Author: Alexander T. Long, CEO

Yesterday we celebrated our second year as a studio!

A lot has happened in the last year, and we have plans for even more this year I imagine our community would like to know.

Last year was very active for the SpaceEngine team, with several major bugfixes and updates, the addition of the Event Finder tool, and the implementation of a realistic climate model. It also saw us adding four new members to our team, placing us in a great spot for 2024!

Three months into the new year, I'm happy to announce that Cosmographic is continuing to grow. Next week we'll be welcoming a new programmer to our team, and we hope to add other team members later in the year.

One major goal for 2024 is to be more active in the community and to build connections. Later this week one of our developers will be giving a talk at her alma mater on the physics behind the Climate Model, and we'll also have the chance to chat with some graduate students about our work, jobs, and anything else they're curious about.

We're also making efforts to connect with the wider science and education community. We're actively working to build and develop relationships with universities, institutions, observatories, and educators, among others, and hope to keep building and cultivating those relationships. We also expect to work more closely with content creators this year, so that may be something to watch for!

On the other side things, some of our team will also be attending GDC this year — again, with the hopes of building relationships — but also to learn and grow, and maybe also meet some potential hires.

With regards to SpaceEngine itself, our plan for 2024 is to complete the transition to Vulkan, which will open a lot of new doors. Where things currently stand, I think it's safe to say that this is a very big step and may have broader implications for SpaceEngine as a project. But I firmly believe that this is the right choice, and honestly the only real choice to be made. We simply could not build the features we'd wanted (and that existing users have asked for) in the current version of SpaceEngine; OpenGL wasn't up to the task, even if it’s maintained.

While the Vulkan transition is going to occupy the team for most of the year, we still plan to have regular updates, specifically fixing bugs and adding or correcting existing content such as the catalogs.

So, the short version is that development continues all around. We’re working on our engagement, both with the community, and with our partners in the games industry; the team is still growing, and there will continue to be updates throughout the year.

Thank you again to everyone in our community for your continued support. Keep an eye out for updates and check our Discord to keep in touch with the community (and devs)!