Project Heliopause — private alpha

v0.324.0 2026-10-16 Linux (.run) A roof built over a ship no longer pulls the ship up onto it, and a station taken down disappears from play for everyone in the system at once rather than at their next login.

Platform	File	Size	SHA-256
Linux (.run)	pax-helios-v0.324.0-linux-x86_64.run	165.2 MB	86873268d9482164…

What changed

A roof built over a ship no longer pulls the ship up onto it, and a station taken down disappears from play for everyone in the system at once rather than at their next login.

v0.323.0 2026-10-16 Linux (.run) Ships now collide with pieces built on a planet's surface: a hull stops at walls and sets down on deck pieces, and counts as landed there.

Platform	File	Size	SHA-256
Linux (.run)	pax-helios-v0.323.0-linux-x86_64.run	165.2 MB	fd826bbda5f00d1f…

What changed

Ships now collide with pieces built on a planet's surface: a hull stops at walls and sets down on deck pieces, and counts as landed there.

v0.322.0 2026-10-16 Linux (.run) Stations can now be built on the ground: a landing pad of their own with a station's market and shipyard, where you land, dock and walk. Docking at any landing pad now brings you back upright when you log in again.

Platform	File	Size	SHA-256
Linux (.run)	pax-helios-v0.322.0-linux-x86_64.run	165.2 MB	cfb5fc0c17d4b4dd…

What changed

Stations can now be built on the ground: a landing pad of their own with a station's market and shipyard, where you land, dock and walk. Docking at any landing pad now brings you back upright when you log in again.

v0.321.0 2026-10-16 Linux (.run) Stations built from the station kit can now appear in a system: they are on the nav list and the map, you can land on their decks and dock, and each has its own market.

Platform	File	Size	SHA-256
Linux (.run)	pax-helios-v0.321.0-linux-x86_64.run	165.2 MB	a9ed78f5037af1e1…

What changed

Stations built from the station kit can now appear in a system: they are on the nav list and the map, you can land on their decks and dock, and each has its own market.

v0.320.0 2026-10-14 Linux (.run) Things built on a landing pad now stay on it as the world turns, and landing pads keep their heading instead of slowly swinging round.

Platform	File	Size	SHA-256
Linux (.run)	pax-helios-v0.320.0-linux-x86_64.run	165.2 MB	06ddefd6f53f2a4a…

What changed

Things built on a landing pad now stay on it as the world turns, and landing pads keep their heading instead of slowly swinging round.

v0.319.0 2026-10-14 Linux (.run) No changes to the game. This build adds a Blender add-on for the developers, for building station layouts by hand from the station kit.

Platform	File	Size	SHA-256
Linux (.run)	pax-helios-v0.319.0-linux-x86_64.run	165.2 MB	0aa16629d8b7a2b8…

What changed

No changes to the game. This build adds a Blender add-on for the developers, for building station layouts by hand from the station kit.

v0.318.2 2026-10-13 Linux (.run) No changes to the game: this build only speeds up the developers' test run.

Platform	File	Size	SHA-256
Linux (.run)	pax-helios-v0.318.2-linux-x86_64.run	165.2 MB	c0f2759128f3912c…

What changed

No changes to the game: this build only speeds up the developers' test run.

v0.318.1 2026-10-13 Linux (.run) No changes you'll notice in the game. Race physics now keeps its working memory to itself, so the developers' test suite can run on several threads at once without crashing.

Platform	File	Size	SHA-256
Linux (.run)	pax-helios-v0.318.1-linux-x86_64.run	165.2 MB	a415a2c10de779e0…

What changed

No changes you'll notice in the game. Race physics now keeps its working memory to itself, so the developers' test suite can run on several threads at once without crashing.

v0.318.0 2026-10-13 Linux (.run) Dive and Ghost Ops rooms are lit by rows of ceiling light fixtures, two rows of the stations' light strips set into the panels, instead of one long glowing bar hanging under the ceiling. They keep the room's colour: emergency amber in a dive, the clearance colour in a Ghost Op. Where two rooms overlap and the ceiling opens into the next one, no light hangs in mid-air any more.

Platform	File	Size	SHA-256
Linux (.run)	pax-helios-v0.318.0-linux-x86_64.run	165.2 MB	e6eb88f9ef2d0b06…

What changed

Dive and Ghost Ops rooms are lit by rows of ceiling light fixtures, two rows of the stations' light strips set into the panels, instead of one long glowing bar hanging under the ceiling. They keep the room's colour: emergency amber in a dive, the clearance colour in a Ghost Op. Where two rooms overlap and the ceiling opens into the next one, no light hangs in mid-air any more.
A dive's amber room lights now light its rooms. They had been lighting the corridors between them, so the rooms where the robots are were only lit by the corridor light spilling in.

v0.317.0 2026-10-13 Linux (.run) The Sparrow and the Dart now show their thrust. Each engine's glow brightens as it burns and sends rings of cyan light drifting back behind the ship, more of them the harder you push. Manoeuvring thrusters throw short sparks off the hull where they fire. The drive was never a rocket, so there are no flames.

Platform	File	Size	SHA-256
Linux (.run)	pax-helios-v0.317.0-linux-x86_64.run	165.2 MB	69c163ea39c5494f…

What changed

The Sparrow and the Dart now show their thrust. Each engine's glow brightens as it burns and sends rings of cyan light drifting back behind the ship, more of them the harder you push. Manoeuvring thrusters throw short sparks off the hull where they fire. The drive was never a rocket, so there are no flames.
Other pilots' Sparrows and Darts show their main engines burning too. They need this version on both sides.
The Sparrow's engine glow was hidden inside its engine pods and is now visible.

v0.316.0 2026-10-12 Linux (.run) The Mule's four drive pads are real machinery now instead of two plain discs. Each is a rimmed disc. Its working face is two glowing emitter rings set in channels, crossed by vanes, around a domed cap, with orange tabs on the rim so you can see a pad turn. Underneath, a ball joint sits in the arm's hub. The pads still glow amber when they push and cyan when they pull, brighter the harder they work, on your Mule and on other pilots'.

Platform	File	Size	SHA-256
Linux (.run)	pax-helios-v0.316.0-linux-x86_64.run	165.2 MB	75b59bf25e753b63…

What changed

The Mule's four drive pads are real machinery now instead of two plain discs. Each is a rimmed disc. Its working face is two glowing emitter rings set in channels, crossed by vanes, around a domed cap, with orange tabs on the rim so you can see a pad turn. Underneath, a ball joint sits in the arm's hub. The pads still glow amber when they push and cyan when they pull, brighter the harder they work, on your Mule and on other pilots'.
The Mule's arms no longer run through its pads. Each arm now slopes down under its pad and into the hub, so the pad's whole face shows.
The sparks a working pad throws now leave from its rim. They used to appear about a metre out from the pad's edge.

v0.315.0 2026-10-12 Linux (.run) Ships meet rocks, other ships and every other body as the shape of their hull. Before, every ship was an invisible ball 16 m across: you bounced off rocks a few metres short of touching them, two ships could not get within 20 m of each other's middle, and a Mule's nose could sink into a rock. Now a nose, a wingtip or a boom touches where it is, so you can thread closer through a rock field or fly in formation, and you still can't fly through anything.

Platform	File	Size	SHA-256
Linux (.run)	pax-helios-v0.315.0-linux-x86_64.run	165.2 MB	6975af07b785ed10…

What changed

Ships meet rocks, other ships and every other body as the shape of their hull. Before, every ship was an invisible ball 16 m across: you bounced off rocks a few metres short of touching them, two ships could not get within 20 m of each other's middle, and a Mule's nose could sink into a rock. Now a nose, a wingtip or a boom touches where it is, so you can thread closer through a rock field or fly in formation, and you still can't fly through anything.

v0.314.0 2026-10-12 Linux (.run) The Mule's berth in the hangar bay has its own floodlights: two lamps hung from the bay's ceiling over it. The side of a parked Mule facing the middle of the bay was nearly black; now it is lit, at every Anchorage.

Platform	File	Size	SHA-256
Linux (.run)	pax-helios-v0.314.0-linux-x86_64.run	165.2 MB	8d1bed2d2612da9b…

What changed

The Mule's berth in the hangar bay has its own floodlights: two lamps hung from the bay's ceiling over it. The side of a parked Mule facing the middle of the bay was nearly black; now it is lit, at every Anchorage.

v0.313.0 2026-10-12 Linux (.run) Shots fly as tracers. In dives and Ghost Ops your bolts and the machines' streak along their flight instead of floating as glowing balls, and a sealed facility's point-defence fire comes at you as long, heavy tracers. Faster fire draws longer streaks.

Platform	File	Size	SHA-256
Linux (.run)	pax-helios-v0.313.0-linux-x86_64.run	165.2 MB	8d4336a14583f1a5…

What changed

Shots fly as tracers. In dives and Ghost Ops your bolts and the machines' streak along their flight instead of floating as glowing balls, and a sealed facility's point-defence fire comes at you as long, heavy tracers. Faster fire draws longer streaks.

v0.312.0 2026-10-12 Linux (.run) On foot, a parked Sparrow or Dart is now the shape of the ship. You could walk a metre and a half into a Sparrow's nose and bumped into thin air beside a Dart's; now you stop at the hull: its nose, its wingtips, its fuselage. That holds for your own ship and for other pilots' parked ships, whichever way they face.

Platform	File	Size	SHA-256
Linux (.run)	pax-helios-v0.312.0-linux-x86_64.run	165.2 MB	59f36f89a8485a6b…

What changed

On foot, a parked Sparrow or Dart is now the shape of the ship. You could walk a metre and a half into a Sparrow's nose and bumped into thin air beside a Dart's; now you stop at the hull: its nose, its wingtips, its fuselage. That holds for your own ship and for other pilots' parked ships, whichever way they face.

v0.311.0 2026-10-12 Linux (.run) The rooms inside facilities are panelled now. In a dive or a Ghost Op the walls are riveted plating with braced panels, and the floors and ceilings a grid of framed plates, where every surface was a flat grey. The rooms are as bright as before; a Ghost Op's locked bulkheads are still red.

Platform	File	Size	SHA-256
Linux (.run)	pax-helios-v0.311.0-linux-x86_64.run	165.2 MB	0ed310a0421727a2…

What changed

The rooms inside facilities are panelled now. In a dive or a Ghost Op the walls are riveted plating with braced panels, and the floors and ceilings a grid of framed plates, where every surface was a flat grey. The rooms are as bright as before; a Ghost Op's locked bulkheads are still red.
Hand-built dive levels look as their makers built them.

v0.310.0 2026-10-12 Linux (.run) The machines inside facilities are real models now. In Ghost Ops each class looks like what it is: crawlers on four clinging legs, forklift loaders, survey units with a big lens and a dish, armoured security drones, heavier sentinels with gun pods, and the crowned core warden. Working machines have amber eyes, armed ones red. Every machine turns to face you.

Platform	File	Size	SHA-256
Linux (.run)	pax-helios-v0.310.0-linux-x86_64.run	164.2 MB	18c5fb98eb951f7f…

What changed

The machines inside facilities are real models now. In Ghost Ops each class looks like what it is: crawlers on four clinging legs, forklift loaders, survey units with a big lens and a dish, armoured security drones, heavier sentinels with gun pods, and the crowned core warden. Working machines have amber eyes, armed ones red. Every machine turns to face you.
A dive's robots are the facility's security drones: red-eyed, twin guns, watching you.
The corrupted core is a red heart in a turning cage, still guttering as you hit it. The bay-door control is a pillar with an amber screen on every side, and the transceiver you plant on a facility's hull is a clamped dome with a green beacon.

v0.309.1 2026-10-12 Linux (.run) No changes to the game: this build only updates the tools that publish releases.

Platform	File	Size	SHA-256
Linux (.run)	pax-helios-v0.309.1-linux-x86_64.run	164.1 MB	32391df2a29d0381…

What changed

No changes to the game: this build only updates the tools that publish releases.

v0.309.0 2026-10-12 Linux (.run) A ringed planet's rings now cast their shadow on it. Where sunlight crosses the rings on its way to the planet, the planet shows curved stripes: a dense ring throws a deep shadow, a faint one a light veil, and the gaps between rings let a bright line of sunlight through. The lower the sun sits to the rings, the darker and wider the shadow; with the sun edge-on to the rings it narrows to a thin line along the equator.

Platform	File	Size	SHA-256
Linux (.run)	pax-helios-v0.309.0-linux-x86_64.run	164.1 MB	0789762d727ba566…

What changed

A ringed planet's rings now cast their shadow on it. Where sunlight crosses the rings on its way to the planet, the planet shows curved stripes: a dense ring throws a deep shadow, a faint one a light veil, and the gaps between rings let a bright line of sunlight through. The lower the sun sits to the rings, the darker and wider the shadow; with the sun edge-on to the rings it narrows to a thin line along the equator.

v0.308.0 2026-10-12 Linux (.run)Windows (.zip) The Sparrow and the Dart now collide with stations as their real shape, as the Mule has since v0.307.0. A Sparrow's nose could slide 5.5 m into a station wall and its wingtips almost 3 m; a Dart's nose and tail 3.5 m. Now nose, tail and wingtips all meet the wall. Landing is unchanged: every ship still sets down on its feet.

Platform	File	Size	SHA-256
Linux (.run)	pax-helios-v0.308.0-linux-x86_64.run	164.1 MB	9853bfe1dc7a5d9f…
Windows (.zip)	pax-helios-v0.308.0-windows-x86_64.zip	158.9 MB	490ded0e46491d99…

What changed

The Sparrow and the Dart now collide with stations as their real shape, as the Mule has since v0.307.0. A Sparrow's nose could slide 5.5 m into a station wall and its wingtips almost 3 m; a Dart's nose and tail 3.5 m. Now nose, tail and wingtips all meet the wall. Landing is unchanged: every ship still sets down on its feet.

v0.307.2 2026-10-12 Linux (.run)Windows (.zip) Sealed facilities have real gun turrets. Their point defence was two plain grey columns stuck into the hulk, the same size on a 500 m orbital works as on a 60 m ground outpost. Now each sealed site has two turrets on its roofs, with twin guns facing outward, in proportion to the site. Divable sites have none, as before.

Platform	File	Size	SHA-256
Linux (.run)	pax-helios-v0.307.2-linux-x86_64.run	164.1 MB	3f4dbbc9e0c75f24…
Windows (.zip)	pax-helios-v0.307.2-windows-x86_64.zip	158.9 MB	b023ad65e85a4280…

What changed

Sealed facilities have real gun turrets. Their point defence was two plain grey columns stuck into the hulk, the same size on a 500 m orbital works as on a 60 m ground outpost. Now each sealed site has two turrets on its roofs, with twin guns facing outward, in proportion to the site. Divable sites have none, as before.

v0.307.1 2026-10-12 Linux (.run)Windows (.zip) Planet rings now block the stars behind them. Bright stars used to shine straight through a ring, and a ring in its planet's shadow looked as if it were not there. Now the dense bands hide the stars behind them, the middle bands dim them, and only the faint inner ring lets them through. A ring in shadow shows as a dark band across the sky. Lit rings look as bright as before.

Platform	File	Size	SHA-256
Linux (.run)	pax-helios-v0.307.1-linux-x86_64.run	164.1 MB	83cc7a057b72a6be…
Windows (.zip)	pax-helios-v0.307.1-windows-x86_64.zip	158.9 MB	e85761a65ac0d2ee…

What changed

Planet rings now block the stars behind them. Bright stars used to shine straight through a ring, and a ring in its planet's shadow looked as if it were not there. Now the dense bands hide the stars behind them, the middle bands dim them, and only the faint inner ring lets them through. A ring in shadow shows as a dark band across the sky. Lit rings look as bright as before.

v0.307.0 2026-10-12 Linux (.run)Windows (.zip) The Mule has a berth. It is too long for the hangar bay's landing pads, so when it parks itself in an Anchorage (logging in docked with no saved spot) it now sits on a marked berth on the deck beside pad A, nose to the bay mouth, with its ramp flat on the deck. A Mule you fly in yourself still stays wherever you set it down.

