Author: Alexander T. Long, CEO

Hey folks,

This week, we're celebrating Cosmographic Software's third anniversary, and I'm pleased to say we're in a fairly good place. As we look forward to the rest of the year, I'd like to continue my tradition of giving our community a few updates.

Development

The past year was focused on incremental improvements and refinement through smaller updates, with much of this happening largely behind the scenes. Much of our current focus is on improvements to Universe generation, which many of our current users will know to be fairly significant. In terms of a timeline, we hope to have those features available to you by early Fall (Q3).

Our community and support team — Jon, Mike, Massimo, and Katie — are also keeping an eye on the feedback, comments and suggestions; and in addition to the support tickets, notes, and usual daily work one might expect, last year we added a monthly meeting where community suggestions are considered for development. When this initiative was put forward by our community manager (Jon), I was immediately on board, as we value our users and what’s important to them. While most suggestions might not be implemented for one reason or another, we all agree it's important they are heard and discussed, and that's exactly what we're doing.

Company Updates

The company has largely remained the same size going into 2025. While we're still looking for one more full-time developer to join our crew, any further team expansion will be delayed until sometime in 2027 (So, if you're interested in joining, keep an eye out around then).

Some team members are heading to conferences this year to improve skills, and trade notes with other professionals in astronomy, video games, and education. The first will be GDC (Game Developers Conference), but we're also planning to head to CASCA (Canadian Astronomical Society) and SIGGRAPH later in the year. SpaceEngine is complicated, and our developers are constantly facing new challenges. For us, this means both traditional development and a "hard science" aspect which is fairly unique to SE.

Because of this, I believe it to be vitally important that we take every opportunity to support our team by providing opportunities to improve their knowledge and skills so they can, in turn, continue to innovate and improve on Vladimir's creation.

I'm glad to say that this year has gotten off to a productive start, and I am relieved that we have been fortunate enough to avoid any major impact as a result of the ongoing changes in world affairs. We are a team that prides itself on our differences and what each person brings to the table. From the start, I set out to build an environment where diversity could thrive in an equitable and inclusive environment.

I often reflect on my time in the Canadian Armed Forces, where during our basic training we were introduced to the concept of "strength through diversity." Every member of your team brings their own value, whether through experience, background, or skills. It was important to me personally that we set these values deep within the foundations of our company and that, as we continued to grow, we would remain faithful to those principals. As it stands now, I am glad to say that we've stayed that course, and I believe this lies at the centre of why we have remained strong despite the many challenges we faced together.

Both the Cosmographic team, and myself personally, are grateful for our community’s support; it means the world to us. Your comments, screenshots, and suggestions keep us smiling even when things are at their toughest.

On behalf of Vladimir, and the Cosmographic team: we are grateful, as always, for your continued support. We'll continue to do our best into 2025 and beyond.

Sincerely,

Alexander T. Long, CEO