Juno: New Origins

Juno: New Origins is a 3D aerospace sandbox where you build and test rockets, airplanes, cars and other craft using customizable parts. Realistic physics model their behavior across land, sea, air and space. You can also design planets and entire stellar systems, manage an aerospace company, and share creations with the community.

Build and customize craft

The 3D designer supports everything from simple rockets to multi-stage rockets, airplanes, rovers, satellites and robotic mechs. It includes over 30 parts, such as fairings, retractable solar panels, procedural landing gear, RCS and gyros. You can save custom subassemblies and resize or reshape procedural parts, including fuel tanks and cargo bays, into many configurations.

You can shape fuel tanks, wings, cargo bays, fairings and nose cones, and resize parts such as solar panels, landing gear, pistons and jet engines. Craft can be painted with custom colors and given different reflectiveness, emissiveness and texture styles. You can also design rocket and jet engines, changing settings such as power cycle, combustion pressure, gimbal range, fuel type and nozzle performance. Engine performance affects the exhaust visuals in flight. Pre-built engines are available too, and the Performance Analysis window shows how building changes values such as Delta-V, TWR and engine Isp.

Fly and explore

Rocket physics and orbital mechanics are realistic, while a craft’s drag and lift characteristics update as it changes. You can view predicted orbits and encounters on the Map View, plan burns, and use time-warp to speed up orbital travel. Ion engines can burn during time-warp. The Nav Sphere helps control heading, while the traditional Navball (FDAI) provides attitude information.

Planets are fully 3D and rotating, with water and multiple biomes such as desert, grasslands and tundra. Re-entry produces visual effects and can damage parts through heat. Astronauts, also called space sailors, are fully controllable and equipped with jetpacks and a grappling hook. You can dock craft in orbit, transfer fuel between them and manage fuel cross-feeds and priorities. A persistent sandbox retains previous launches, and custom launch locations let you launch from multiple places in the solar system.

Run an aerospace company

In career mode, you earn money by completing contracts and gain tech points by reaching milestones and exploring landmarks. The tech tree lets you unlock new technology. Contracts are both hand-crafted and procedural, providing new gameplay opportunities. Interactive tutorials show how to build and operate rockets, cars and airplanes, including how to achieve orbit.

Program your craft

Vizzy is a visual programming language designed for Juno: New Origins. You can drag and drop code blocks to automate craft, log telemetry and create custom MFD touch screens. It also lets you explore programming, maths and physics.

Design worlds and share creations

Planet Studio is an in-game tool for making planets, stars, moons and stellar systems. Templates and tools let you create procedural celestial bodies, while its advanced mode offers modifiers for adjusting noise layers, terrain and biomes, plus a paintbrush for shaping complex forms.

You can download community-made crafts, sandboxes, planets and mods from SimpleRockets.com, and upload your own crafts and sandboxes. The online community lets players upvote and comment on one another’s content. Builders progress through ranks from white level to gold level and beyond.