Platform	File	Size	SHA-256
Linux (.run)	pax-helios-v0.307.0-linux-x86_64.run	164.1 MB	adb5cce8bfe4c925…
Windows (.zip)	pax-helios-v0.307.0-windows-x86_64.zip	158.9 MB	d93d873abc14947b…

What changed

The Mule has a berth. It is too long for the hangar bay's landing pads, so when it parks itself in an Anchorage (logging in docked with no saved spot) it now sits on a marked berth on the deck beside pad A, nose to the bay mouth, with its ramp flat on the deck. A Mule you fly in yourself still stays wherever you set it down.
Flying the Mule now feels like flying a 21 m ship. Its nose and tail no longer slide into a station's walls, and its booms meet the walls too.
The Mule's cockpit view sits in its cab, where the pilot does. It used to look out from the middle of the hold, so the nose was 8 m further ahead than it seemed.
The Mule's dorsal tanks are orange-brown, as designed.
Other pilots' ships are solid when you are on foot: you walk round them, not through them. A parked Mule is closed with its ramp up; you cannot board someone else's ship yet.
Another pilot who steps out of their ship is no longer also drawn sitting in its seat.

v0.306.0 2026-10-12 Linux (.run)Windows (.zip) Planet rings look like rings. About a third of gas giants have them, and each was a solid flat disc in the planet's colour, cut straight through the planet and always lying level. Now a ring stands clear of the planet with open space between, is made of two to four bands of different density with gaps you can see the planet and the stars through, and carries fine ringlets inside each band.

Platform	File	Size	SHA-256
Linux (.run)	pax-helios-v0.306.0-linux-x86_64.run	164.1 MB	87ac932acbc1209c…
Windows (.zip)	pax-helios-v0.306.0-windows-x86_64.zip	158.9 MB	52f5650b071b7ecd…

What changed

Planet rings look like rings. About a third of gas giants have them, and each was a solid flat disc in the planet's colour, cut straight through the planet and always lying level. Now a ring stands clear of the planet with open space between, is made of two to four bands of different density with gaps you can see the planet and the stars through, and carries fine ringlets inside each band.
A ring lies square to its planet's tilt, so a tilted world's rings are tilted with it.
The planet's shadow falls across its rings. Seen from the unlit side, a ring is dimmer but still shows.
Most rings are bright ice; some are darker and dustier. Every pilot sees the same rings on the same planet, and renaming a planet keeps them.
Rings are only scenery: you can fly through them.

v0.305.2 2026-10-12 Linux (.run)Windows (.zip) The copilot speaks on Windows. The Windows download has never included the voice engine, so on Windows the copilot only ever showed text. It now speaks with the same voice as on Linux. Nothing to install: the files it needs come in the zip, and your launcher's update brings them.

Platform	File	Size	SHA-256
Linux (.run)	pax-helios-v0.305.2-linux-x86_64.run	164.0 MB	0e623736f89743d5…
Windows (.zip)	pax-helios-v0.305.2-windows-x86_64.zip	158.9 MB	5fde538551977cb9…

What changed

The copilot speaks on Windows. The Windows download has never included the voice engine, so on Windows the copilot only ever showed text. It now speaks with the same voice as on Linux. Nothing to install: the files it needs come in the zip, and your launcher's update brings them.

v0.305.1 2026-10-12 Linux (.run)Windows (.zip) The Windows download is a little smaller and tidier. Every Windows zip until now carried a stray `build` folder of test screenshots from the release checks run before packaging. That folder is gone; the game is unchanged.

Platform	File	Size	SHA-256
Linux (.run)	pax-helios-v0.305.1-linux-x86_64.run	164.0 MB	2ca405544109f70e…
Windows (.zip)	pax-helios-v0.305.1-windows-x86_64.zip	152.8 MB	792fc2b3eb9fbd28…

What changed

The Windows download is a little smaller and tidier. Every Windows zip until now carried a stray `build` folder of test screenshots from the release checks run before packaging. That folder is gone; the game is unchanged.
Windows downloads for v0.293.0 to v0.304.0, which shipped for Linux only while the Windows build machine was offline, are now on the portal too.

v0.305.0 2026-10-11 Linux (.run)Windows (.zip) The Mule is now a ship you can walk through. Step out and you stand up in the cab behind the pilot's seat. Take the stair down past the bunks and the galley, then through the engine room and the hold with its six cargo racks. The stern ramp lowers while you're on foot and you walk down it. Press Interact at the seat to sit back down.

Platform	File	Size	SHA-256
Linux (.run)	pax-helios-v0.305.0-linux-x86_64.run	164.0 MB	1e6b004845932266…
Windows (.zip)	pax-helios-v0.305.0-windows-x86_64.zip	153.2 MB	036aee17766fede9…

What changed

The Mule is now a ship you can walk through. Step out and you stand up in the cab behind the pilot's seat. Take the stair down past the bunks and the galley, then through the engine room and the hold with its six cargo racks. The stern ramp lowers while you're on foot and you walk down it. Press Interact at the seat to sit back down.
To fit people inside, the Mule is much bigger: about 21 m long, up from 9. It has a raised cab with windows, a stern ramp, and freshly painted plating. It flies exactly as it did; only its size changed.
The ramp reaches down to whatever floor is under it. A Mule parked on a bay pad hangs over the pad's edge, so there the ramp is steeper.
The doors inside the Mule are yours alone. They start open, and Interact opens or closes them.

v0.304.0 2026-10-11 Linux (.run)Windows (.zip) The doors in every Anchorage's terminal, walkway and concourse now work like Helios Prime's: they start shut, you press Interact to open or close one, and everyone in the system sees it move. A door left open stays open for the next pilot through.

Platform	File	Size	SHA-256
Linux (.run)	pax-helios-v0.304.0-linux-x86_64.run	164.4 MB	8aca689d07afc45d…
Windows (.zip)	pax-helios-v0.304.0-windows-x86_64.zip	153.5 MB	3d4f972e2b0b91e3…

What changed

The doors in every Anchorage's terminal, walkway and concourse now work like Helios Prime's: they start shut, you press Interact to open or close one, and everyone in the system sees it move. A door left open stays open for the next pilot through.

v0.303.0 2026-10-11 Linux (.run)Windows (.zip) The consoles in every Anchorage's terminal and concourse now work: walk up to one while your ship is docked and press Interact to open the dock services, as at Helios Prime. So does the console on an Orbital's mezzanine.

Platform	File	Size	SHA-256
Linux (.run)	pax-helios-v0.303.0-linux-x86_64.run	164.3 MB	dfe71ddc557f1e45…
Windows (.zip)	pax-helios-v0.303.0-windows-x86_64.zip	153.5 MB	a33b0eb5a1fa67a9…

What changed

The consoles in every Anchorage's terminal and concourse now work: walk up to one while your ship is docked and press Interact to open the dock services, as at Helios Prime. So does the console on an Orbital's mezzanine.

v0.302.0 2026-10-11 Linux (.run)Windows (.zip) Every Anchorage now has Helios Prime's outside fittings too: the trusses under the landing platform, antenna masts and radiators on it, solar wings, thruster pods, docking collars and a sensor dish. You see them as you fly in, not only once you land.

Platform	File	Size	SHA-256
Linux (.run)	pax-helios-v0.302.0-linux-x86_64.run	164.4 MB	42e2836c94b5f6a9…
Windows (.zip)	pax-helios-v0.302.0-windows-x86_64.zip	153.5 MB	0be6387336af0484…

What changed

Every Anchorage now has Helios Prime's outside fittings too: the trusses under the landing platform, antenna masts and radiators on it, solar wings, thruster pods, docking collars and a sensor dish. You see them as you fly in, not only once you land.
Helios Prime is unchanged.

v0.301.0 2026-10-11 Linux (.run)Windows (.zip) Every Anchorage is now furnished the way Helios Prime is. Its hangar bay has the terminal (a corridor, a junction, a store and an operations room), railings round the pads, the grated apron, fuel tanks, crates, shelving and floodlights; the walkway from the terminal up to the landing platform; and on the platform, the concourse's two wings (crew quarters, galley and mess, sick bay).

Platform	File	Size	SHA-256
Linux (.run)	pax-helios-v0.301.0-linux-x86_64.run	164.3 MB	e5b8212fec2aedff…
Windows (.zip)	pax-helios-v0.301.0-windows-x86_64.zip	153.5 MB	25e60fae77e7fae7…

What changed

Every Anchorage is now furnished the way Helios Prime is. Its hangar bay has the terminal (a corridor, a junction, a store and an operations room), railings round the pads, the grated apron, fuel tanks, crates, shelving and floodlights; the walkway from the terminal up to the landing platform; and on the platform, the concourse's two wings (crew quarters, galley and mess, sick bay).
Their doors stand open: you can walk straight through. Consoles there are not usable yet.
Helios Prime is unchanged.

v0.300.0 2026-10-11 Linux (.run)Windows (.zip) Every Anchorage now has the walkway Helios Prime has: from a door just inside the back wall of the hangar bay, a corridor into the station's core, a long stairwell up through it, and a skybridge out to a door on the landing platform. Land in the bay of any Anchorage, step out, and you can walk up to its platform, and back down.

Platform	File	Size	SHA-256
Linux (.run)	pax-helios-v0.300.0-linux-x86_64.run	164.3 MB	7bfbb46afa2bbabe…
Windows (.zip)	pax-helios-v0.300.0-windows-x86_64.zip	153.5 MB	f6201ff02e2c74aa…

What changed

Every Anchorage now has the walkway Helios Prime has: from a door just inside the back wall of the hangar bay, a corridor into the station's core, a long stairwell up through it, and a skybridge out to a door on the landing platform. Land in the bay of any Anchorage, step out, and you can walk up to its platform, and back down.
Helios Prime is unchanged.

v0.299.0 2026-10-11 Linux (.run)Windows (.zip) The things you find in a facility dive have real shapes. Doors were plain grey slabs; they are now blast doors with a frame, ribs, rivets, a hazard band and a lock at the centre that glows in its key's colour (the coloured outline on a locked door is still there). Keys, which were coloured balls, are keycards. The laser upgrade is a glowing emitter, the shield a hex cell with a cross, and the EXIT a green ring with a glowing core instead of a spinning cube.

Platform	File	Size	SHA-256
Linux (.run)	pax-helios-v0.299.0-linux-x86_64.run	164.3 MB	60497452679dc1e0…
Windows (.zip)	pax-helios-v0.299.0-windows-x86_64.zip	153.5 MB	698e17615b615639…

What changed

The things you find in a facility dive have real shapes. Doors were plain grey slabs; they are now blast doors with a frame, ribs, rivets, a hazard band and a lock at the centre that glows in its key's colour (the coloured outline on a locked door is still there). Keys, which were coloured balls, are keycards. The laser upgrade is a glowing emitter, the shield a hex cell with a cross, and the EXIT a green ring with a glowing core instead of a spinning cube.
They still glow in the same colours and behave exactly as before.

v0.298.0 2026-10-11 Linux (.run)Windows (.zip) Asteroids tumble. Every rock in a belt or on a race course now turns slowly about its own axis, from about once a minute for the small ones to once every twenty minutes for the biggest. Their shapes, sizes and places are unchanged.

Platform	File	Size	SHA-256
Linux (.run)	pax-helios-v0.298.0-linux-x86_64.run	164.3 MB	a008af8759f5fddb…
Windows (.zip)	pax-helios-v0.298.0-windows-x86_64.zip	153.4 MB	684b0fdf36859b18…

What changed

Asteroids tumble. Every rock in a belt or on a race course now turns slowly about its own axis, from about once a minute for the small ones to once every twenty minutes for the biggest. Their shapes, sizes and places are unchanged.

v0.297.0 2026-10-11 Linux (.run)Windows (.zip) Asteroids look like asteroids. The rocks in every asteroid belt, and on race courses, were plain grey balls. Up close each one is now a real rock: lumpy, cratered and pitted, one of six shapes, turned its own way and shaded its own tone. From far away, where a rock is only a few pixels, it is still drawn as a simple dot to keep the frame rate up.

Platform	File	Size	SHA-256
Linux (.run)	pax-helios-v0.297.0-linux-x86_64.run	164.3 MB	5d8f72df808cf37b…
Windows (.zip)	pax-helios-v0.297.0-windows-x86_64.zip	153.4 MB	bab70cc0c59bac3f…

What changed

Asteroids look like asteroids. The rocks in every asteroid belt, and on race courses, were plain grey balls. Up close each one is now a real rock: lumpy, cratered and pitted, one of six shapes, turned its own way and shaded its own tone. From far away, where a rock is only a few pixels, it is still drawn as a simple dot to keep the frame rate up.
Every belt keeps its rocks exactly where they were, at the same sizes.
Bumping into a rock now happens at its surface rather than at an invisible ball around it.

v0.296.0 2026-10-11 Linux (.run)Windows (.zip) At every Anchorage except Helios Prime, the railing round the landing platform had a gap where Helios Prime's skybridge joins it. There it led to nothing, a drop off the platform. Those Anchorages now have a railing section across the gap. Helios Prime's skybridge door is unchanged.

Platform	File	Size	SHA-256
Linux (.run)	pax-helios-v0.296.0-linux-x86_64.run	161.3 MB	d1c252b13eb9ef71…
Windows (.zip)	pax-helios-v0.296.0-windows-x86_64.zip	150.5 MB	bf4ebc7af94c8de3…

What changed

At every Anchorage except Helios Prime, the railing round the landing platform had a gap where Helios Prime's skybridge joins it. There it led to nothing, a drop off the platform. Those Anchorages now have a railing section across the gap. Helios Prime's skybridge door is unchanged.

v0.295.0 2026-10-11 Linux (.run)Windows (.zip) Every Anchorage except Helios Prime had a doorway in the back wall of its hangar bay that led into an empty tunnel. It ended in a drop into an unfinished stairwell you could not climb out of. Those Anchorages now have a solid wall there. The holes in their outer hull where the walkway passes through (visible from the landing platform) are closed too.

Platform	File	Size	SHA-256
Linux (.run)	pax-helios-v0.295.0-linux-x86_64.run	161.3 MB	503283e768bca957…
Windows (.zip)	pax-helios-v0.295.0-windows-x86_64.zip	150.5 MB	3576951813448a4f…

What changed

Every Anchorage except Helios Prime had a doorway in the back wall of its hangar bay that led into an empty tunnel. It ended in a drop into an unfinished stairwell you could not climb out of. Those Anchorages now have a solid wall there. The holes in their outer hull where the walkway passes through (visible from the landing platform) are closed too.
Helios Prime is unchanged: its walkway from the bay up to the landing platform is still open.

v0.294.0 2026-10-11 Linux (.run)Windows (.zip) Planet landing pads have a ramp all the way round. A pad's deck stood 1.5 m above the ground at its edge (more with the raised rim it had), so if you walked off a pad to look around you could not walk back on, and F7 was the only way back to your ship. A plated slope now runs from the deck's edge down to the ground on every side, gentle enough to walk up on even the smallest pads.

