions, and suicide burns, you've managed to land a giant hunk of metal on another planet.

What do you do now?



Wonder no more. Now you can jump out of the command pod and start exploring the new world in your sleek space-suit. Before venturing off, you may want to take a moment at the base of the grand vessel you've just landed, look up at it through your own eyes...and bask in its glory. The next thing you'll likely bask in will be the explosion you've just caused by toppling it all over with the new grappling hook.

We think the astronauts will provide some key interaction opportunities that were missing in the game, and given the second highest suggestion, it looks you thought so too.

In addition to causing general mayhem with the grappling hook, you can use them for practical purposes as well. The grappling hook's tether works as a useful tool to manipulate objects like this, this and, these.



No space suit would be complete without a jetpack, and yours comes standard with one. It's loaded with four gimbaling RCS nozzles which, when cranked up to maximum thrust provides just enough power to get you off the ground on Droo. You do have a limited supply of fuel, however. Luckily, your tether is not only astonishingly strong, but somehow also hollow and can be used to siphon fuel from crafts that you've grappled to.

You'll no-doubt be busy running around, but everyone needs to rest their legs now and then, so we've given you chairs to kick back in while flying to the next landing spot, or roaming around in a rover. We didn't want you to get too lazy while perched on your throne, however, so you are able to continue piloting your craft whilst in the chair. The grappling hook is also at your disposal while seated, which can result in some spectacular crashes if you decide to plant a tether down while you're skimming along the ground at 100mph.

The chairs are pretty comfy, but it's doubtful you'll want to fly millions of miles across the solar system in one while strapped to the side a rocket. To that end, we've retro-fitted the command pod's to have crew-compartments which astronauts can board for long trips.



Unlike many controllable characters in games, the astronauts are physically simulated. Being physically simulated means the astronauts will react realistically to forces and torques. They'll orbit just like everything else, and can be pushed, pulled, shot out of an improvised cannon, knocked over by a passing wing-tip, etc. On the other hand, it also means it is harder to have the animations match the movement with 100% precision, so you will see some "sliding" where the feet don't quite match the astronaut's direction of movement. Given the nature of the game, and how important physics interactions are, we felt that having the astronaut interact seamlessly with the environment should be a primary goal. We all hope you have fun exploring those environments with them!



This update has a lot more than just astronauts, though. It has some highly requested features such as this, a camera that can actually go underwater, some really nice Vizzy improvements, and a lot more, including many bug fixes. The update should be available now on Steam, iOS, and Android. Like usual, it may take some time for it to be delivered to your device.

Make sure to check out the full release notes for a list of all features/bugs in this release.

For those who beta-tested, the release notes since the last beta are here.