- SimplePlanes VR is now available - 17 December 2021
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. LAUNCH TRAILER KEY FEATURES Fully immersive cockpits and virtual controls that you can reach out and grab with your hands Download and fl…
- SimpleRockets 2 is now available for mobile - 19 September 2019
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 cons…
- Aerospace Engineer Bundle - 20 December 2018
The Steam Winter Sale is here and you all know what that means! SimplePlanes is 50% off and SimpleRockets 2 is 15% off. We also put together a special bundle for all of you aerospace enthusiasts with an extra 15% discount. It's a great deal and I hope you check it out! Thanks for playing! https://cdn.steampulse.org/steam/asset?u=https%3A%2F%2Fsteamcdn-a.akamaihd.net%2Fsteam%2Fbundles%2F9556%2Faryocclvsc7trc5e%2Fheader_586x192.jpg
- SR2 - New Trailer and Release Date - 22 October 2018
We are getting close to releasing SimpleRockets 2. We are close enough that we are ready to commit to actual date: November 8th. In the meantime, here's a new trailer to whet your appetite. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ghk5Qmd-gdM&feature=youtu.be Don't forget to add SimpleRockets 2 to your Steam Wishlist so you will receive a notification when it's released.
- Explosions in SR2 - 15 October 2018
When you are building rockets, you're most likely going to run into the occasional rapid unscheduled disassembly. It happens to even the most experienced rocket surgeons. You might as well embrace it and take advantage of the opportunity and snag some spectacular photos. https://imgur.com/qWIHfWN.png In addition to the visuals, we also improved the physics of the explosions quite a bit. Now larger fuel tanks will create much larger explosions. We also approximate the surface area of parts and use that to determine how much it should react to an explosion. I've spent far too many hours now sitting on the launch pad blowing up parts before realizing that I had long ago crossed the line between working and playing. Don't tell the other devs. Here are some more great shots I got this weekend. And of course, a GIF to make this post look complete. https://imgur.com/p8J1Iny.gif I apologize to…
- Beta Testing (PC/Mac) - 2 October 2018
We have recently started (secretly) beta testing SimpleRockets 2 for PC and Mac. We started with a very small group of people, just to ease into this and make sure nothing exploded, including our brains. So far we've had about 165 bug reports submitted and only Nathan's brain has exploded, so it's going well. We'd like to add a few more beta testers. If you are interested, please see our post here. You will need an account on SimpleRockets.com if you want to participate. We can't take everyone, but I will randomly select 25 people. If you are selected, you will receive a notification on SimpleRockets.com by 10/5/2018 at 9pm CST. Also, I've been keeping an eye on how much we have left to do and the likelihood of finishing SR2 in October will be rather difficult. It is starting to look more likely that we will release in early November at this point. I have a stash of black licorice on st…
- Planned Burns in SimpleRockets 2 - 18 September 2018
With rising fuel prices, we'd hate for you to waste your precious RP-1 guessing how to burn your engines to get where you want to go. In SimpleRockets 2, you can plan your burns by clicking on your current orbit and adding a Planned Burn. From there you can easily drag gizmos around to manipulate that burn and Map View will show the new, predicted orbit. It will also tell you exactly how long you need to burn (and the direction) to achieve that orbit. Here's a GIF where I planned a collision course with the moon. https://imgur.com/97KKx6k.gif Notice how it updates the orbit in realtime and immediately lets me know that it found an encounter in the future. We considered calling them Burn Soothsayers, but then we realized that was a dumb name. Once you plan a burn you can either try and execute that burn yourself or you can just click the Auto Burn button and SR2 will try its best to acco…
- Ion Engine in SimpleRockets 2 - 3 September 2018
The tyrannical Tsiolkovsky rocket equation cannot be avoided. The only way for rockets to accelerate in space is by expelling some of their mass. Most engines do this with combustion, which expels huge amounts of fuel mass at a respectable velocity. This gives great acceleration (and an impressive fireball), but very poor specific impulse. Specific impulse is like gas mileage for rocket engines. Ion engines, on the other hand, take a different approach. https://imgur.com/Laj5Adk.gif They shoot out a minuscule amount of fuel mass, but they do it at insane velocities. Around 40 kilometers per second (90,000mph). This results in a force that is about the equivalent of lifting a piece of paper into the air. That's not very impressive, but they make up for it by taking their time with their fuel. Ion engines can "burn" for weeks, so this small force can add up to an extremely impressive delt…