Platform	File	Size	SHA-256
Linux (.run)	pax-helios-v0.294.0-linux-x86_64.run	161.3 MB	47daad247464f4bc…
Windows (.zip)	pax-helios-v0.294.0-windows-x86_64.zip	150.5 MB	6631fe011b9de490…

What changed

Planet landing pads have a ramp all the way round. A pad's deck stood 1.5 m above the ground at its edge (more with the raised rim it had), so if you walked off a pad to look around you could not walk back on, and F7 was the only way back to your ship. A plated slope now runs from the deck's edge down to the ground on every side, gentle enough to walk up on even the smallest pads.
The raised rim is gone; the green edge ring and edge lights now lie flush with the deck, like the landing markings.
A ship set down beside a pad rests on the ramp where it sits on it, instead of sinking into it.

v0.293.0 2026-10-11 Linux (.run)Windows (.zip) The Anchorage's landing pads have steps. Each pad stood almost a metre above the deck: you could step off it but not climb back on, so the only way back to a ship parked on it was F7. Now each pad has two steps all the way round, with lit edges, so you can walk back up from any side. They are part of the station, so every Anchorage has them, in the hangar bay and on the landing platform.

Platform	File	Size	SHA-256
Linux (.run)	pax-helios-v0.293.0-linux-x86_64.run	161.3 MB	dea6fd24ed36add8…
Windows (.zip)	pax-helios-v0.293.0-windows-x86_64.zip	150.5 MB	c63c5aaf322f84d0…

What changed

The Anchorage's landing pads have steps. Each pad stood almost a metre above the deck: you could step off it but not climb back on, so the only way back to a ship parked on it was F7. Now each pad has two steps all the way round, with lit edges, so you can walk back up from any side. They are part of the station, so every Anchorage has them, in the hangar bay and on the landing platform.
The platform pads' surface is where it looks: you and a parked ship used to stand 10 cm above the visible top.

v0.292.1 2026-10-11 Linux (.run)Windows (.zip) Railings stop you. Every railing in the game (round the hangar bay's pads, along the Orbital's mezzanine) was solid only at its three base plates, so you could walk straight through it. They are solid now, and too tall to jump over. The bay's pad railings come in 2 m sections with gaps between them: walk out through a gap.

Platform	File	Size	SHA-256
Linux (.run)	pax-helios-v0.292.1-linux-x86_64.run	161.3 MB	056a6655f097ce36…
Windows (.zip)	pax-helios-v0.292.1-windows-x86_64.zip	150.5 MB	33287bb8a43c10f1…

What changed

Railings stop you. Every railing in the game (round the hangar bay's pads, along the Orbital's mezzanine) was solid only at its three base plates, so you could walk straight through it. They are solid now, and too tall to jump over. The bay's pad railings come in 2 m sections with gaps between them: walk out through a gap.
The Anchorage's landing platform has railings round all four edges, open only at the skybridge door. This is part of the station itself, so every Anchorage in every system has them.
The Anchorage's hangar deck now reaches its walls. It used to stop 3-4 m short, leaving a trench along three walls you could fall into and never climb out of (and the tanks and shelving there were standing on nothing). At the open mouth there is no rail where ships fly in: a lit kerb marks the edge and an invisible barrier stops you on foot.
The Orbital's landing deck has railings on its three open edges.
Ships don't touch any of these: a rail or edge barrier only stops someone on foot.
If you do fall on a station, the safety net puts you back where you were standing a moment before ("CAUGHT BY THE SAFETY NET"), and the same goes for a big drop onto a ledge. Before, F7 (back aboard) was the only way out.
You can now walk from the landing platform down the spine stairs to the hangar bay. The safety net used to sit partway down the stairwell when you started on the platform and held you there.

v0.291.0 2026-10-11 Linux (.run)Windows (.zip) Stairs are smooth to walk up, in first and third person. Each stair step lifted the camera 20 cm in an instant, a dozen times a second; the view now glides with your height instead (your footing is unchanged).

Platform	File	Size	SHA-256
Linux (.run)	pax-helios-v0.291.0-linux-x86_64.run	161.1 MB	cce63e8f5a2cc066…
Windows (.zip)	pax-helios-v0.291.0-windows-x86_64.zip	150.2 MB	094893dc14d7dba0…

What changed

Stairs are smooth to walk up, in first and third person. Each stair step lifted the camera 20 cm in an instant, a dozen times a second; the view now glides with your height instead (your footing is unchanged).
In third person in a narrow stairwell the camera no longer pumps in and out past each step of the ceiling. It still pulls in at once so it never goes through a wall, but eases back out.
The last see-through corner at the foot of the Anchorage stairs is closed (station data, already live): the side walls now reach the roof over the bottom step.

v0.290.0 2026-10-11 Linux (.run)Windows (.zip) No more thin dark line where a corridor's ceiling meets its walls. Every kit corridor piece (straight, T, corner, crossing, dead end) had a hair gap along both top corners that showed space or the hangar bay behind. The walls now rise flush with the top of the ceiling, closing it in every corridor at once, on the Anchorage and in the Orbitals.

Platform	File	Size	SHA-256
Linux (.run)	pax-helios-v0.290.0-linux-x86_64.run	161.1 MB	b8fec15320afadbf…
Windows (.zip)	pax-helios-v0.290.0-windows-x86_64.zip	150.2 MB	4f98607ef7e7fc62…

What changed

No more thin dark line where a corridor's ceiling meets its walls. Every kit corridor piece (straight, T, corner, crossing, dead end) had a hair gap along both top corners that showed space or the hangar bay behind. The walls now rise flush with the top of the ceiling, closing it in every corridor at once, on the Anchorage and in the Orbitals.
Climbing stairs beside a wall is smooth. Pressed against a stairwell wall, the walker kept popping up half a metre onto the stair's side rail and being pushed off again, which looked like jitter. Narrow edges (stair rails, wall trim) no longer count as steps.
New tool `scripts/blender/station_room_scan.py`: finds any crack you can see through a room's walls, floor or ceiling, into space or into the rest of the station. The Anchorage's bay terminal showed 132 such gaps; the fixes for the rest of them are a station data update.
New tests: the stairwell climbed down the middle and against each wall, and every Anchorage door placed shut in its frame.

v0.289.0 2026-10-10 Linux (.run)Windows (.zip) The Orbitals no longer let you see space where walls meet. Every edge of the habitat (floor to wall, wall to wall, wall to roof) had a thin gap where two hull plates met edge to edge. The walls now stand a little inside the floor and roof, and neighbouring plates overlap, so every corner is closed.

Platform	File	Size	SHA-256
Linux (.run)	pax-helios-v0.289.0-linux-x86_64.run	161.1 MB	9a8b55860fb5ed87…
Windows (.zip)	pax-helios-v0.289.0-windows-x86_64.zip	150.2 MB	33f6408fae9da737…

What changed

The Orbitals no longer let you see space where walls meet. Every edge of the habitat (floor to wall, wall to wall, wall to roof) had a thin gap where two hull plates met edge to edge. The walls now stand a little inside the floor and roof, and neighbouring plates overlap, so every corner is closed.
The shimmering surfaces inside and around the Orbitals are gone: the entrance corridor's floor no longer sits exactly on the habitat floor, the stairs' flights, the crates and the corridor's lights no longer share surfaces, and the spine's trusses no longer overlap face on face.
New tools: `scripts/blender/outpost_scan.py` checks an Orbital for see-through gaps and shimmering surfaces (it found 317 gaps and 166 shimmering pairs before, none after), and `scripts/blender/outpost_renders.py` renders its corners from inside with space painted magenta. A new test walks the Orbital from the landing deck through the door, up the stairs and onto the mezzanine.

v0.287.0 2026-10-10 Linux (.run)Windows (.zip) No more falling through the skybridge floor. On foot, the game only collided you with props within 80 m of your SHIP. Walking from a ship parked on the hangar bay's pad up to the skybridge took you past that about nine panels beyond the stairs, the corridor's floor stopped existing for you, and the station's own floor ends there. Props are now collided within 80 m of you.

Platform	File	Size	SHA-256
Linux (.run)	pax-helios-v0.287.0-linux-x86_64.run	161.1 MB	ee1256041fde3696…
Windows (.zip)	pax-helios-v0.287.0-windows-x86_64.zip	150.2 MB	eaad2913f5076081…

What changed

No more falling through the skybridge floor. On foot, the game only collided you with props within 80 m of your SHIP. Walking from a ship parked on the hangar bay's pad up to the skybridge took you past that about nine panels beyond the stairs, the corridor's floor stopped existing for you, and the station's own floor ends there. Props are now collided within 80 m of you.
The per-frame on-foot collision is one procedure now (walk_world_resolve), and the station walk test drives that very code from the ship on the bay pad, with the frame's scratch freed every step as the game does. With the old cull put back it fails at the spot you fell.

v0.286.0 2026-10-09 Linux (.run)Windows (.zip) A docked login comes back in the station, not in empty space. A docked ship holds a pin to its station, and the pin was taken on the first frame after login — before the saved spot had resolved, while the ship still sat at the system's default spawn 2.5 km out. Every frame after that it dragged the ship back out there, and its next position report saved that wrong spot as the dock. Now the pin is re-taken when the saved spot resolves; a docked spot more than 1.5 km from the station is never believed (client and server, v20261009.0.4), and a ship with no usable spot parks on the hangar bay's first pad (an Orbital: off its docking collar).

Platform	File	Size	SHA-256
Linux (.run)	pax-helios-v0.286.0-linux-x86_64.run	161.1 MB	fa1c4db38aeee849…
Windows (.zip)	pax-helios-v0.286.0-windows-x86_64.zip	150.2 MB	76c7087df90db65a…

What changed

A docked login comes back in the station, not in empty space. A docked ship holds a pin to its station, and the pin was taken on the first frame after login — before the saved spot had resolved, while the ship still sat at the system's default spawn 2.5 km out. Every frame after that it dragged the ship back out there, and its next position report saved that wrong spot as the dock. Now the pin is re-taken when the saved spot resolves; a docked spot more than 1.5 km from the station is never believed (client and server, v20261009.0.4), and a ship with no usable spot parks on the hangar bay's first pad (an Orbital: off its docking collar).
A saved on-foot spot more than 60 m from the hull is not believed either; and when the ship had to be re-parked you start aboard. The last login found you 97 m from the ship, walking on the invisible plane under it.

v0.285.0 2026-10-09 Linux (.run)Windows (.zip) The Anchorage's spine, from the hangar bay to the platform, is walkable end to end (pilot's walk, 2026-10-09):

Platform	File	Size	SHA-256
Linux (.run)	pax-helios-v0.285.0-linux-x86_64.run	161.1 MB	ad70eeac0e9d266f…
Windows (.zip)	pax-helios-v0.285.0-windows-x86_64.zip	150.2 MB	d883eed59a34a624…

What changed

The Anchorage's spine, from the hangar bay to the platform, is walkable end to end (pilot's walk, 2026-10-09):
**The wall you could walk through is gone.** The corridor runs through the station's spindle, whose skin still crossed it just past the bay's back wall (and again where the skybridge leaves it, seen from the platform side). Those patches of skin, and two of the bay neck's faces across the stairwell, are opened in the model; a route check now finds nothing standing across the walkway.
**The box blocking the path is gone.** It was a kit airlock, a solid 3.2 m block placed before the skybridge was laid straight through it — the same box from both ends. Squeezing past it is also what dropped you through the floor: it could push you out through the corridor's side wall, and outside the tube there is no floor across the gap between the spindle and the platform.
**The jittering textures are fixed on this route.** The stairwell's wall panels overlapped their neighbours in exactly the same plane all the way up, and so did the stair pieces' sides, a floor tile, a ceiling tile and the bay and platform decks under every kit floor; two textures in one plane flicker. Each is now 1.2 cm (2 cm for the decks) clear of the other.
The hangar bay's interior pads collide (v0.283.0) and the platform's are octagons (v0.282.0). A new test walks the real walker code from the bay floor to the platform against the station's collision and the live layout, and fails if she is blocked or falls; it fails on the old layout at the airlock.

v0.284.0 2026-10-09 Linux (.run)Windows (.zip) The launcher's version number follows an update. After it installed a new build in place it kept showing the old number until restarted; it now shows the version of the game on disk, which is what PLAY opens. (The launcher's own program still swaps to the new one at its next start, silently, as before.) This takes effect from the update after this one: the launcher doing this update is still the old code.

Platform	File	Size	SHA-256
Linux (.run)	pax-helios-v0.284.0-linux-x86_64.run	161.1 MB	f2f5e2b6752f28e9…
Windows (.zip)	pax-helios-v0.284.0-windows-x86_64.zip	150.2 MB	fa995abff47878b2…

What changed

The launcher's version number follows an update. After it installed a new build in place it kept showing the old number until restarted; it now shows the version of the game on disk, which is what PLAY opens. (The launcher's own program still swaps to the new one at its next start, silently, as before.) This takes effect from the update after this one: the launcher doing this update is still the old code.

v0.283.0 2026-10-09 Linux (.run)Windows (.zip) From the pilot's walk through the Anchorage (2026-10-09):

Platform	File	Size	SHA-256
Linux (.run)	pax-helios-v0.283.0-linux-x86_64.run	161.1 MB	c1c4c90b6fc8e3d9…
Windows (.zip)	pax-helios-v0.283.0-windows-x86_64.zip	150.2 MB	4da9e22b8161b73d…

What changed

From the pilot's walk through the Anchorage (2026-10-09):
Logging out docked at a station brings you back in its bay. The station's frame and your place in it are now saved and restored (server v20261009.0.1); before, a docked ship woke at the system's default spawn, flagged docked, with the pilot on foot beside it in open space.
The hangar bay's two landing pads have collision now, as octagons: a ship set down on one stands on it, and so does the walker, instead of both sinking into the slab.

v0.282.0 2026-10-08 Linux (.run)Windows (.zip) The Anchorage's landing pads collide as the octagons they are. Each had a square collision box, which left up to four metres of invisible pad past every corner: extra steps to get off the edge, and a jump from a few metres away that landed at pad height. Four strips per pad now make the octagon exactly.

Platform	File	Size	SHA-256
Linux (.run)	pax-helios-v0.282.0-linux-x86_64.run	161.1 MB	75342fc4becdd35f…
Windows (.zip)	pax-helios-v0.282.0-windows-x86_64.zip	150.2 MB	daf685f4d592786d…

What changed

The Anchorage's landing pads collide as the octagons they are. Each had a square collision box, which left up to four metres of invisible pad past every corner: extra steps to get off the edge, and a jump from a few metres away that landed at pad height. Four strips per pad now make the octagon exactly.

v0.281.0 2026-10-08 Linux (.run)Windows (.zip) From the pilot's walk at Helios Prime Anchorage (2026-10-08):

Platform	File	Size	SHA-256
Linux (.run)	pax-helios-v0.281.0-linux-x86_64.run	161.1 MB	c23e8ee09260e4f7…
Windows (.zip)	pax-helios-v0.281.0-windows-x86_64.zip	150.2 MB	b3d660127571e967…

What changed

From the pilot's walk at Helios Prime Anchorage (2026-10-08):
Stepping off a station's landing pad, or off a crate, is a drop now. A docked walker stood on an invisible plane fixed at the height she stepped out at, so she walked off the pad's edge on air and never came down from a box. The plane is now a safety net well under the station's real decks; the decks and props carry her.
The pause menu pauses her: while it is up the mouse and the keys are the menu's, and she no longer wanders off behind it.

v0.280.0 2026-10-08 Linux (.run)Windows (.zip) A memory bug in the model caches, found by the sanitizer while chasing the exit crash. Both caches kept their models in a growable array and handed out pointers into it, so a model loaded in the middle of a frame could move every model already queued for drawing, and the frame then drew from freed memory. Entries now live on their own and never move. This is the kind of damage that shows up later as the heap-corruption abort on exit; whether it is the whole story the next session on shake will tell.

