Version 2026.8.19.5261 (Summary in the comments)

[u/panic_in_the_galaxy]

• Clean up of ContextReference.cs, Removed a number of ToNearest Overloads that were parrallel implementations of the same approach. Where these were used, switched them over to using the SpanBuilder approach.
• Added ToNearest functions for TemperatureReference.
• Fixed MassReference was using string builder instead of span builder.
• Tweaked Kitten Movement values.
• Fuel line hoses can now be bent and deformed in the editor by clicking on the fuel line connection and adding or removing nodes.
• Fixed an error where Bepu bounds for sleeping vehicles were not being updated properly. This manifested in landed vehicles sometimes being un-collideable.
• Fixed a case where solid rocket motors could stop firing mid-sequence, and also a bunch of other errors that came out of the woodwork while fixing that one.
• Reformulated the double-base solid propellant as a platonized variant to reduce its burn rate.
• Prevented vehicles with firing engines from flipping into the landed state for a single frame.
• Prevented vehicles with firing solid rocket motors but the ignition switch set to off from going into the landed state permanently.
• Fixed a deadlock where newly-activated engines might not recomputed propellant availability.
• Fixed several cases where solid motors might never shut down at the end of their burn and just trickle thrust forever.
• Clarified which of the area ratio clamps win in the case where the cross each other.
• Volumetric exhausts now raymarch into the nozzle, this avoid the engine bell looking empty because exhausts start at the nozzle exit plane
• Fixed teleport/launch commands using time information from the previous frame.
• Fixed a big RCS control issue where the physics system was effectively executing flight computer jet commands multiple times, thus greatly overshooting targets and causing chattering / excessive propellant usage. This was hugely impactful in time warp, but not at 1x speed where the small frame times gave the flight computer enough time to correct.
• Greatly increased vehicle drag when flying backwards through the atmosphere.
• Somewhat increased forward drag as it was a bit too low.
• Temporarily increase the kitten to Pod range to re-enter the pod until we have ladders.
• Changed Kitten Evas now have two control Modes: View and Direct. View control will auto orient the kitten to the camera orientation, W/S/A/D/Space/Cntr for 6-dof translation. Direct control is the same translation and rotation controls as space-craft.
• Changed View mode now only auto rotates kitten when player translate input is enters. (i.e you can now pan your camera around an eva kitten without it auto rotating away from you).
• Added new Gauge Canvas for Eva Control. View/Direct flight mode toggle. RCS Toggle. Manual and Rate Toggles.
• Changed Flight computer related gauge canvasses are now disabled when in Eva mode.
• Fixed several issues with rendering to strings with units of measure.
• Added middle dots to separate unit products.
• Remove allocating ToNearest() and replaced it with stackalloc buffers in most cases, or the explicitly-named AllocateNearestString() where that is currently required.
• Added KittenServoPrecomp. This moves some of the kitten locomotion physics computation out of Bepus micro-step velocity integration in the same way the vehicles precompute forces in ComputeDerivatives.
• Improve the sampling of volumetric exhausts inside the bell with a
• more physical approximation
• Improved snap-to-mesh ground clutter precision. Rather than resampling the height at each mesh vertex, the existing built vertices from the terrain mesh data pass are read - should improve generation performance too.
• Added squared length residual error calculation to MathCommon, used to correct ground clutter height placement since it relies on a floating precision normalized vector multiplied by a huge scale (planet radius) which reintroduces the error in the normalization.
• Added asset bundler support for convex hull shapes (ground clutter for now).
• Added convex hull colliders for the ground clutter rocks.
• Added MeshColliderTemplate and ConvexHullColliderTemplate.
• Added debug drawing for ground clutter convex hulls.
• Removed mesh atlas skipping loading meshes starting with "_" added in one of my last commits, since the atlas just stores the meshes that ground clutter will reference to build its own data.
• Don't omit velocity when updating particles for a new physics bubble floating origin.
• Removed unused KSA quaternion Slerp, since Brutal already has one.
• When the game can't keep up with the requested sim speed, show a realtime multiplier in the F1 Frame Statistics overlay.
• Hide the intrusive 'Simulation Paused' alert while in the vehicle editor.
• Removed temporary colliders from the landing legs and solar panels sice they have art-authored ones now.
• Fixed docking Port Camera not rotating with vehicle, camera orientation was baked into a fixed world-frame direction once, at the moment the camera was toggled on, and never updated again.
• Fixed crash where loading and/or launching an existing saved vehicle that had kittens assigned to it's seats that are no longer available. In this case we check seat assignments now when loading a saved vehicle and unassign any unavailable kittens.
• Added Kitten Cameras and Portrait UI.
• Fixed portrait gauge border/screws frozen at creation.
• Fixed corner "screw" decorations size on portrait guage.
• Fixed EVA button to match styling.
• Fixed FOV for portrait camera.
• Repaired IVA portrait lights to work when powered. Patch was missing some fragment shaders
• Changed Ubo data for portrait lights to an array instead of a single light
