
The Pioneer and Voyager spacecraft can be seen in its encounters with Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune. Players are able to view the Rho Cancri (55 Cancri) star in the constellation of Cancer they can see the five known planets in the system. Moons are able to be converged into planets, and may be able to affect the planet's atmosphere or minerals. The trans-Neptunian object 2008 KV42 with a retrograde motion orbit can be seen in a simulation. Comets can be observed colliding into planets, such as the Shoemaker Levy 9's collision with Jupiter. A visual size comparison of the largest known stars and planets can be explored, and real time animations of events like the Apophis asteroid passing near Earth in the year 2029 can be watched.

During gameplay, the player may be introduced to the regions that include the 100 largest bodies in the Solar System, the nearest 1000 stars to the Sun or the nearest 70 galaxies to the Milky Way. Real simulations include the Solar System, which includes the eight planets, five minor planets, 160+ moons, and hundreds of asteroids and predictions of future events such as the Andromeda and Milky Way galaxy collision which will occur in 3.8 to 4.5 billion years. In November 2018, the original Universe Sandbox was renamed to Universe Sandbox Legacy, and the new version was then renamed to Universe Sandbox in December.īoth realistic and fictional simulations appear in Universe Sandbox, with each area of outer space being placed by default or according to the player's preference. Work on a new version of the game, originally called Universe Sandbox², began in 2014.

Since then, he has hired eight additional designers for the company.

Dixon worked full-time on the project since 2010, founding the company Giant Army the following year. Universe Sandbox was designed by Dan Dixon, who released the first version in May 2008. The original Universe Sandbox was only available for Windows-based PCs, but an updated version was released for Windows, macOS, and Linux in 2015.

Using Universe Sandbox, users can see the effects of gravity on objects in the universe and run scale simulations of the Solar System, various galaxies or other simulations, while at the same time interacting and maintaining control over gravity, time, and other objects in the universe, such as moons, planets, asteroids, comets, and black holes. Universe Sandbox is a series of interactive space sandbox gravity simulator educational software video games.