Platform	File	Size	SHA-256
Linux (.run)	pax-helios-v0.280.0-linux-x86_64.run	161.1 MB	dc798d79d2c8c0a3…
Windows (.zip)	pax-helios-v0.280.0-windows-x86_64.zip	150.2 MB	a2430ccf0649432b…

What changed

A memory bug in the model caches, found by the sanitizer while chasing the exit crash. Both caches kept their models in a growable array and handed out pointers into it, so a model loaded in the middle of a frame could move every model already queued for drawing, and the frame then drew from freed memory. Entries now live on their own and never move. This is the kind of damage that shows up later as the heap-corruption abort on exit; whether it is the whole story the next session on shake will tell.
The skinned figures (v0.279.0) followed the same pointer across frames; they now follow the model by name.

v0.279.0 2026-10-08 Linux (.run)Windows (.zip) The pilot moves. helios now skins rigged characters (on the CPU: the rig's joints are posed by the clip sampler, every vertex blended by its four joints, and the result uploaded as the figure's own mesh each frame — no shader changed). One rig, the Mixamo pilot with her clips, replaces the baked single-pose figures everywhere a body moves:

Platform	File	Size	SHA-256
Linux (.run)	pax-helios-v0.279.0-linux-x86_64.run	161.1 MB	6dec77f4f47cedc8…
Windows (.zip)	pax-helios-v0.279.0-windows-x86_64.zip	150.2 MB	a3a1bb244972e69e…

What changed

The pilot moves. helios now skins rigged characters (on the CPU: the rig's joints are posed by the clip sampler, every vertex blended by its four joints, and the result uploaded as the figure's own mesh each frame — no shader changed). One rig, the Mixamo pilot with her clips, replaces the baked single-pose figures everywhere a body moves:
on foot in third person she stands, walks, and runs with SHIFT;
other pilots on foot walk while they report walking;
the pilot in every cockpit sits on the sit clip instead of a frozen pose. The baked figures remain as the architect's props and as the fallback while the rig loads.
New headless gate `--gate=figure`: standing matches the baked standing figure, mid-stride does not, and her feet stay on the deck in both.

v0.278.0 2026-10-08 Linux (.run) On a pad the walker no longer drifts off the deck. Her frame was set once when she stepped out and never followed the world's spin, so a few minutes later the deck had tilted away from her: floating on one side of the pad, sinking on the other, worse with distance from the centre. The frame now turns with the pad every frame, as it already did on open ground.

Platform	File	Size	SHA-256
Linux (.run)	pax-helios-v0.278.0-linux-x86_64.run	157.3 MB	a78d23d5d4aee102…

What changed

On a pad the walker no longer drifts off the deck. Her frame was set once when she stepped out and never followed the world's spin, so a few minutes later the deck had tilted away from her: floating on one side of the pad, sinking on the other, worse with distance from the centre. The frame now turns with the pad every frame, as it already did on open ground.

v0.277.0 2026-10-08 Linux (.run)Windows (.zip) From the pilot's second walk (2026-10-08):

Platform	File	Size	SHA-256
Linux (.run)	pax-helios-v0.277.0-linux-x86_64.run	157.3 MB	7f6b9a85e1382d83…
Windows (.zip)	pax-helios-v0.277.0-windows-x86_64.zip	146.4 MB	2cf71ea603adc0f9…

What changed

From the pilot's second walk (2026-10-08):
The yard keeps your hulls. Every hull you have paid for stays yours, and swapping back into one is free: the shipyard shows SELECT instead of BUY for a hull you own, and buying one you own is the same free swap. (Server v20261008.0.1.)
Set down on a planet pad, you step out onto the deck, not into the ground beneath it.
On a station deck the ship rests on its feet, not on a 2 m sphere that left a Dart 0.7 m up.
Three times the lamps lit at once (48), so the far end of a station interior is lit before you walk up to it.
Flight assist lets the ship drop faster toward the ground: the safe sink is now the height over 8 s, not 15.

v0.276.0 2026-10-07 Linux (.run)Windows (.zip) From the pilot's first walk on v0.275.0 (2026-10-07):

Platform	File	Size	SHA-256
Linux (.run)	pax-helios-v0.276.0-linux-x86_64.run	157.3 MB	f7a9defa2eb7fb59…
Windows (.zip)	pax-helios-v0.276.0-windows-x86_64.zip	146.4 MB	037725267167be84…

What changed

From the pilot's first walk on v0.275.0 (2026-10-07):
A landed ship settles on its feet. Each landing-gear pad now rests on the ground under IT, and at touchdown the hull tilts onto the slope so every foot touches — a level hull on a hillside had left the downhill foot in the air. A saved landed pose settles the same way at login.
On foot in first person the cockpit and its panels are no longer drawn at the ship; looking back at it showed them hanging in the air.
Footsteps are a short soft scuff, quieter, so a stride no longer reads as the hull's clunk.
Docking at a station: a hull that has set down and sits still on the deck counts as resting on it. Before, "DOCK: set down on a deck or a pad first" came back half a second after touchdown, because a hull a hair proud of the deck never touched it again.
Leaving a world with air, the ENTRY forecast and the "steepen" verdict stay off: a ship climbing out has no entry to steepen.
Every toast the pilot sees is now written to the log file, for triage.

v0.275.0 2026-10-07 Linux (.run)Windows (.zip) Shadows near the ground are no longer black. Close to a world the ambient light gains the ground's own colour by day (its bounce) and, under an atmosphere, the sky's tint by its density, with a twilight floor at night; on foot a small fill sits under all of that, since a person on a deck is lit by the deck. A figure in a station's shadow and an outpost's buildings at dusk now read as shapes, not cut-outs. Open space between the worlds keeps its locked fill exactly. Together with v0.272.0 to v0.274.0 (all in this build): a landed ship stands on its gear instead of 8 m up; the third-person camera on foot stays out of walls and floors; on foot the flight display is the walker's, with the ship's numbers and the debug readouts off.

Platform	File	Size	SHA-256
Linux (.run)	pax-helios-v0.275.0-linux-x86_64.run	157.3 MB	c77807d0a94c5cea…
Windows (.zip)	pax-helios-v0.275.0-windows-x86_64.zip	146.4 MB	0d31ea38b44312e3…

What changed

Shadows near the ground are no longer black. Close to a world the ambient light gains the ground's own colour by day (its bounce) and, under an atmosphere, the sky's tint by its density, with a twilight floor at night; on foot a small fill sits under all of that, since a person on a deck is lit by the deck. A figure in a station's shadow and an outpost's buildings at dusk now read as shapes, not cut-outs. Open space between the worlds keeps its locked fill exactly. Together with v0.272.0 to v0.274.0 (all in this build): a landed ship stands on its gear instead of 8 m up; the third-person camera on foot stays out of walls and floors; on foot the flight display is the walker's, with the ship's numbers and the debug readouts off.

v0.271.0 2026-10-07 Linux (.run)Windows (.zip) Quitting now logs each shutdown step by name, and a crash writes one last line naming the signal and the step it was in — for the exit hang some pilots have seen, so the next one says where it happened.

Platform	File	Size	SHA-256
Linux (.run)	pax-helios-v0.271.0-linux-x86_64.run	157.3 MB	70af9f7cdbab89be…
Windows (.zip)	pax-helios-v0.271.0-windows-x86_64.zip	146.4 MB	ef42977151210833…

What changed

Quitting now logs each shutdown step by name, and a crash writes one last line naming the signal and the step it was in — for the exit hang some pilots have seen, so the next one says where it happened.

v0.270.0 2026-10-07 Linux (.run)Windows (.zip) Fixed a memory leak that grew the game for as long as it ran — about 24 MB a minute sitting still, much more while flying over a planet — until the machine ran out of memory and the kernel killed it. The game now sits at a constant size once the scene is built.

Platform	File	Size	SHA-256
Linux (.run)	pax-helios-v0.270.0-linux-x86_64.run	157.3 MB	2a8689c60196ab6e…
Windows (.zip)	pax-helios-v0.270.0-windows-x86_64.zip	146.4 MB	56e6ee93d156b99c…

What changed

Fixed a memory leak that grew the game for as long as it ran — about 24 MB a minute sitting still, much more while flying over a planet — until the machine ran out of memory and the kernel killed it. The game now sits at a constant size once the scene is built.
The game writes a log file: `~/.local/share/pax-helios/pax-helios.log` (Windows: `%LOCALAPPDATA%\pax-helios\`), with the previous run kept beside it. Once a minute it notes how much memory it is using. If a run ends without saying goodbye, the next one says so at the top.
Fixed the copilot voice note going blank in Settings after the first frame, and the law mode string in the HUD losing its text.

v0.269.0 2026-10-06 Linux (.run)Windows (.zip) Third person on foot: press V while walking to step the camera behind your pilot and see her — standing, or mid-stride while you move. V again goes back to her eyes. The ON FOOT message now says so.

Platform	File	Size	SHA-256
Linux (.run)	pax-helios-v0.269.0-linux-x86_64.run	157.3 MB	181bc22583277796…
Windows (.zip)	pax-helios-v0.269.0-windows-x86_64.zip	146.4 MB	b846e300ca59bccf…

What changed

Third person on foot: press V while walking to step the camera behind your pilot and see her — standing, or mid-stride while you move. V again goes back to her eyes. The ON FOOT message now says so.
The figure is the same one other pilots have always seen beside your ship, so what you see is what they see. The camera does not yet dodge walls: in a tight corridor it can look through the one behind you.

v0.268.0 2026-10-06 Linux (.run)Windows (.zip) The login page lists the game servers the portal publishes — click one and the SERVER field fills in. The field can still be typed into, and OFFLINE empties it.

Platform	File	Size	SHA-256
Linux (.run)	pax-helios-v0.268.0-linux-x86_64.run	157.3 MB	bc58e4f74b5fa6e2…
Windows (.zip)	pax-helios-v0.268.0-windows-x86_64.zip	146.4 MB	64d43255f9d29560…

What changed

The login page lists the game servers the portal publishes — click one and the SERVER field fills in. The field can still be typed into, and OFFLINE empties it.
A fresh install fills SERVER with the first listed server instead of 127.0.0.1, so a first LAUNCH no longer fails on localhost.

v0.267.0 2026-10-06 Linux (.run)Windows (.zip) Enter in Settings no longer launches the game; only the login page launches on Enter.

Platform	File	Size	SHA-256
Linux (.run)	pax-helios-v0.267.0-linux-x86_64.run	157.3 MB	a0432f15de2b1da9…
Windows (.zip)	pax-helios-v0.267.0-windows-x86_64.zip	146.4 MB	73e3d6786739abb5…

What changed

Enter in Settings no longer launches the game; only the login page launches on Enter.
Messages (dock denied, gear, system entry) appear between the status panel and the dash instead of across the shield and hull readouts.
PROBES moved up beside GEAR on the dash; it no longer collides with the key help line. The screenshot "SAVED" notice now shows at the top centre for the same reason.
The launcher's window is titled "pax-helios launcher", so it can be told from the game in the taskbar.

v0.266.0 2026-10-06 Linux (.run)Windows (.zip) The docked menu sits in the centre of the screen and no longer runs off the bottom. Long lists — the market, contracts, the shipyard's modules, a slot's fitting options — are shown a page at a time, with PREV / NEXT.

Platform	File	Size	SHA-256
Linux (.run)	pax-helios-v0.266.0-linux-x86_64.run	157.3 MB	5a8424958f439618…
Windows (.zip)	pax-helios-v0.266.0-windows-x86_64.zip	146.4 MB	acb6734607e24270…

What changed

The docked menu sits in the centre of the screen and no longer runs off the bottom. Long lists — the market, contracts, the shipyard's modules, a slot's fitting options — are shown a page at a time, with PREV / NEXT.
Contracts have their own tab beside MARKET, SHIPYARD and FITTING.
A --windowed launch stays windowed even when the saved setting is fullscreen.

v0.265.0 2026-10-06 Linux (.run)Windows (.zip) Screenshots: press F12 (rebindable under Settings > CONTROLS) to save the whole screen as a PNG. The folder is set under Settings > GAME & DISPLAY and defaults to Pictures/pax-helios. Works on the login page and in menus as well as in flight.

Platform	File	Size	SHA-256
Linux (.run)	pax-helios-v0.265.0-linux-x86_64.run	157.3 MB	fa4b6b200ce577a5…
Windows (.zip)	pax-helios-v0.265.0-windows-x86_64.zip	146.1 MB	4f8caa54fc8b4cf5…

What changed

Screenshots: press F12 (rebindable under Settings > CONTROLS) to save the whole screen as a PNG. The folder is set under Settings > GAME & DISPLAY and defaults to Pictures/pax-helios. Works on the login page and in menus as well as in flight.

v0.264.0 2026-10-06 Linux (.run)Windows (.zip) **A door you open is open for everyone.** The server now keeps each door's state: other pilots in the system see the leaf slide as you use it, and anyone arriving later finds doors as they were left. Needs server v20261006.0.14.

Platform	File	Size	SHA-256
Linux (.run)	pax-helios-v0.264.0-linux-x86_64.run	157.2 MB	521366379cb5a31b…
Windows (.zip)	pax-helios-v0.264.0-windows-x86_64.zip	146.0 MB	2356df129e41b6ee…

What changed

**A door you open is open for everyone.** The server now keeps each door's state: other pilots in the system see the leaf slide as you use it, and anyone arriving later finds doors as they were left. Needs server v20261006.0.14.

v0.263.0 2026-10-06 Linux (.run)Windows (.zip) **Doors open.** On foot, walk up to a kit door and press your INTERACT key (Return by default): the leaf slides into the frame and you can walk through. Press again to shut it. The prompt at the bottom of the screen names the key when something is in reach. Doors are yours alone for now: other pilots still see them shut.

Platform	File	Size	SHA-256
Linux (.run)	pax-helios-v0.263.0-linux-x86_64.run	157.2 MB	c06db392293c8014…
Windows (.zip)	pax-helios-v0.263.0-windows-x86_64.zip	146.0 MB	c44fcc6e2235d03f…

What changed

**Doors open.** On foot, walk up to a kit door and press your INTERACT key (Return by default): the leaf slides into the frame and you can walk through. Press again to shut it. The prompt at the bottom of the screen names the key when something is in reach. Doors are yours alone for now: other pilots still see them shut.
**Consoles work.** Use a console while docked and the services screen opens where you stand, market, yard and all, with the mouse freed for it. Use it again, or step back aboard, to close it. A console anywhere without services says so.

v0.259.0 2026-10-06 Linux (.run)Windows (.zip) **Water is water.** On foot you no longer walk on a lake: your feet are on the bed. Knee-deep water slows you to a wade, chest-deep water stops you, and if you are set down in deep water you can still wade toward the shallows. No swimming yet.

Platform	File	Size	SHA-256
Linux (.run)	pax-helios-v0.259.0-linux-x86_64.run	157.2 MB	47eb81d80bad8e51…
Windows (.zip)	pax-helios-v0.259.0-windows-x86_64.zip	146.0 MB	52f6d80f143664a9…

What changed

**Water is water.** On foot you no longer walk on a lake: your feet are on the bed. Knee-deep water slows you to a wade, chest-deep water stops you, and if you are set down in deep water you can still wade toward the shallows. No swimming yet.
**Cliffs let you slide.** A step into ground too steep to climb now keeps whatever part of it runs along the face, so you glide along a cliff instead of stopping dead against it.
**Sound intake checked in the build.** The script that turns generated takes into the game's sounds is now tested on synthetic takes every build, and that caught a click at the seam of every looping bed before any real take arrived.

v0.258.0 2026-10-06 Linux (.run)Windows (.zip) **A world pulls with its own gravity.** On foot, a moon or a light world no longer pulls at Earth's 1 g: you fall and jump under the body's own surface gravity. A Luna-sized moon gives a 5 m hop that takes six seconds to come down. The smallest moons are held at a floor so a jump still lands this session; the heaviest at a cap so the walker stays usable. Station decks are unchanged.

