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Install

Beta

CelestialSim is in beta and pre-1.0: APIs can still change between releases. Pin a version and check the release notes before upgrading.

Requirements

  • Godot 4.7. The extension declares a lower compatibility minimum, but 4.7 is the only version developed and tested against.
  • A GPU with Vulkan support (the Forward+ or Mobile renderer).

Prebuilt binaries ship for:

Platform Binary
Linux x86_64
Windows x86_64
macOS universal (x86_64 + arm64)

Android is experimental — an APK is exported for the demo, but it is not a supported target.

Steps

  1. Download the latest celestial-<version>.zip from the Releases page.
  2. Extract the zip. It contains an addons/ directory with a single celestialsim/ folder inside.
  3. Copy addons/celestialsim/ into your Godot project's addons/ folder (create addons/ if your project doesn't have one yet).
  4. Open the project in Godot.

That's it. The GDExtension is loaded automatically by addons/celestialsim/celestialsim.gdextension.

Nothing to enable, nothing else to install

There is no plugin to enable in Project Settings → Plugins — CelestialSim is a GDExtension, not an EditorPlugin. You also do not need Slang: the compute shaders are compiled to SPIR-V ahead of time and baked into the binary.

Verify it worked

Open (or create) a 3D scene and click Add Child Node, then type Celestial in the search box. If the node type shows up, the extension loaded and you're ready to build your first planet.

Troubleshooting

Celestial doesn't appear in Add Child Node. Restart the Godot editor. GDExtension classes are registered when the editor starts, so a project that was already open when you copied the addon in won't see them.

Still missing after a restart. Copy the whole addons/celestialsim/ folder from the zip rather than individual files: the .gdextension resolves the library from addons/celestialsim/bin/, so an addon missing that folder loads nothing. Godot prints a load error to the Output panel if it cannot find or open the library.