Dear shipmates,

It's that time again - 1.17.3 is out! This time we have quite a few new simulator features, together with ShipBuilder tools that will make creating ships with high-definition textures a breeze!

One of the fresh new features is Jet Engines, of which you can catch a sneak peek on this video:

What types of ships sporting jet engines can you think of?!?!? Be creative, go bananas with jets, and let us have a look at your creations! We are sure this feature will allow hours of endless ship-building fun.

On top of jet engines we've also added auto-focus! This new feature is on by default, and it will make the camera follow your creations as they move in space. If you find it annoying you may always turn it off with Ctrl^HOME or via the "Control" menu.

Finally, make sure you try out the new Magic Eraser on the ShipBuilder's texture layer - this tool allows you to easily wipe out background colors from high-definition images so that you may use them in your ships!

Here's the full changelist for this release:

• Added Jet Engines

  • Not really "ship" stuff, but essential to a physics simulator nonetheless :-)

  • Two types of engines:

    • Jet Engine: provides main propulsion

    • Jet Thrust Engine: provides short bursts to correct small directional deviations

  • ...and two engine controllers:

    • Jet Engine Throttle Controller: best for controlling Jet engines

    • Jet Engine Thrust Controller: best for controlling Jet Thrust engines

  • Check out the new Air Boat and Rocket ships to see these engines in action!

• Re-designed interaction between engine controllers and engines, allowing a controller to run an unlimited number of engines

  • Introduced new "Engine Transmission" electrical material that may be used to connect engine controllers with engines at a distance

• Added auto-focus - for cinematic awesomeness

  • May be turned off and on via the Control menu or by pressing Ctrl+HOME

• Added "Stress Overlay" view mode, showing structure stress as a heatmap

  • Among other things, it allows for stress-testing your model and understanding where structural weaknesses are

• Added lightning hit probability setting

  • You can set it to zero to prevent lightnings from hitting the ship altogether!

• More stable FPS rate on multi-core Windows computers

• ShipBuilder:

  • Added some initial texture editing tools:

    • Magic Eraser: for removing background from textures

    • Eraser: for removing entire sections of textures

  • Added analysis of electrical layer during ship validation

    • Detects issues with electrical circuits such as disconnected engines and unpowered components

  • Added "Backup Ship" button to save the current ship to a backup file

    • Useful when you're making experiments and you're not sure whether they'll work out!

  • Added Preferences window for setting a default size for new ships, and for setting a custom background color for the canvas

  • Fixed material palettes annoyingly closing when mouse moves out of the palette

  • Fixed drawing lag on low-bandwidth graphic cards

• Added 9 new ships

  • Thanks to Pocketwatch, Menta1ity, braun, and BeamierBoomer!

Enjoy this update and please let us know how you find it! Don't forget to vote up Floating Sandbox if you like it!