Platform	File	Size	SHA-256
Linux (.run)	pax-helios-v0.258.0-linux-x86_64.run	157.2 MB	c56608aef88c2fc1…
Windows (.zip)	pax-helios-v0.258.0-windows-x86_64.zip	146.0 MB	a0ce2f0dac345ce8…

What changed

**A world pulls with its own gravity.** On foot, a moon or a light world no longer pulls at Earth's 1 g: you fall and jump under the body's own surface gravity. A Luna-sized moon gives a 5 m hop that takes six seconds to come down. The smallest moons are held at a floor so a jump still lands this session; the heaviest at a cap so the walker stays usable. Station decks are unchanged.

v0.257.0 2026-10-06 Linux (.run) **Feet on the ground going downhill.** On a world the ground is not a deck: walking down a slope used to leave you a hair off the ground every step, so you could not jump on a descent and other pilots saw you falling. Now a walker who was on the ground follows it down, as long as the drop is one a step can take. A real edge is still a fall.

Platform	File	Size	SHA-256
Linux (.run)	pax-helios-v0.257.0-linux-x86_64.run	157.2 MB	380f33af708685d5…

What changed

**Feet on the ground going downhill.** On a world the ground is not a deck: walking down a slope used to leave you a hair off the ground every step, so you could not jump on a descent and other pilots saw you falling. Now a walker who was on the ground follows it down, as long as the drop is one a step can take. A real edge is still a fall.
**Cliffs are cliffs.** A rise steeper than 45 degrees cannot be walked up; the step is refused and you stay put. Gentler ground is climbed as before.

v0.256.0 2026-10-06 Linux (.run) **Level ground on a small moon.** On foot, the frame that says which way is up was sampled once, when you stepped out, which was right for a planet and visibly wrong on a kilometre-sized moon once you walked a few hundred metres: the ground tilted. Now up is re-sampled every frame from where the walker stands; you stay where you were and keep facing the way you faced.

Platform	File	Size	SHA-256
Linux (.run)	pax-helios-v0.256.0-linux-x86_64.run	157.2 MB	5a080df0bd6868c2…

What changed

**Level ground on a small moon.** On foot, the frame that says which way is up was sampled once, when you stepped out, which was right for a planet and visibly wrong on a kilometre-sized moon once you walked a few hundred metres: the ground tilted. Now up is re-sampled every frame from where the walker stands; you stay where you were and keep facing the way you faced.
**A guard against lost keys.** The build test now refuses to pass if key handlers go missing from the input switch, the regression that took landing gear, sensors, jump and dock with it in v0.250.0.

v0.255.0 2026-10-06 Linux (.run) **Half the download.** The kit pieces carried textures sized for a hull, 2 mm per texel on a 2 m wall. Each piece now carries what its size can show: 256 px for lamps and fittings, 512 px for walls and tiles, 1024 px for the big exterior pieces. The ships, the cockpits and the stations are unchanged. Models went from 185 MB to 90 MB, and they load faster for it.

Platform	File	Size	SHA-256
Linux (.run)	pax-helios-v0.255.0-linux-x86_64.run	157.2 MB	7c0cfd6f4bfcbd2b…

What changed

**Half the download.** The kit pieces carried textures sized for a hull, 2 mm per texel on a 2 m wall. Each piece now carries what its size can show: 256 px for lamps and fittings, 512 px for walls and tiles, 1024 px for the big exterior pieces. The ships, the cockpits and the stations are unchanged. Models went from 185 MB to 90 MB, and they load faster for it.

v0.254.0 2026-10-06 Linux (.run) **No more stutter when a station's models first load.** Reading and decoding a model's textures now happens on a second thread; the game thread only hands the finished pixels to the GPU, a couple of models per frame. Arriving at the dressed Anchorage should be smooth from the first frame. Your own ship and cockpit still load before the first frame, so nothing appears as a placeholder.

Platform	File	Size	SHA-256
Linux (.run)	pax-helios-v0.254.0-linux-x86_64.run	246.1 MB	10f35a7b613180d7…

What changed

**No more stutter when a station's models first load.** Reading and decoding a model's textures now happens on a second thread; the game thread only hands the finished pixels to the GPU, a couple of models per frame. Arriving at the dressed Anchorage should be smooth from the first frame. Your own ship and cockpit still load before the first frame, so nothing appears as a placeholder.

v0.253.0 2026-10-06 Linux (.run) **Other pilots see you walk.** When you step out of your ship, the other pilots in the system see a figure standing beside it, walking when you walk, facing where you face. On a station deck, a pad or open ground alike. Everyone is the same figure for now.

Platform	File	Size	SHA-256
Linux (.run)	pax-helios-v0.253.0-linux-x86_64.run	246.1 MB	f7ebcde39c97be29…

What changed

**Other pilots see you walk.** When you step out of your ship, the other pilots in the system see a figure standing beside it, walking when you walk, facing where you face. On a station deck, a pad or open ground alike. Everyone is the same figure for now.

v0.252.0 2026-10-06 Linux (.run) **Recorded sounds drop in by name.** Put a WAV in the audio folder under a slot's name and the game plays it instead of the synthesised sound. Nothing sounds different yet: this is the plumbing for the real recordings to come.

Platform	File	Size	SHA-256
Linux (.run)	pax-helios-v0.252.0-linux-x86_64.run	246.1 MB	51652bf062a1ceeb…

What changed

**Recorded sounds drop in by name.** Put a WAV in the audio folder under a slot's name and the game plays it instead of the synthesised sound. Nothing sounds different yet: this is the plumbing for the real recordings to come.
**New slots:** landing gear down and up, touchdown, the first bite of atmosphere, and eight ambience beds — space, the cockpit at rest, station interiors, the plasma sheath, hypersonic descent, atmospheric flight, the pad approach and the drive hum — each crossfading in as its moment comes. They are silent until their files exist, except the gear, which keeps the old clunk for now.

v0.251.1 2026-10-06 Linux (.run) **Stepping out on a world works without docking first.** A check from the station days put you straight back in the chair whenever the ship was not docked, so on a pad you had to press G first and on open ground you could not get out at all.

Platform	File	Size	SHA-256
Linux (.run)	pax-helios-v0.251.1-linux-x86_64.run	246.0 MB	6211d9b36e290525…

What changed

**Stepping out on a world works without docking first.** A check from the station days put you straight back in the chair whenever the ship was not docked, so on a pad you had to press G first and on open ground you could not get out at all.

v0.251.0 2026-10-06 Linux (.run) **Stepping out is a binding now.** "STEP OUT / BOARD" in the settings screen, F7 by default. It was hard-wired to the letter E, which is roll on the default layout and thrust up on some pilots' own, so on open ground E lifted the ship off instead. If your file already used F7, the game picked the next free key; check the settings screen.

Platform	File	Size	SHA-256
Linux (.run)	pax-helios-v0.251.0-linux-x86_64.run	246.0 MB	e911501b75d85873…

What changed

**Stepping out is a binding now.** "STEP OUT / BOARD" in the settings screen, F7 by default. It was hard-wired to the letter E, which is roll on the default layout and thrust up on some pilots' own, so on open ground E lifted the ship off instead. If your file already used F7, the game picked the next free key; check the settings screen.
**Held keys no longer trigger letter commands.** A key bound to thrust, strafe, roll, boost or brake only does that. One layout had brake on N, which also cycled the nav target on every press.

v0.250.2 2026-10-06 Linux (.run) **E tells you why it did nothing.** Pressed in flight, or on a ship that is resting but not LANDED, it now says to set down first, and whether the gear is the reason.

Platform	File	Size	SHA-256
Linux (.run)	pax-helios-v0.250.2-linux-x86_64.run	246.1 MB	807a16f0e6ca5462…

What changed

**E tells you why it did nothing.** Pressed in flight, or on a ship that is resting but not LANDED, it now says to set down first, and whether the gear is the reason.

v0.250.1 2026-10-06 Linux (.run) **Gear, sensor view, jump, dock, the throttle presets and the rest are back.** v0.250.0 lost the handlers for L, O, I, P, F1 to F3, 1 to 5, T, X, J and G while the step-out key was rewritten. Update from v0.250.0 at once.

Platform	File	Size	SHA-256
Linux (.run)	pax-helios-v0.250.1-linux-x86_64.run	246.0 MB	ab716d62bd88db70…

What changed

**Gear, sensor view, jump, dock, the throttle presets and the rest are back.** v0.250.0 lost the handlers for L, O, I, P, F1 to F3, 1 to 5, T, X, J and G while the step-out key was rewritten. Update from v0.250.0 at once.

v0.250.0 2026-10-05 Linux (.run) **Step out on a world.** E now works when you are docked at a pad or set down on open ground, not only at a station. You stand on the pad's apron or on the ground itself, with down pointing at the planet, and walk, run and jump as on a station deck. The ship stays put while you are outside; E brings you back aboard.

Platform	File	Size	SHA-256
Linux (.run)	pax-helios-v0.250.0-linux-x86_64.run	246.0 MB	7d904fc388ae4e16…

What changed

**Step out on a world.** E now works when you are docked at a pad or set down on open ground, not only at a station. You stand on the pad's apron or on the ground itself, with down pointing at the planet, and walk, run and jump as on a station deck. The ship stays put while you are outside; E brings you back aboard.

v0.249.0 2026-10-05 Linux (.run) **Big rooms get floodlights.** The kit's lamps light about six metres, which left the Anchorage's hangar bay pitch black unless you turned your headlights on. A new floodlight piece throws 45 m, and the bay layout uses eleven of them on its walls. The architect places the new bay; until then the bay is as dark as before.

Platform	File	Size	SHA-256
Linux (.run)	pax-helios-v0.249.0-linux-x86_64.run	246.0 MB	e17e77d745ac85af…

What changed

**Big rooms get floodlights.** The kit's lamps light about six metres, which left the Anchorage's hangar bay pitch black unless you turned your headlights on. A new floodlight piece throws 45 m, and the bay layout uses eleven of them on its walls. The architect places the new bay; until then the bay is as dark as before.

v0.248.1 2026-10-05 Linux (.run) **The Sparrow's wings are orange**, as they were always meant to be, with an orange radome to match. **The Dart's markings are gone**: the letter-like stencils the paint came back with on its fins and nose are off.

Platform	File	Size	SHA-256
Linux (.run)	pax-helios-v0.248.1-linux-x86_64.run	243.6 MB	afe5328567d84541…

What changed

**The Sparrow's wings are orange**, as they were always meant to be, with an orange radome to match. **The Dart's markings are gone**: the letter-like stencils the paint came back with on its fins and nose are off.

v0.248.0 2026-10-05 Linux (.run) **At a station, G docks only once you have landed.** Gear down, the hull resting on a deck or a pad, and stopped. Hovering over the apron with the gear up no longer counts; the toast tells you which of the three is missing. Planet pads already worked this way.

Platform	File	Size	SHA-256
Linux (.run)	pax-helios-v0.248.0-linux-x86_64.run	243.1 MB	75d770b804ab7975…

What changed

**At a station, G docks only once you have landed.** Gear down, the hull resting on a deck or a pad, and stopped. Hovering over the apron with the gear up no longer counts; the toast tells you which of the three is missing. Planet pads already worked this way.

v0.247.0 2026-10-05 Linux (.run) **Other pilots' fitted modules show on their ships**, the same way yours do: racks, armour, overdrives and emitters at the same places.

Platform	File	Size	SHA-256
Linux (.run)	pax-helios-v0.247.0-linux-x86_64.run	243.1 MB	113105467fb2c522…

What changed

**Other pilots' fitted modules show on their ships**, the same way yours do: racks, armour, overdrives and emitters at the same places.
**NPC haulers are Mules and pirates are Darts.** They used to all look like Sparrows.

v0.246.0 2026-10-05 Linux (.run) **The Anchorage is ready to become one walkable station.** The station now has a doorway through the hangar bay's back wall and a way through the spindle: a corridor from the bay, a long walled stairwell climbing 18 m inside the spindle, and a skybridge out to the landing platform, where the concourse wings are. The corridor itself appears once the architect places it on the server, along with the hangar bay's fittings.

Platform	File	Size	SHA-256
Linux (.run)	pax-helios-v0.246.0-linux-x86_64.run	243.1 MB	f82dbb94455d7e72…

What changed

**The Anchorage is ready to become one walkable station.** The station now has a doorway through the hangar bay's back wall and a way through the spindle: a corridor from the bay, a long walled stairwell climbing 18 m inside the spindle, and a skybridge out to the landing platform, where the concourse wings are. The corridor itself appears once the architect places it on the server, along with the hangar bay's fittings.

v0.245.0 2026-10-05 Linux (.run) **The Orbitals' hall has a ceiling and an upper floor.** The habitat was one 20 m tall room. Most of it now has a ceiling 4 m up with strip lights, and on top of that a mezzanine with railings, stores and a console overlooking the galley, which stays open full height.

Platform	File	Size	SHA-256
Linux (.run)	pax-helios-v0.245.0-linux-x86_64.run	243.1 MB	abc6ef3b16897477…

What changed

**The Orbitals' hall has a ceiling and an upper floor.** The habitat was one 20 m tall room. Most of it now has a ceiling 4 m up with strip lights, and on top of that a mezzanine with railings, stores and a console overlooking the galley, which stays open full height.
**Walking up stairs works.** On foot you used to stop dead at the first step of any staircase. You now climb steps and kerbs up to 45 cm without jumping; walls still stop you.

v0.244.0 2026-10-05 Linux (.run) **Planet landing pads are aprons.** The flat disc with a stick on it is now a plated landing apron: a landing circle and cross, chevrons pointing in, a green lit edge, fuel hookups, a control hut with lit windows and a lattice beacon mast. Pads keep their size and their house colours, and you land exactly where you did before.

Platform	File	Size	SHA-256
Linux (.run)	pax-helios-v0.244.0-linux-x86_64.run	243.1 MB	4a10048c75e456ee…

What changed

**Planet landing pads are aprons.** The flat disc with a stick on it is now a plated landing apron: a landing circle and cross, chevrons pointing in, a green lit edge, fuel hookups, a control hut with lit windows and a lattice beacon mast. Pads keep their size and their house colours, and you land exactly where you did before.
**Fitted modules show on your ship.** A cargo rack sits on the spine, armour plates hang as blisters under the wings, an overdrive is a booster pod under the tail, a shield emitter is a dish on top. They fit the Sparrow, the Mule and the Dart. Other pilots' modules don't show yet.

v0.243.0 2026-10-05 Linux (.run) **You can walk into an Orbital.** The outpost's habitat block was solid. It is now a hall you walk into from the landing deck: through a door in the east wall and a short corridor, into an operations room with consoles facing the way in, crew quarters with stacked bunks and lockers, a galley and a mess table, stores in the corner, and lamps on every wall that light the room. Land on the deck, step out, and walk in.