- Cargo Bays in SimpleRockets 2 - 20 August 2018
The cargo bay will open the door to many possibilities. The most obvious being the space shuttle. There are many more possibilities, but it really hinges on your creativity. I know the creativity of our players is far greater than my own and I can't wait to see what you do with them. https://imgur.com/jEMZUX0.gif The cargo bay is our most complicated procedural part. It can be resized just like the fuel tank, so it can take on an infinite number of shapes. You can also change the angle the doors open as well as their speed. https://imgur.com/HE2Jhj1.gif My son just pointed out to me that the green one looks like a coffin. That wasn't the intention, but just add that to the list of things you can make with the cargo bay part. You could also use it to house custom-made, retractable landing gear. Or you could make a bomb bay (we don't have bombs, but you can pretty much make anything with…
- Pixel Pop Pictures and Virtual Tour - 30 July 2018
We demoed SimpleRockets 2 at the Pixel Pop Festival in St Louis this weekend. Since many of you couldn't make it, we decided to make this video so you could have a virtual experience of our demo. Enjoy! https://youtu.be/F6yg7Yi24pE Also, here are some pictures we took at the event.
- Nav Sphere in SimpleRockets 2 - 23 July 2018
The Nav Circle in SR1 made it very easy to control rockets in a 2D game. It took me a while to figure out the best way to extend the Nav Circle into three dimensions. I ended up with basically two nav circles: one for heading and one for pitch. The end result is now called the Nav Sphere and it makes controlling rockets in 3D extremely easy. https://imgur.com/Y4oXVPZ.png The blue circle is for controlling the pitch of the rocket and the orange circle is for controlling the heading. You can click and drag the circles to adjust them or you can use keyboard inputs (or a gamepad) to control them. We will probably tweak the visuals a bit before release, but I'm really happy with how they've turned out. https://imgur.com/wceOvOj.gif
- Launch Effects in SimpleRockets 2 - 9 July 2018
Kevin just finished redesigning the launch site. He also built a new hangar, extended the runway, and added two additional landing pads for those of you who want to be like Elon. https://imgur.com/eqcObek.png With the effort invested in the new launch site, we didn't want to take any chances so we integrated some invisible sound suppression systems to protect the launch pads from the considerable acoustic force. Okay, that's not really true. We just added some volumetric smoke that is a purely visual effect. However, that combined with William's new camera shake has really enhanced the launch experience and I noticed after launching my Pigeon Heavy rocket that my socks were nowhere to be seen. https://imgur.com/GOFx7Bu.gif Has anyone seen my socks?
- Re-Entry Effects in SimpleRockets 2 - 26 June 2018
They said the Apollo 11 command module re-entered Earth's atmosphere at Mach 36 and temperatures of the air in front of the heat shield reached nearly 20,000° degrees Fahrenheit, which is well beyond the melting point of sanity. Today, I loaded up the latest build of SimpleRockets 2 with the new re-entry effects Philip and I have been working on and I hurtled my command pod at Smearth at nearly Mach 40. https://imgur.com/MgABzFq.gif The new, resizable Heat Shield part is protecting the command pod and if you have really good eyes you can see in the lower left that it reaches over 13,000° Celsius. The command pod is mostly protected, though it does take some damage from the excessive heat. The G-forces from the deceleration (which I did not measure) would undoubtedly turn any person into a pancake of squishy. So, while I am way hotter than Apollo 11, my astronauts would be far more deade…
- Apex I Engine in SimpleRockets 2 - 11 June 2018
Our newest engine, the Apex I is an absolute beast. It's heavy, expensive, and drinks RP-1 like there's no tomorrow, but it will have the power to get even your most poorly engineered contraptions into space. https://imgur.com/kqWFSWy.gif It dwarfs the Mage I engine in size, power, and visuals. https://imgur.com/YbDkQmp.png Here are the details: Thrust: 3,200 kN Mass: 3,500 kg Price: $8,500,000 Height: 4.2 m Diameter: 3.0 m Max Gimbal Angle: 2.5 degrees Fuel Consumption: 1,350 L/s Specific Impulse: 298 s Here's a bonus shot of it in a highly ill-advised use case. Can anyone guess the inspiration behind this engine? I'll give you a hint, if you are on a PC, the name of the engine is on your keyboard...