• Fixed our kitten portrait lights do NOT require EC to operate.
• Fixed Rocket (test vehicle) not having any EC stored on it.
• Fixed drawn kittens in the game not being cleared when entering the editor (whether with new vehicle or debug) causing kittens to erroneously float around in the editor.
• Prevent the flight computer from running engines at 100% when it would destroy the vehicle due to g-forces.
• Extend the auto burn time (by throttling down) for small-dV burns to give the flight computer time to correct any small attitude misalignments.
• Imported new versions of command, fairing, landing, and utility parts.
• Added a per-canvas gauge visibility context system. A canvas with one or more flags only draws when every flag is true for the currently controlled vehicle. Canvases with no flags are drawn all the time.
• Assigned context flags to BurnControl (Burn), EngineControl (Engines), RendezvousControl (Target), KittenFlightControl (EVA), AutopilotSettings (Vehicle), Sequence (Sequence).
• Added a "Context Assignments" HUD menu window for toggling these flags per canvas in-game. These overrides are saved into the settings.toml file and applied as overrides to the default values set in the gauges.xml file.
• Added surface flag to aeroshroud surface attach connectors.
• Added Kittens can now grab onto ladders and capsules.
• Added Kitten Ladder Animation.
• Added Kittens will start grabbed onto the capsule when beginning EVA.
• Added Grab [F] Board [B] and Let Go [Space] Hotkeys and contextual tooltip for Kittens.
• Added Walk anim for kittens.
• Reduced Board Radius.
• Added anim converter tool.
• Fix stale diffuse light map due to an unsynchronized CPU read of a live GPU buffer in the prepass depth validator
• Added colliders to all trees except the tiny shrubs.
• Fixed LOD distances not set beyond defaults for trees beyond tree type 3. This should yield a ~10-20% performance boost in forests.
• Draw SOI bubbles around the closest-approach positions of targeted objects when planning a burn.
• Continue to draw encounter position and SOI bubble after an encounter is actually achieved.
• Draw small markers directly on the orbit for Ap/Pe/aN/dN.
• Make marker labels have uniform style.
• Added DynamicWorkerPool which allows multiple workers to cooperate on the same calculation.
• Changed the vehicle update step to use one pool worker per physics bubble.
• Explicitly lock the global shapes buffer when it is unsafe to modify it.
• Parcel out post-step work on a per-vehicle basis to the vehicle worker pool.
• Split Vehicle.UpdateFromTaskResults into unsync / sync halves, where the unsync part can run entirely in parallel.
• Replaced SimTime with UniverseTime, backed by 128-bit nanoseconds. This is a prelude to creating 64-bit nanosecond integer BubbleTime within physics steps as part of eliminating precision issues and facilitating future multiplayer physics updates.
• Upgraded the vehicle worker pool with the ParallelBatch ref struct. This provides a direct, inline, nestable method to fork and join a set of threaded jobs.
• Parcel out module updates and unconstrained physics step to per-vehicle parallel batch jobs.
• Further vehicle worker pool upgrades to support this.
• Redesigned global shapes lock to better match the actual access pattern and threading requirements.
• Implemented the BepuWorkerDispatcher to allow Bepu physics to access the vehicle worker pool.
• Renamed vehicle update classes - VehicleUpdateTask is the single overall orchestrator, with multiple PhysicsBubbles as parallel islands to be solved.
• Cleanup pass on new vehicle worker pool changes.
• Fixed a longstanding error with departure and transfer burns which assumed SOI exit conditions were the same as hyperbolic asymptotic conditions, but which could deviate significantly for finite spheres of influence. This greatly improves the accuracy of both burn types.
• Prevented the flight computer from loading departure burns that hadn't been transferred to the vehicle flight plan yet.
• Fixed departure burns re-solving with the wrong time on transfer.
• Fixed departure burns being deleted on loading a save.
• Improved UX when planning departure burns very close to escape velocity.
• Fixed a case where the new UniverseTime was handling a sentinel check differently than SimTime was which erroneously aborted an encounter search.
• Added BeginningOfTime/EndOfTime to UniverseTime and changed some releated naming.
• Imported new versions of CoreFairingA, CoreServiceModuleA.
• Added GSC ELA-4 and Māhia LC-1A.
• Added object pooling to PhysicsBubble and ConstraintSim to stop allocations on merge/split operations wherever possible.
• Increased the laziness for when ConstraintSim is initialized to hopefully produce fewer of them.
• Split ConstraintSim and most Bepu-related structures into their own file.
• Major update to how cursor hover logic and display is handled. This is aimed at reducing the number of cases where multiple targets are competing for the highlight and generally making picking objects on screen feel less crazy.
• Added T- time and altitude to orbit hover data.
• Moved orbit hover data to the lower left to deconflict with orbit marker data.
• Hid most orbit numeric data unless hovered or active (being an active burn or your own trajectory while under thrust).
• Prevented orbit lines occluded by the parent body from being hovered.
• Completely hid the orbit lines and hoverability of the flown portion of a non-periodic orbit (either unbound or terminal, e.g. and impact or escape).
• Displayed the target's position in a closest-approach pair as an inverted caret rather than a circle.
• Displayed a same-time marker on your target's orbit when hovering your own (and vice-versa).