Platform	File	Size	SHA-256
Linux (.run)	pax-helios-v0.243.0-linux-x86_64.run	233.6 MB	f340b66fd7fb5baf…

What changed

**You can walk into an Orbital.** The outpost's habitat block was solid. It is now a hall you walk into from the landing deck: through a door in the east wall and a short corridor, into an operations room with consoles facing the way in, crew quarters with stacked bunks and lockers, a galley and a mess table, stores in the corner, and lamps on every wall that light the room. Land on the deck, step out, and walk in.

v0.242.0 2026-10-05 Linux (.run) **The Mule has its own cockpit.** Flying a Mule from inside, you sit in a hauler's cab: wider than the Sparrow's, with a roof overhead and a header across the top of the windscreen, matching the glass band you see from outside. The forward view and the instruments are as before.

Platform	File	Size	SHA-256
Linux (.run)	pax-helios-v0.242.0-linux-x86_64.run	233.6 MB	a2c7bbe8bd353ea4…

What changed

**The Mule has its own cockpit.** Flying a Mule from inside, you sit in a hauler's cab: wider than the Sparrow's, with a roof overhead and a header across the top of the windscreen, matching the glass band you see from outside. The forward view and the instruments are as before.

v0.241.0 2026-10-05 Linux (.run) **Other pilots' Mules glow.** A passing Mule's four drive pads now tilt and glow for you the way they do for its pilot: pull in cyan, push in amber, brighter under load. (The sparks stay the pilot's own.)

Platform	File	Size	SHA-256
Linux (.run)	pax-helios-v0.241.0-linux-x86_64.run	228.9 MB	d39e1a0355d13a38…

What changed

**Other pilots' Mules glow.** A passing Mule's four drive pads now tilt and glow for you the way they do for its pilot: pull in cyan, push in amber, brighter under load. (The sparks stay the pilot's own.)
**The Dart has its own cockpit.** Flying a Dart from inside, you sit in a fighter's tub: narrower than the Sparrow's cabin, low side walls, a reclined seat. Same instruments, same clear canopy.

v0.240.0 2026-10-05 Linux (.run) **You see the ship another pilot is flying.** Every other pilot used to appear as a Sparrow whatever they flew. A Dart now flies past as a Dart and a Mule as a Mule. (A passing Mule's drive pads don't glow for you yet — only its own pilot sees those.)

Platform	File	Size	SHA-256
Linux (.run)	pax-helios-v0.240.0-linux-x86_64.run	224.0 MB	6a50c23f2c43a066…

What changed

**You see the ship another pilot is flying.** Every other pilot used to appear as a Sparrow whatever they flew. A Dart now flies past as a Dart and a Mule as a Mule. (A passing Mule's drive pads don't glow for you yet — only its own pilot sees those.)

v0.239.1 2026-10-05 Linux (.run) **Head-look turns properly now.** It was crawling at a small fraction of the intended speed; a normal swipe of the mouse now turns your head past your shoulder. It still follows your mouse sensitivity setting.

Platform	File	Size	SHA-256
Linux (.run)	pax-helios-v0.239.1-linux-x86_64.run	224.0 MB	5a63476baef6a654…

What changed

**Head-look turns properly now.** It was crawling at a small fraction of the intended speed; a normal swipe of the mouse now turns your head past your shoulder. It still follows your mouse sensitivity setting.
**The middle mouse button engages head-look too**, as well as the right one. With the architect tool up, the middle button still drags props.

v0.239.0 2026-10-05 Linux (.run) **Head-look.** In the cockpit view, hold the right mouse button and the mouse turns your head instead of the ship: look out over the wings, up through the canopy, across to the side consoles nobody has seen yet. The ship keeps flying where it was pointed, and the HUD stays painted on the windshield. Let go and your head eases back to the nose. Your head turns about 140° either side, 70° up and 45° down.

Platform	File	Size	SHA-256
Linux (.run)	pax-helios-v0.239.0-linux-x86_64.run	224.0 MB	573543cd003a425a…

What changed

**Head-look.** In the cockpit view, hold the right mouse button and the mouse turns your head instead of the ship: look out over the wings, up through the canopy, across to the side consoles nobody has seen yet. The ship keeps flying where it was pointed, and the HUD stays painted on the windshield. Let go and your head eases back to the nose. Your head turns about 140° either side, 70° up and 45° down.

v0.238.0 2026-10-05 Linux (.run) **The Dart flies.** The stations have sold the Dart for a while, but buying one still gave you a Sparrow on screen. It is now its own ship: a slim gunmetal needle with a bubble canopy well forward, an orange cranked delta wing, twin canted fins, pylons for its three hardpoints and one big engine with two nozzles. It handles like an interceptor — lighter, quicker off the line and sharper sideways than the Sparrow. The handling numbers are a first pass and will be tuned.

Platform	File	Size	SHA-256
Linux (.run)	pax-helios-v0.238.0-linux-x86_64.run	224.0 MB	477150c7cc919eb4…

What changed

**The Dart flies.** The stations have sold the Dart for a while, but buying one still gave you a Sparrow on screen. It is now its own ship: a slim gunmetal needle with a bubble canopy well forward, an orange cranked delta wing, twin canted fins, pylons for its three hardpoints and one big engine with two nozzles. It handles like an interceptor — lighter, quicker off the line and sharper sideways than the Sparrow. The handling numbers are a first pass and will be tuned.

v0.237.0 2026-10-05 Linux (.run) **Dive sites are buildings.** The compromised facilities were a dark slab with a cylinder on it. They are now a corporate works the Murmur got into: a plated hull with stepped decks and buttresses, a heavy frame around the way in on its bow, a ringed tower with a bent mast, a broken truss arm, pipe runs and plates hanging at wrong angles. Rust-dark where you can dive, cold blue where it is sealed; the red and blue beacons are unchanged. Ground outposts beside their pads are the same works at a smaller scale.

Platform	File	Size	SHA-256
Linux (.run)	pax-helios-v0.237.0-linux-x86_64.run	216.5 MB	eb90d39f0886bd53…

What changed

**Dive sites are buildings.** The compromised facilities were a dark slab with a cylinder on it. They are now a corporate works the Murmur got into: a plated hull with stepped decks and buttresses, a heavy frame around the way in on its bow, a ringed tower with a bent mast, a broken truss arm, pipe runs and plates hanging at wrong angles. Rust-dark where you can dive, cold blue where it is sealed; the red and blue beacons are unchanged. Ground outposts beside their pads are the same works at a smaller scale.

v0.236.0 2026-10-04 Linux (.run) **Jump gates are structures.** The two grey pylons and glowing bar that stood in for every gate since August are now a built portal: plated pylons with collars and corner blocks, a lintel and sill, a control pod with lit windows on top, antenna masts, solar wings, and the same blue glow along the inner edges, so the nav cue reads as it always did. The frame is solid; the 790 m opening is not.

Platform	File	Size	SHA-256
Linux (.run)	pax-helios-v0.236.0-linux-x86_64.run	214.6 MB	66a2404219f5662f…

What changed

**Jump gates are structures.** The two grey pylons and glowing bar that stood in for every gate since August are now a built portal: plated pylons with collars and corner blocks, a lintel and sill, a control pod with lit windows on top, antenna masts, solar wings, and the same blue glow along the inner edges, so the nav cue reads as it always did. The frame is solid; the 790 m opening is not.

v0.235.2 2026-10-04 Linux (.run) **No bars across the view.** The Sparrow's canopy is one clean bubble from outside, so it is from the seat too: the pillars and the overhead bar are gone from the flight deck. Dash, consoles, seat and floor stay.

Platform	File	Size	SHA-256
Linux (.run)	pax-helios-v0.235.2-linux-x86_64.run	212.7 MB	30c23b3b28e9a01b…

What changed

**No bars across the view.** The Sparrow's canopy is one clean bubble from outside, so it is from the seat too: the pillars and the overhead bar are gone from the flight deck. Dash, consoles, seat and floor stay.

v0.235.1 2026-10-04 Linux (.run) **The dash no longer blocks the lower half of the view.** The new flight deck's instrument housing and glare shield rose above the panel tops; everything behind the instruments now sits below the sightline, so the panels are the only thing standing in the view, as before. The extra frame members over the eye are gone too: two pillars and the overhead bar, as it was. Repainted charcoal instead of brown.

Platform	File	Size	SHA-256
Linux (.run)	pax-helios-v0.235.1-linux-x86_64.run	212.7 MB	e6aaa75767b75a6d…

What changed

**The dash no longer blocks the lower half of the view.** The new flight deck's instrument housing and glare shield rose above the panel tops; everything behind the instruments now sits below the sightline, so the panels are the only thing standing in the view, as before. The extra frame members over the eye are gone too: two pillars and the overhead bar, as it was. Repainted charcoal instead of brown.

v0.235.0 2026-10-04 Linux (.run) **The cockpit is a cockpit.** The six grey bars that framed the cockpit view are replaced by an authored, painted flight deck: dash housing and glare shield under the instruments, side consoles with the throttle and the stick, the seat behind you, a floor with pedals, the canopy frame seen from inside, and light strips along the edges. The live instrument panels and the holo tank are unchanged.

Platform	File	Size	SHA-256
Linux (.run)	pax-helios-v0.235.0-linux-x86_64.run	212.4 MB	6591e01466853259…

What changed

**The cockpit is a cockpit.** The six grey bars that framed the cockpit view are replaced by an authored, painted flight deck: dash housing and glare shield under the instruments, side consoles with the throttle and the stick, the seat behind you, a floor with pedals, the canopy frame seen from inside, and light strips along the edges. The live instrument panels and the holo tank are unchanged.

v0.234.0 2026-10-04 Linux (.run)Windows (.zip) **The Mule is a ship now.** The hauler flew as a grey slab with a box on top. It is now an authored hull in the Sparrow's style: a boxy hold on an octagonal section, a raised cab with a glass band, flank cargo doors, a belly ramp, two dorsal tanks, booms out to the four drive pads with hubs under the discs, skid legs that tuck up. Painted the same way as the Sparrow. The drive discs still gimbal and glow with load over it.

Platform	File	Size	SHA-256
Linux (.run)	pax-helios-v0.234.0-linux-x86_64.run	208.1 MB	b5fd4b07e0ee8f05…
Windows (.zip)	pax-helios-v0.234.0-windows-x86_64.zip	196.9 MB	304038ffe365401a…

What changed

**The Mule is a ship now.** The hauler flew as a grey slab with a box on top. It is now an authored hull in the Sparrow's style: a boxy hold on an octagonal section, a raised cab with a glass band, flank cargo doors, a belly ramp, two dorsal tanks, booms out to the four drive pads with hubs under the discs, skid legs that tuck up. Painted the same way as the Sparrow. The drive discs still gimbal and glow with load over it.

v0.232.0 2026-10-04 Linux (.run)Windows (.zip) **A pilot in the seat.** Look at your ship from the chase view, or at any other pilot's, and there is a pilot under the canopy. The canopy glass is now translucent (the first see-through part in the game), so she shows through it at any angle.

Platform	File	Size	SHA-256
Linux (.run)	pax-helios-v0.232.0-linux-x86_64.run	197.2 MB	b4c14cb2dd75897a…
Windows (.zip)	pax-helios-v0.232.0-windows-x86_64.zip	186.0 MB	89c6460046c31641…

What changed

**A pilot in the seat.** Look at your ship from the chase view, or at any other pilot's, and there is a pilot under the canopy. The canopy glass is now translucent (the first see-through part in the game), so she shows through it at any angle.

v0.231.0 2026-10-04 Linux (.run)Windows (.zip) **Planet orbitals look like outposts now.** Every settled system has an Anchorage in free orbit and one or more "<Planet> Orbital" stations riding a planet; until now all of them wore the Anchorage's 400 m ring. The Orbitals are now a different station: a habitat block with windows, a landing deck off its east face with an airlock, a truss spine with solar wings, radiators and fuel tanks, a docking collar at the north end and thruster pods at the south. Set down on its deck and step out.

Platform	File	Size	SHA-256
Linux (.run)	pax-helios-v0.231.0-linux-x86_64.run	197.2 MB	ace9d65564f47a50…
Windows (.zip)	pax-helios-v0.231.0-windows-x86_64.zip	186.0 MB	074ca9857fb259fb…

What changed

**Planet orbitals look like outposts now.** Every settled system has an Anchorage in free orbit and one or more "<Planet> Orbital" stations riding a planet; until now all of them wore the Anchorage's 400 m ring. The Orbitals are now a different station: a habitat block with windows, a landing deck off its east face with an airlock, a truss spine with solar wings, radiators and fuel tanks, a docking collar at the north end and thruster pods at the south. Set down on its deck and step out.

v0.230.0 2026-10-04 Linux (.run)Windows (.zip) **The station's lamps light their rooms.** The light strips and wall lamps the architect has placed through the concourse, the second wing and the hangar bay were painted props: the rooms were lit only by the sun through the door. Each lamp now glows and throws a warm pool of light on the deck and walls around it, nearest lamps first wherever you stand. Walk the concourse after dark and it reads as a lit room.

Platform	File	Size	SHA-256
Linux (.run)	pax-helios-v0.230.0-linux-x86_64.run	197.2 MB	8547f354af45a319…
Windows (.zip)	pax-helios-v0.230.0-windows-x86_64.zip	186.0 MB	eb8da655055c8bb5…

What changed

**The station's lamps light their rooms.** The light strips and wall lamps the architect has placed through the concourse, the second wing and the hangar bay were painted props: the rooms were lit only by the sun through the door. Each lamp now glows and throws a warm pool of light on the deck and walls around it, nearest lamps first wherever you stand. Walk the concourse after dark and it reads as a lit room.

v0.229.0 2026-10-04 Linux (.run)Windows (.zip) **Arriving at a dressed station no longer freezes the game.** The Anchorage now carries hundreds of placed pieces from forty different models, and the first frame that saw them loaded every model at once, twice — a 30-second stall right after the "connected" toast. Each model now loads once, and at most one new model per frame, so the station fills in over a second or two while you keep flying.

Platform	File	Size	SHA-256
Linux (.run)	pax-helios-v0.229.0-linux-x86_64.run	197.2 MB	2838be0bc15836d5…
Windows (.zip)	pax-helios-v0.229.0-windows-x86_64.zip	186.0 MB	da783888317eb647…

What changed

**Arriving at a dressed station no longer freezes the game.** The Anchorage now carries hundreds of placed pieces from forty different models, and the first frame that saw them loaded every model at once, twice — a 30-second stall right after the "connected" toast. Each model now loads once, and at most one new model per frame, so the station fills in over a second or two while you keep flying.

v0.228.0 2026-10-04 Linux (.run) **The hangar opens on the authored Sparrow** — the same painted airframe you fly since v0.227.0 — instead of the old bought hull. That hull is retired from the install, which is 19 MB smaller.

Platform	File	Size	SHA-256
Linux (.run)	pax-helios-v0.228.0-linux-x86_64.run	197.2 MB	5666eed944278081…

What changed

**The hangar opens on the authored Sparrow** — the same painted airframe you fly since v0.227.0 — instead of the old bought hull. That hull is retired from the install, which is 19 MB smaller.
Groundwork for the Anchorage's hangar bay dressing (terminal, apron, railings, dock gear), placed on the server by the architect.

v0.227.0 2026-10-04 Linux (.run) **The real Sparrow, outside the hangar.** The chase view, the view on foot and every other pilot's ship drew the old block composite; the authored Sparrow only ever appeared in the hangar. The chase camera, the pad and other pilots now show the painted airframe from v0.224.0, landing gear posed by its clips — down when yours is down, down on docked ships.

