This menu displays a large number of settings that affect the entire simulation. The menu can be opened by clicking the arrow in the upper right of the View menu in the bottom bar.
The menu occupies the View tab of the Settings menu, which also includes a Simulation tab containing the Sim Settings Menu. The View tab includes settings related to what the user can see in the simulation.
Motion[ | ]
Trails[ | ]
Displays or hides trails for objects in the simulation, or displays them only for selected objects. Trail settings include:
- Trail Center: Displays the current trail center of the simulation.
- Set Selected As Trail Center: Sets the currently selected object as the simulation trail center.
- Clear Trail Center: Resets the simulation trail center to the Simulation Origin.
- Mode: Determines the Trail Mode property of all objects in the simulation.
- Width: Controls the width of the displayed trail lines.
- Length: Controls the length of the displayed trails, i.e., how long the trails last before fading.
- Intensity: Controls the brightness of the displayed trail lines.
Orbits[ | ]
Displays or hides orbits for objects in the simulation, or displays them only for selected objects. Orbit settings include:
- Orbit Width: Controls the width of the displayed orbit lines.
- Orbit Intensity: Controls the brightness of the displayed orbit lines.
- Orbit Arrival Intensity: Controls the brightness of the tail end of the orbit.
Velocity Lines[ | ]
Displays or hides lines representing the Velocity Vector of each object.
Objects[ | ]
Lighting[ | ]
Controls the lighting of the simulation.
- Light Intensity: Controls the brightness of the lighting in the simulation.
Colors[ | ]
Sets the colors of each object's trail, orbit, label, and the object itself to a color indicating the strength of its Velocity, Acceleration, or Mass relative to the other objects in the simulation.
Object Visibility[ | ]
Determines whether objects are realistically visible (Realistic), visible at any distance (Enhanced), or visible at any distance and lighting (Always). Visibility settings include:
- Object Scales: When set to Exaggerated, objects will be displayed as larger than their actual size to improve visibility.
- Minimum Object Size: The minimum size objects will be displayed (in pixels)
- Particle Scales: When set to Exaggerated, small objects like Fragments will be displayed as larger than their actual size to improve visibility.
- Minimum Particle Size: The minimum size particles will be displayed (in pixels)
- Exaggerated Lighting Factor: Controls the extra brightness given to objects that would normally be too dim to see.
- Rim Light Intensity: Adjusts the brightness of the glow around the edge of each object.
- Brightness Filter: When set to Human Eye, objects are drawn with brightnesses representing how they would be seen by a human. When set to Limited Brightness, brighter objects are dimmed to allow details to be seen.
- Filter Strength: Controls the fine-tuning of the Brightness Filter.
- Minimum Gas Opacity: Determines the minimum brightness that gas clouds are displayed. When set to 0%, some gas clouds may be invisible.
- Latitude and Longitude Lines: Controls whether latitude and longitude lines are displayed on spherical objects.
- Width: The width of the latitude and longitude lines.
- Intensity: The brightness of the latitude and longitude lines.
Glows[ | ]
Adjusts the brightness of the glows displayed around hot objects (like stars).
Simulation[ | ]
Field of View[ | ]
Controls the field of view of the camera, or the angular extent of the simulation that is seen by the camera. This setting has the unit of degrees. Smaller values will cause the camera to see only a small portion of the center of the frame, while larger values will capture more of the simulation.
Simulation Overlays[ | ]
Toggling off the Simulation Overlays will turn off all of the following settings:
- Object Labels: Displays or hides object labels.
- Opacity: Controls the transparency of the labels. A label with an opacity of 1 is completely opaque, while a label with an opacity of 0 is completely transparent, and thus invisible.
- Relative Mass Labels: When on, the font size of the object labels will be scaled with the mass of the object, such that the label of most massive object in a simulation will have the largest font size.
- Selection Circles: Displays or hides the selection and hover circles around objects.
- Height Lines: Displays or hides a vertical straight line between the selected object and the Simulation Grid.
- Context: By default, only the height lines of the selected object is displayed. If Context is set to All, the height lines of every object in the simulation will be displayed.
- Width: The width of the height lines.
- Intensity: The brightness of the height lines.
- Projected Paths: Displays or hides the expected path of the selected object, based on the prediction of the N-body integrator.
- Context: By default, only the projected path of the selected object is displayed. If Context is set to All, the projected paths of every object in the simulation will be displayed.
- Width: The width of the projected paths.
- Intensity: The brightness of the projected paths.
- Grid: Displays or hides the Simulation Grid.
- Width: The width of the grid lines.
- Text Size: The size of the grid labels.
- Icons: Displays or hides object icons.
- Show Distance: Displays the distance between selected objects on-screen.
- Line Width: The width of the distance lines.
- Line Intensity: The brightness of the distance lines.
- Constellations: Displays lines between certain stars, if present in the simulation, according to the selected Culture. Constellation settings include:
- Culture: Determines the set of stored constellations to draw from, such as Western, Arabic, Chinese, Maori, and Siberian.
- Labels :Determines whether the constellation name is drawn for every constellation, or only the selected one.
- Lines: Determines whether the constellation lines are drawn for every constellation, or only the selected one.
- Line Width: Sets the width of the constellation lines.
Shadows[ | ]
Controls whether objects will cast shadows on other objects.
Supernovae[ | ]
Controls whether Supernova Cloud objects are visible.
Habitable Zones[ | ]
Displays or hides the habitable zones of stars. This setting also controls the way that the habitable zone is displayed. By default, a habitable zone will be displayed as a flat disk (Flat), but it can also be displayed as a sphere (Billboard) or as three perpendicular flat disks (Cross).