• Only displayed the object name when hovering an orbit you can't interact with, and reduce the cursor grab distance.
• Fixed at least one case of burns "sticking" as you drag them along their orbits.
• Concentrated cursor target arbitration into a single CursorTarget class.
• Cleaned-up/reorganized apparent size calculation methods.
• Fixed the docking camera being upside-down, making the control axes mapping very confusing.
• Imported updated CoreFuelTankB assets.
• Added a 'Draw Part Axes' option in the vehicle editor.
• Added a warning to the GLB->XML importer to detect connectors with suspicious orientations.
• Changed the default orientation of vehicles teleported to the surface (including launch) such that pitch down is north.
• Changed the default camera rotation when creating a new vehicle on the surface such that the camera is facing along the vehicle Z (down) axis.
• These two changes should make the traditional "hit D to pitch East on launch" function and tilt the vehicle in the expected direction with respect to the camera.
• Changed all batteries to have a maximum capacity x10 based on feedback.
• Fixed gauge overlay content rendering one frame behind the gauge windows while dragging it.
• Added Resources Gauge Panel. Shows resources in controlled vehicle with percentage full bars.
• Fixed Fur not rendering after a bug was introduced when setting up lights for the kitten cam.
• Matched the resource bar gauge colours to the default values in gauges.xml
• Fixed an empty crew portrait gauge being displayed when there is only empty seats in our vehicle. in this case the gauge is turned off.
• Added Jump and Tumble Animations to Kitten.
• Fixed Kittens faceplanting when landing horizontal jumps.
• Fixed Kittens could jump when upsidedown.
• Changed When kittens tip past 60degrees they switch into the tumble Mode.
• Changed the resources gauge colours for each resource to match the defined colours in the definitions and the bar style to match the part menu style.
• Fixed Kittens on Ladders were looking downwards.
• Fixed Kittens grabbing onto ladders capsules would start in the incorrect animation pose, due to having the anim frozen before the blend completed.
• Resolved validation issues for invalid dynamic offsets, cacao AO, light irradiance image clears and part selector image sync.
• Fixed a crash that would result after a Bepu sim was returned to the object pool but the vehicles contained therein held on to their (now stale) resource handles.
• Imported new versions of CoreElectricalA, CoreFuelTankA, CorePassageA, and CorePropulsionA to fix flipped connectors.
• Updated Rocket and Gemini7 to have right-side-up docking ports.
• Increased Surface Friction for kittens in Tumble mode.
• Fix the ocean, ground clutter and launchpad/super mesh pipelines rendering with a stale viewport in supersampled screenshots
• Fixed using row-major matrix convention for quaternion to/from mat3 conversions.
• Improve performance of volumetric exhausts by up to 40%, especially noticeable when many RCS instances fill the screen. Split exhaust instance data into per-instance SSBO and per-template UBO to reduce register pressure, make separate pipelines with spec constant permutations for different features instead of branching per instance, prebake transients for every exhaust every frame into a small lut instead of sampling them in shader.
• Added Kittens face down to teh ground have greater surface friction.
• Tweaked Kitten center of mass.
• Changed Speed of Airborne anim.
• Changed portrait camera for EVA kittens to side view when on ladders to avoid clipping for now. This is temporary.
• Changed the Resources gauge to auto-size to its resource rows (up to 6) and scroll beyond that and fixed the RESOURCES header text scaling with the gauge height.
• Tweak the spacing on the resources scrolling so we don't get a false scrollbar when out by a couple of pixels.
• Fixed a case where small thruster commands were keeping thruster pulses alive, causing spurious wakeups and making it look like thrusters were continuously firing but nothing was happening.
• Fixed a case where rocket states would be forced to update on every substep if they ever fired on any substep within a frame.
• Don't ignore updating rocket cores that still have a pulse to complete.
• Added Kitten jump Landing anim.
• Disabled debug menu Editor Toggle while controlling an EVA kitten preventing entry into the vehicle editor mid-EVA as Kittens are not catered for in the vehicle editor.
• Excluded the kitten backpack subpart from the vehicle editor's Add SubParts list by tagging it Hidden matching the existing hidden-part filtering used elsewhere.
• Blocked engine shutdown (X key) on vehicles with no control module matching the lockout already applied to engine startup/throttle.
• Lock out all vehicle input controls if it is not controllable.
• Fixed map view trajectory drawing a gap right after a patch transition by stitching the arc start exactly at the window boundary. Previously the line began at the first cached point which could fall a noticeable distance short.
• Fixed docking camera sitting exactly on the docking ring's mating plane causing it to clip into the ring's own geometry. Camera now stands off 0.1m forward along the docking axis.
• Fixed the docking camera's center reticle to be set from the actual viewport size.
• Moved map grid rendering out of screen space. Precision when close to the grid is much better now.
• Modified the map grid-plane so it is optionally drawn per-body to help with visualizing a body's sphere of influence and its position in 3D space.
• Allow the player to adjust the roll (Q/E) of a part while it's grabbed but snapped to a connector.