Platform	File	Size	SHA-256
Linux (.run)	pax-helios-v0.227.0-linux-x86_64.run	215.1 MB	87329be98fc2fd01…

What changed

**The real Sparrow, outside the hangar.** The chase view, the view on foot and every other pilot's ship drew the old block composite; the authored Sparrow only ever appeared in the hangar. The chase camera, the pad and other pilots now show the painted airframe from v0.224.0, landing gear posed by its clips — down when yours is down, down on docked ships.
Groundwork for the concourse's second wing (galley, mess, sick bay), placed on the server by the architect.

v0.226.0 2026-10-04 Linux (.run) **Twelve more interior pieces** in the architect's palette: corridor corner, crossing and dead end (with a pressure hatch), a hatch wall that closes a corridor on its own, a large observation viewport, a galley counter, a mess table with benches, a med-bay bed, a wall cabinet, stocked shelving, a steel drum and a ceiling pipe run. Same 2 m grid and conventions as the first wave, so corridors can turn, cross and end, and rooms can be a galley, a sick bay or a store.

Platform	File	Size	SHA-256
Linux (.run)	pax-helios-v0.226.0-linux-x86_64.run	215.1 MB	5eee3f3f18cc54e8…

What changed

**Twelve more interior pieces** in the architect's palette: corridor corner, crossing and dead end (with a pressure hatch), a hatch wall that closes a corridor on its own, a large observation viewport, a galley counter, a mess table with benches, a med-bay bed, a wall cabinet, stocked shelving, a steel drum and a ceiling pipe run. Same 2 m grid and conventions as the first wave, so corridors can turn, cross and end, and rooms can be a galley, a sick bay or a store.

v0.225.0 2026-10-04 Linux (.run) **The station's plating is crisp from the pad.** Its structure — spindle, ring, spokes, bay, landing platform and pads — now wears the hull-plate texture tiled every 10 metres instead of one stretched skin, so panel seams and bolts are legible at walking distance where there used to be a blur.

Platform	File	Size	SHA-256
Linux (.run)	pax-helios-v0.225.0-linux-x86_64.run	187.9 MB	e7748568b7b75940…

What changed

**The station's plating is crisp from the pad.** Its structure — spindle, ring, spokes, bay, landing platform and pads — now wears the hull-plate texture tiled every 10 metres instead of one stretched skin, so panel seams and bolts are legible at walking distance where there used to be a blur.
The platform can be dressed with the exterior kit (trusses, tanks, radiators, masts, dishes, solar wings, docking collars, an airlock) — placed on the server by the architect; nothing to download for it.

v0.224.0 2026-10-04 Linux (.run) **A real Sparrow.** The starter ship's hull was the August blockout under a coat of paint. It is now a proper airframe at ~4,000 triangles: a smooth lofted fuselage with a radome and chin sensor, framed canopy, flank intakes, panel seams and hatches, thicker wings with leading-edge extensions and tip pods, a vented engine block, nacelles with inner nozzle cones, RCS clusters, antennae, and landing gear with knees, feet and bay recesses — painted in the same worn grey-blue with orange accents. Same size, same gear clips, same fitting sockets: everything that used the old ship still fits.

Platform	File	Size	SHA-256
Linux (.run)	pax-helios-v0.224.0-linux-x86_64.run	190.4 MB	9be20ea3202ccbf7…

What changed

**A real Sparrow.** The starter ship's hull was the August blockout under a coat of paint. It is now a proper airframe at ~4,000 triangles: a smooth lofted fuselage with a radome and chin sensor, framed canopy, flank intakes, panel seams and hatches, thicker wings with leading-edge extensions and tip pods, a vented engine block, nacelles with inner nozzle cones, RCS clusters, antennae, and landing gear with knees, feet and bay recesses — painted in the same worn grey-blue with orange accents. Same size, same gear clips, same fitting sockets: everything that used the old ship still fits.
On foot: the flight HUD stays out of the way while you walk.

v0.223.0 2026-10-03 Linux (.run) **You can actually land on the station.** Against the station's structure the ship's collision hull is now 2 m instead of 8 m, so it settles with its belly just off the deck rather than hovering 6–7 m above it.

Platform	File	Size	SHA-256
Linux (.run)	pax-helios-v0.223.0-linux-x86_64.run	194.7 MB	d034a02c86b444b1…

What changed

**You can actually land on the station.** Against the station's structure the ship's collision hull is now 2 m instead of 8 m, so it settles with its belly just off the deck rather than hovering 6–7 m above it.
**Stepping out takes you down to the deck.** If the platform (or a placed floor) is up to 12 m below your ship when you press E, you step down onto it instead of floating at your ship's height.
Walking is brisker: 3.5 m/s, 7.5 m/s running.

v0.222.0 2026-10-03 Linux (.run)Windows (.zip) **No more invisible wall around the Anchorage.** Stations used to be a 400 m sphere you bounced off — which kept you out of the hangar bay and off the landing platform for good ("a barrier 7 m from the deck"). The Anchorage now collides as its real shape: spindle, ring, bay walls and deck, landing platform and pads. Fly into the bay; set down on the platform.

Platform	File	Size	SHA-256
Linux (.run)	pax-helios-v0.222.0-linux-x86_64.run	194.7 MB	020aeddf42cec7eb…
Windows (.zip)	pax-helios-v0.222.0-windows-x86_64.zip	183.5 MB	8672eda16fc59002…

What changed

**No more invisible wall around the Anchorage.** Stations used to be a 400 m sphere you bounced off — which kept you out of the hangar bay and off the landing platform for good ("a barrier 7 m from the deck"). The Anchorage now collides as its real shape: spindle, ring, bay walls and deck, landing platform and pads. Fly into the bay; set down on the platform.
**On foot, the station is the floor.** Step out beside the platform and you stand on the actual deck, walk up onto the pads, and can't walk into the spindle.
The concourse needs re-placing once (it was 1.25 m into the deck; the pilot's command is in INTERIORS.md).

v0.221.0 2026-10-03 Linux (.run)Windows (.zip) **Stations are the authored Anchorage now.** Every station in a system was still drawn as the grey cylinder-and-cube placeholder from the first weeks; the painted Anchorage model (ring, spokes, hangar bay, landing platform, beacon) only ever appeared in the hangar. It is in the world now, 393 m across, ring turning. Dock at it and land on its outer platform.

Platform	File	Size	SHA-256
Linux (.run)	pax-helios-v0.221.0-linux-x86_64.run	194.7 MB	dbaace5ab8605973…
Windows (.zip)	pax-helios-v0.221.0-windows-x86_64.zip	183.5 MB	7220339d04b7b00b…

What changed

**Stations are the authored Anchorage now.** Every station in a system was still drawn as the grey cylinder-and-cube placeholder from the first weeks; the painted Anchorage model (ring, spokes, hangar bay, landing platform, beacon) only ever appeared in the hangar. It is in the world now, 393 m across, ring turning. Dock at it and land on its outer platform.
Pairs with server v20261003.0.9: props placed beside a station are stored relative to it, so station furniture (the concourse) sits where it was built.

v0.220.0 2026-10-03 Linux (.run)Windows (.zip) **Out of the chair lands on the floor that is there.** When you press E beside a placed floor — a concourse's tiles, a corridor's deck — you step down (or up) onto it instead of hovering at your ship's belly height. Park within about three metres of a floor's level and the deck under your boots is that floor. Away from any floor it is still the pad plane at your ship's belly.

Platform	File	Size	SHA-256
Linux (.run)	pax-helios-v0.220.0-linux-x86_64.run	194.7 MB	b089e1a881e20f0d…
Windows (.zip)	pax-helios-v0.220.0-windows-x86_64.zip	183.5 MB	3a2bd3d9c1a6df3c…

What changed

**Out of the chair lands on the floor that is there.** When you press E beside a placed floor — a concourse's tiles, a corridor's deck — you step down (or up) onto it instead of hovering at your ship's belly height. Park within about three metres of a floor's level and the deck under your boots is that floor. Away from any floor it is still the pad plane at your ship's belly.
Groundwork for the Anchorage concourse (a dock-side interior built from the kit on the exterior landing platform), which the architect places on the server; nothing to download for it.

v0.219.0 2026-10-03 Linux (.run)Windows (.zip) **Station furniture stays put.** Anything the architect places within 2 km of a station now rides that station: a corridor built beside the Anchorage keeps pace with it around the star instead of drifting off at orbital speed. Needs the matching server (v20261003.0.7); older props keep their old anchoring until re-placed.

Platform	File	Size	SHA-256
Linux (.run)	pax-helios-v0.219.0-linux-x86_64.run	194.7 MB	39a4d27a4204a308…
Windows (.zip)	pax-helios-v0.219.0-windows-x86_64.zip	183.5 MB	11a0f91f8e2a9219…

What changed

**Station furniture stays put.** Anything the architect places within 2 km of a station now rides that station: a corridor built beside the Anchorage keeps pace with it around the star instead of drifting off at orbital speed. Needs the matching server (v20261003.0.7); older props keep their old anchoring until re-placed.

v0.218.0 2026-10-03 Linux (.run)Windows (.zip) **Leave the ship.** Docked at a station, press **E**: you step down on the pad beside your ship, on foot. Mouse looks, WASD walks, SHIFT runs, SPACE jumps, **E** again climbs back aboard (undocking also puts you back in the chair). Your ship is solid, and so is every kit piece placed nearby — walls, stairs, railings, crates — so a corridor the architect has built at a station can be walked through.

Platform	File	Size	SHA-256
Linux (.run)	pax-helios-v0.218.0-linux-x86_64.run	194.7 MB	39d1945766f88a93…
Windows (.zip)	pax-helios-v0.218.0-windows-x86_64.zip	183.5 MB	792ea45a660aca9d…

What changed

**Leave the ship.** Docked at a station, press **E**: you step down on the pad beside your ship, on foot. Mouse looks, WASD walks, SHIFT runs, SPACE jumps, **E** again climbs back aboard (undocking also puts you back in the chair). Your ship is solid, and so is every kit piece placed nearby — walls, stairs, railings, crates — so a corridor the architect has built at a station can be walked through.
First version, on purpose: the pad is a flat deck at your ship's belly, the station's own structure is not solid yet, and planet pads are not walkable yet. The dock menu steps aside while you are out and comes back when you climb in.

v0.217.2 2026-10-03 Linux (.run)Windows (.zip) **Walk the kit.** In the hangar (`--hangar=<dir>`), press **G** to step out of the camera onto the deck: RMB looks, WASD walks, SHIFT runs, SPACE jumps, G goes back to the camera. The kit pieces are solid — walls stop you, stairs climb, railings hold — because every kit piece now ships with its collision volumes (the boxes it was built from) beside the model. Try `--hangar=meshy/out/kit_interior_test` or any folder of `kit_*` pieces. This is the first walkable interior; the game's "out of the chair" comes next.

Platform	File	Size	SHA-256
Linux (.run)	pax-helios-v0.217.2-linux-x86_64.run	194.7 MB	1232dc6a483a8411…
Windows (.zip)	pax-helios-v0.217.2-windows-x86_64.zip	183.5 MB	87f8dac4c472b6a4…

What changed

**Walk the kit.** In the hangar (`--hangar=<dir>`), press **G** to step out of the camera onto the deck: RMB looks, WASD walks, SHIFT runs, SPACE jumps, G goes back to the camera. The kit pieces are solid — walls stop you, stairs climb, railings hold — because every kit piece now ships with its collision volumes (the boxes it was built from) beside the model. Try `--hangar=meshy/out/kit_interior_test` or any folder of `kit_*` pieces. This is the first walkable interior; the game's "out of the chair" comes next.
**Twelve station exterior pieces** in the architect's palette, on a 10 m module: hull plate (plain and with a viewport), straight truss and truss node, docking collar, airlock, antenna mast, sensor dish, solar wing, fuel tank, radiator, thruster pod. Painted in the station's weathered light-grey plating with orange docking hardware.

v0.216.0 2026-10-03 Linux (.run)Windows (.zip) **Your ship has a surface now.** The Sparrow's hull, wings, nacelles and gear are painted: grey-blue plating with panel lines, orange wing stripes, scuffed leading edges, soot behind the engines. Gear clips, nav lights, thruster glow and the canopy are unchanged.

Platform	File	Size	SHA-256
Linux (.run)	pax-helios-v0.216.0-linux-x86_64.run	167.2 MB	97d539eee77e5e76…
Windows (.zip)	pax-helios-v0.216.0-windows-x86_64.zip	156.2 MB	caebf5f408f6f3f4…

What changed

**Your ship has a surface now.** The Sparrow's hull, wings, nacelles and gear are painted: grey-blue plating with panel lines, orange wing stripes, scuffed leading edges, soot behind the engines. Gear clips, nav lights, thruster glow and the canopy are unchanged.
**So does home.** The Anchorage's core, habitat ring, spokes, bay and pads carry weathered station plating with orange collars; the ring windows, bay glow and pad lights still glow.
The shapes are the same as before — this release is paint, not geometry.

v0.215.0 2026-10-03 Linux (.run)Windows (.zip) **Six more interior props** in the architect's palette: an operator console, a cargo crate, a crew locker, a bunk, a caged wall lamp and a deck ladder — the things that make a corridor a place. Same worn grey-blue house style as the kits in v0.214.0.

Platform	File	Size	SHA-256
Linux (.run)	pax-helios-v0.215.0-linux-x86_64.run	156.2 MB	cea50b2e1759ba7c…
Windows (.zip)	pax-helios-v0.215.0-windows-x86_64.zip	145.2 MB	c19f65871c34f688…

What changed

**Six more interior props** in the architect's palette: an operator console, a cargo crate, a crew locker, a bunk, a caged wall lamp and a deck ladder — the things that make a corridor a place. Same worn grey-blue house style as the kits in v0.214.0.
**Windows zip is back.** v0.214.0 shipped Linux-only because the build box was down; this release has both.

v0.214.0 2026-10-03 Linux (.run) **22 new props in the architect's palette.** Two kits of industrial hardware: props (floor grate, five pipe shapes with bolted flanges, equipment box, generator, junction box, wall panel) and station interior pieces on a 2 m grid (floor and ceiling tiles, corridor straight and T, wall panel, door frame and sliding door, window wall, light strip, stairs, railing, bulkhead ring). All are exact metres — a corridor section is 2.0 m wide and 2.6 m tall — with worn grey-blue painted-steel surfaces, rust at the bolts, and a yellow door.

Platform	File	Size	SHA-256
Linux (.run)	pax-helios-v0.214.0-linux-x86_64.run	144.0 MB	a7be17263aa69efb…

What changed

**22 new props in the architect's palette.** Two kits of industrial hardware: props (floor grate, five pipe shapes with bolted flanges, equipment box, generator, junction box, wall panel) and station interior pieces on a 2 m grid (floor and ceiling tiles, corridor straight and T, wall panel, door frame and sliding door, window wall, light strip, stairs, railing, bulkhead ring). All are exact metres — a corridor section is 2.0 m wide and 2.6 m tall — with worn grey-blue painted-steel surfaces, rust at the bolts, and a yellow door.
**Placing them:** `--architect=<token>`, F9, then `[` and `]` cycle through the palette; the kit names start with `kit_`. Interior pieces snap on 2 m centres with their walking surface at the placement height.
**Bigger download.** The kit textures add about 50 MB to the install.

v0.213.0 2026-10-01 Linux (.run) **Point away from a star and cruise.** Inside a star's hard lock the cruise drive now engages if your nose points away from the star (within about 60° of straight out), and it keeps running until you are clear. Pointed at the star it is still refused. A big star's lock is over 13,000 km deep; you no longer have to fly that at manoeuvre speed.