- SimpleRockets 2 Steam Page - 29 May 2018
SimpleRockets 2 now has a coming soon page on Steam along with a new teaser trailer to entice you to come check it out! https://store.steampowered.com/app/870200/SimpleRockets_2 We're still shooting to release on Steam Early Access this summer. We plan to keep adding features and responding to player feedback until we feel the game is ready, at which point we will release the final version on all platforms at the same time. This includes iOS, Google Play, Humble, GOG, and of course Steam (Windows and macOS).
- Photo Library in SimpleRockets 2 - 30 April 2018
This past week I finished adding a new Photo Library feature to SR2. This makes it easy for players to take screenshots of their crafts at any time (in the designer or in flight) and use those screenshots when uploading their crafts and sandboxes. It also keeps track of when and where you took the photo and you can write a description if you're a fan of keeping a journal of your craft's journey across the solar system. https://imgur.com/ymgbfRu.png I've also taken some time to improve the screenshot tool. Now you can switch between landscape, portrait, and square orientations. You can also enable a depth of field effect so that you can snap nice looking photos of your craft like you're using a big expensive camera. You can drag the focus point around to focus on specific parts of your craft. https://imgur.com/3Z7C5VA.gif I'm really excited about this feature. It was a lot of fun to work…
- Pixie Engine in SR2 - 16 April 2018
*Note: Check the FAQ here before asking questions.* We've just completed development of the second engine in SR2. The Pixie engine is a much smaller alternative to the Mage engine with far better gas mileage. This makes it suitable for those second stages destined for Smoon. With an accordingly lower thrust, it is also a lot easier to land on a low-G planetary body without getting into an endless cycle of up-and-down that I often find myself in when trying to land with a Mage engine. https://imgur.com/MMzUYRq.gif Here are the details: Thrust: 50 kN Mass: 75 kg (165 lbs) Price: $150k Height: 1.0 m (3.2 ft) Diameter: 0.7 m (2.3 ft) Max Gimbal Angle: 10 degrees Fuel Consumption: 15 L/s Specific impulse: 339 s Max Torque: 5 Nm Here's a bonus shot of it in action. Also, I just wanted to let everyone know that I'm going to start posting blog updates every other week instead of every week. It'…
- Fairings in SimpleRockets 2 - 3 April 2018
Last week I finished up implementing the fairings for SimpleRockets 2. Fairings are a great way to cover your sensitive belongings while you send them up to space. They are like the groin protectors of the aerospace industry. I designed the fairings in SR2 to be completely procedural, just like the fuselage pieces, so they can be resized and re-shaped into an infinite number of combinations. https://imgur.com/uCYeFB8.gif They are actually composed of three separate parts that link together. https://imgur.com/X9yvi8B.png The fairing-base is the part that responds to the stage activation and separates the fairings. The first fairing part must connect directly to the fairing-base. Any number of fairings can then be connected in series. The nose cone is optional, but some people like it because it looks cool. Also, it helps to minimize drag. SimpleRockets 2 is currently under development. W…
- Fairings in SimpleRockets 2 - 3 April 2018
Last week I finished up implementing the fairings for SimpleRockets 2. Fairings are a great way to cover your sensitive belongings while you send them up to space. They are like the groin protectors of the aerospace industry. I designed the fairings in SR2 to be completely procedural, just like the fuselage pieces, so they can be resized and re-shaped into an infinite number of combinations. https://imgur.com/uCYeFB8.gif They are actually composed of three separate parts that link together. https://imgur.com/X9yvi8B.png The fairing-base is the part that responds to the stage activation and separates the fairings. The first fairing part must connect directly to the fairing-base. Any number of fairings can then be connected in series. The nose cone is optional, but some people like it because it looks cool. Also, it helps to minimize drag. SimpleRockets 2 is currently under development. W…
- Speed Build of a Saturn V rocket in SimpleRockets 2 [Teaser Video] - 27 March 2018
Enjoy ;) .https://imgur.com/E2zfjTu.png SimpleRockets 2 is currently under development. We are hoping to release on Steam Early Access in June. You can read more about our development here and also read our FAQ here.