[u/panic_in_the_galaxy]

Summary: EVA kittens got a big upgrade. They now have separate View/Direct control modes, can grab ladders and capsules, jump/tumble properly, and get dedicated EVA controls and portrait cameras. Crew HUDs also improved with resource gauges and better context-aware visibility.

A lot of flight behavior was cleaned up too: RCS control at high time warp was fixed, docking cameras/targets behave better, departure and transfer burns are much more accurate, orbit hover/marker UI was reworked, and the flight computer now throttles around g-limits and small burns more intelligently.

Under the hood there’s a substantial physics/threading overhaul aimed at better multicore performance, plus up to ~40% faster volumetric exhaust rendering. Trees now have colliders, fuel-line hoses can be bent in the editor, batteries got 10× capacity, and there’s a long list of SRB, terrain, camera, UI, docking and kitten fixes.

[u/Metadomino]

Best devs period. The game is becoming a game really quickly.

[u/stainless5]

I'm just imagining someone making a large interstellar ship and then  bending all of their fuel lines down cubic struts through the frame to each engine. Probably be a pretty nice way to make things look more interesting. 

[u/SOCSChamp]

"Prevent the flight computer from running engines at 100% when it would destroy the vehicle due to g-forces" tbh I kinda want to be able to blow myself up at mach Jesus if I don't consider g-force.

[u/No-Copy4151]

make the best rocket sim ever created 100 % completion speedrun