Platform	File	Size	SHA-256
Linux (.run)	pax-helios-v0.213.0-linux-x86_64.run	94.6 MB	97b7b8a32e99bf38…

What changed

**Point away from a star and cruise.** Inside a star's hard lock the cruise drive now engages if your nose points away from the star (within about 60° of straight out), and it keeps running until you are clear. Pointed at the star it is still refused. A big star's lock is over 13,000 km deep; you no longer have to fly that at manoeuvre speed.
**Jump arrivals clear of the star.** Jumping into a system with no station used to drop you at the star's centre, deep inside its lock. You now arrive 8 star radii out, facing the star.

v0.212.0 2026-10-01 Linux (.run) Each press of the indicators key (I by default) steps through: 1. **This system**: circles on this system's planets, moons and stations. 2. **All**: those plus the star circles (green in jump range, yellow where you jumped from). 3. **Jump range**: only the star circles. 4. **Off**. A toast names each step. Pointing at a star or body still names it in every mode.

Platform	File	Size	SHA-256
Linux (.run)	pax-helios-v0.212.0-linux-x86_64.run	94.6 MB	e88ee900f3302ca4…

What changed

Each press of the indicators key (I by default) steps through: 1. **This system**: circles on this system's planets, moons and stations. 2. **All**: those plus the star circles (green in jump range, yellow where you jumped from). 3. **Jump range**: only the star circles. 4. **Off**. A toast names each step. Pointing at a star or body still names it in every mode.

v0.211.0 2026-10-01 Linux (.run) Stars within jump range now wear **green** circles (bright: fuel aboard; dim: in range, fuel short).

Platform	File	Size	SHA-256
Linux (.run)	pax-helios-v0.211.0-linux-x86_64.run	94.6 MB	2a8e904a52e5598c…

What changed

Stars within jump range now wear **green** circles (bright: fuel aboard; dim: in range, fuel short).
The star you last jumped from wears a **yellow** circle, even when it is now out of range, so you can always find the way back.
The circles follow the **I** key (object locators): hidden when locators are off, shown when on. Pointing at a star still names it either way, and J still jumps to it.

v0.210.0 2026-10-01 Linux (.run) Every star within your ship's jump range now wears an **orange circle** on the sky, the faint ones too. Bright orange: the fuel is aboard. Dim orange: in range, but the hold is short of fuel for it.

Platform	File	Size	SHA-256
Linux (.run)	pax-helios-v0.210.0-linux-x86_64.run	94.6 MB	288f5c67b6852527…

What changed

Every star within your ship's jump range now wears an **orange circle** on the sky, the faint ones too. Bright orange: the fuel is aboard. Dim orange: in range, but the hold is short of fuel for it.
Any circled star can be picked by putting it on the nose; it is named, with distance and class, and **J** mass-jumps to it.
A star named on the nose that is beyond your drive now says "beyond jump range" instead of offering the jump.

v0.209.1 2026-10-01 Linux (.run) The bright stars in your sky are real neighbouring systems, and now they introduce themselves. Hold one on your nose and the cockpit shows its name, distance and star class. Press J (your jump key) to send the mass drive at it; the server checks your drive's range and fuel and tells you if it's out of reach.

Platform	File	Size	SHA-256
Linux (.run)	pax-helios-v0.209.1-linux-x86_64.run	94.6 MB	8eac81327b40aa3e…

What changed

The bright stars in your sky are real neighbouring systems, and now they introduce themselves. Hold one on your nose and the cockpit shows its name, distance and star class. Press J (your jump key) to send the mass drive at it; the server checks your drive's range and fuel and tells you if it's out of reach.
Stars aren't places you can cruise to: travel between systems is by mass drive jump or gate.

v0.208.1 2026-10-01 Linux (.run) The galaxy band's clouds now carry a little colour: reddish glowing gas, bluish dust, and purple where they overlap.

Platform	File	Size	SHA-256
Linux (.run)	pax-helios-v0.208.1-linux-x86_64.run	94.6 MB	fa789f9731ab4280…

What changed

The galaxy band's clouds now carry a little colour: reddish glowing gas, bluish dust, and purple where they overlap.

v0.208.0 2026-10-01 Linux (.run) The galaxy band in the sky is dimmer and broken up by dark dust lanes, so it glows between patches of darkness instead of washing out the sky.

Platform	File	Size	SHA-256
Linux (.run)	pax-helios-v0.208.0-linux-x86_64.run	94.6 MB	896634b306bc9ab3…

What changed

The galaxy band in the sky is dimmer and broken up by dark dust lanes, so it glows between patches of darkness instead of washing out the sky.
A system's star no longer hangs a huge haze across the view: the glow now stays close around its bright disc.

v0.207.5 2026-10-01 Linux (.run) Fixed: while docked, the cockpit's dash text (SHIP, NAV, TARGET panels) and the station's name label showed through the docked menu. The cockpit and the nav marker are now hidden while the docked menu is open, and the nav marker no longer appears in the hangar either.

Platform	File	Size	SHA-256
Linux (.run)	pax-helios-v0.207.5-linux-x86_64.run	94.6 MB	297938d106f24de1…

What changed

Fixed: while docked, the cockpit's dash text (SHIP, NAV, TARGET panels) and the station's name label showed through the docked menu. The cockpit and the nav marker are now hidden while the docked menu is open, and the nav marker no longer appears in the hangar either.

v0.207.4 2026-10-01 Linux (.run) The docked menu is now nearly opaque, so the station behind it no longer shows through.

Platform	File	Size	SHA-256
Linux (.run)	pax-helios-v0.207.4-linux-x86_64.run	94.6 MB	d5d36a3f6b30f9e9…

What changed

The docked menu is now nearly opaque, so the station behind it no longer shows through.

v0.207.3 2026-10-01 Linux (.run) Fixed: the docked menu (market, shipyard, fitting) sat too low and ran off the bottom of the screen. It's now centred. While docked, the status panel steps aside to make room, and your credits are shown in the menu's header instead.

Platform	File	Size	SHA-256
Linux (.run)	pax-helios-v0.207.3-linux-x86_64.run	94.6 MB	b2ac96f9107d5780…

What changed

Fixed: the docked menu (market, shipyard, fitting) sat too low and ran off the bottom of the screen. It's now centred. While docked, the status panel steps aside to make room, and your credits are shown in the menu's header instead.

v0.207.2 2026-10-01 Linux (.run) Fixed: going to the hangar after playing (Esc, Exit to Login, Hangar) showed leftovers from flight on top of the hangar: the flight instruments, planet and facility labels, the nav marker, and the game's control hints over the hangar's own.

Platform	File	Size	SHA-256
Linux (.run)	pax-helios-v0.207.2-linux-x86_64.run	94.6 MB	b7e3ee358b8b03ab…

What changed

Fixed: going to the hangar after playing (Esc, Exit to Login, Hangar) showed leftovers from flight on top of the hangar: the flight instruments, planet and facility labels, the nav marker, and the game's control hints over the hangar's own.

v0.207.1 2026-10-01 Linux (.run) The launcher now passes its extra options on to the game. To test a dive level, start the launcher with the level you want, e.g. `pax-helios-launcher --dive-level=shake-001.pdl`, press PLAY, fly within 15 km of a facility and press Enter to dive.

Platform	File	Size	SHA-256
Linux (.run)	pax-helios-v0.207.1-linux-x86_64.run	94.6 MB	9370ce0469a18082…

What changed

The launcher now passes its extra options on to the game. To test a dive level, start the launcher with the level you want, e.g. `pax-helios-launcher --dive-level=shake-001.pdl`, press PLAY, fly within 15 km of a facility and press Enter to dive.

v0.207.0 2026-10-01 Linux (.run) Hand-built mine dives now play like they do in pax-descent's editor:

Platform	File	Size	SHA-256
Linux (.run)	pax-helios-v0.207.0-linux-x86_64.run	94.6 MB	386ffb65f6ed62a2…

What changed

Hand-built mine dives now play like they do in pax-descent's editor:
Doors work. They slide open when you fly near (or when you touch or shoot them, depending on how they were placed), and coloured locks need the matching key. Until now doors were ignored and you flew straight through them.
Keys (red, blue, gold) are picked up by flying through them; the status panel shows which ones you hold.
Laser pickups add a bolt to each shot, up to four. Shield pickups repair 40 hull.
The EXIT ends the dive. Destroy every robot first for the full reward and to restore the facility; leave earlier and you're paid for your kills only and the facility stays compromised.
Missile and energy pickups don't appear yet; they'll come with ships that carry missiles and energy.

v0.206.0 2026-10-01 Linux (.run) Dive levels now come from a catalog (assets/levels/catalog.txt). Adding a hand-built level means saving it into that folder and adding one line; no code change. A level can also be pinned to one particular facility as a landmark.

Platform	File	Size	SHA-256
Linux (.run)	pax-helios-v0.206.0-linux-x86_64.run	94.6 MB	43d5f5c8b91797ec…

What changed

Dive levels now come from a catalog (assets/levels/catalog.txt). Adding a hand-built level means saving it into that folder and adding one line; no code change. A level can also be pinned to one particular facility as a landmark.
Which level a mine uses is now stable: adding new levels later moves only the mines that switch to the new one, instead of reshuffling every mine. This build reshuffles mines once to the new scheme, so a mine you've dived before may have a different interior.

v0.205.0 2026-10-01 Linux (.run) Fixed: you could be trapped in the entry hall of a wreck dive (like Latch Point I). The corridors leading out were drawn as solid walls, and even where you could see a gap the ship couldn't fit through the join, so you bounced back unless you rammed it at high speed. Corridors are now wider, the joins are flyable, and the openings are actually drawn as openings. The same fix applies to ghost-op interiors, where locked bulkheads still show as solid red walls.

Platform	File	Size	SHA-256
Linux (.run)	pax-helios-v0.205.0-linux-x86_64.run	94.6 MB	17ccd48948ff480a…

What changed

Fixed: you could be trapped in the entry hall of a wreck dive (like Latch Point I). The corridors leading out were drawn as solid walls, and even where you could see a gap the ship couldn't fit through the join, so you bounced back unless you rammed it at high speed. Corridors are now wider, the joins are flyable, and the openings are actually drawn as openings. The same fix applies to ghost-op interiors, where locked bulkheads still show as solid red walls.
Reminder: a wreck dive is finished by destroying every robot and flying back to the entry beacon, which turns green. Your Dock / Abort Run key (G by default) leaves a dive at any time with no penalty.

v0.204.4 2026-10-01 Linux (.run) Fixed: you couldn't land on small moons that orbit close to their planet (like Dogwatch IIIa); you'd get bounced off around 10 km up. The game kept you in the planet's frame, so the moon was effectively flying into you at about 2 km/s. Moons now take over your frame inside their own sphere of influence, so you descend and land on them normally, with the altimeter working.

Platform	File	Size	SHA-256
Linux (.run)	pax-helios-v0.204.4-linux-x86_64.run	94.5 MB	d68b4c41576981da…

What changed

Fixed: you couldn't land on small moons that orbit close to their planet (like Dogwatch IIIa); you'd get bounced off around 10 km up. The game kept you in the planet's frame, so the moon was effectively flying into you at about 2 km/s. Moons now take over your frame inside their own sphere of influence, so you descend and land on them normally, with the altimeter working.

v0.204.3 2026-10-01 Linux (.run) Fixed: you could get stuck on big, heavy airless worlds (like Dogwatch V). Climbing out of surface cruise dropped you back into normal flight, because those worlds' hard lock sits higher than surface cruise could climb. Surface cruise now climbs to just above the hard lock, wherever it is, before handing you to cruise.

Platform	File	Size	SHA-256
Linux (.run)	pax-helios-v0.204.3-linux-x86_64.run	94.5 MB	09bae9f4ec21b884…

What changed

Fixed: you could get stuck on big, heavy airless worlds (like Dogwatch V). Climbing out of surface cruise dropped you back into normal flight, because those worlds' hard lock sits higher than surface cruise could climb. Surface cruise now climbs to just above the hard lock, wherever it is, before handing you to cruise.
The status panel now shows how to leave while you're in surface cruise: hold THRUST UP (R) past the shown height to climb out into cruise.

v0.204.1 2026-09-30 Linux (.run) Fix: a refused login (wrong password) followed by a good one left the client stuck at CONNECTING... with the server never hearing from it again. The first attempt's socket reader was left alive and later marked the new connection closed; it is now shut down and joined before the link is reused.

Platform	File	Size	SHA-256
Linux (.run)	pax-helios-v0.204.1-linux-x86_64.run	94.5 MB	204610f11303e8cf…

What changed

Fix: a refused login (wrong password) followed by a good one left the client stuck at CONNECTING... with the server never hearing from it again. The first attempt's socket reader was left alive and later marked the new connection closed; it is now shut down and joined before the link is reused.

v0.204.0 2026-09-30 Linux (.run) `pax-helios --say="text" --voice=Leo --wav=out.wav` speaks a line with the in-game engine from the command line, no window: audition a voice, check how a name is pronounced.

Platform	File	Size	SHA-256
Linux (.run)	pax-helios-v0.204.0-linux-x86_64.run	94.5 MB	86873c8e9227d8ea…

What changed

`pax-helios --say="text" --voice=Leo --wav=out.wav` speaks a line with the in-game engine from the command line, no window: audition a voice, check how a name is pronounced.
Settings → COPILOT VOICE now cycles the voices this machine actually has, including any you add to voices.bin.

v0.203.0 2026-09-30 Linux (.run) Settings is now three tabs (CONTROLS, GAME & DISPLAY, AUDIO & COPILOT), so every key binding is on screen at once instead of running off the bottom.

Platform	File	Size	SHA-256
Linux (.run)	pax-helios-v0.203.0-linux-x86_64.run	94.5 MB	0033ae048fadec4a…

What changed

Settings is now three tabs (CONTROLS, GAME & DISPLAY, AUDIO & COPILOT), so every key binding is on screen at once instead of running off the bottom.

v0.202.0 2026-09-30 Linux (.run) The copilot follows your probe swarm: it announces a probe dropped at departure, one coming home (with how many are aboard and how many still out), one lost or stranded, and on entering a system where any are out it says what is inbound, when, and what sits deployed where. A quiet change in the swarm (a probe starting a hop) gets a short status line.

Platform	File	Size	SHA-256
Linux (.run)	pax-helios-v0.202.0-linux-x86_64.run	94.5 MB	cc4e272f41674cd4…

What changed

The copilot follows your probe swarm: it announces a probe dropped at departure, one coming home (with how many are aboard and how many still out), one lost or stranded, and on entering a system where any are out it says what is inbound, when, and what sits deployed where. A quiet change in the swarm (a probe starting a hop) gets a short status line.

v0.201.0 2026-09-29 Linux (.run) The copilot's voice now ships with the game: no install, no setup. Eight voices (Leo, Bruno, Hugo, Jasper, Bella, Luna, Rosie, Kiki) under Settings → COPILOT VOICE; a switch is instant.

Platform	File	Size	SHA-256
Linux (.run)	pax-helios-v0.201.0-linux-x86_64.run	94.5 MB	ff1f2cb7126eee1a…

What changed

The copilot's voice now ships with the game: no install, no setup. Eight voices (Leo, Bruno, Hugo, Jasper, Bella, Luna, Rosie, Kiki) under Settings → COPILOT VOICE; a switch is instant.
The voice is rendered in-game (Kitten TTS Nano through onnxruntime, both permissively licensed), so entering a system, a survey coming aboard, arriving at a world and every warning are spoken with nothing else running.
Names are pronounced by the game itself: the Core's authored names, catalog designations spelled out ("P X Q, four five one, c"), and made-up names by rule.
Machines that had the separate pax-speech sidecar keep it for the Ljspeech voice; everywhere else the in-game engine is used.

v0.200.2 2026-09-29 Linux (.run) The copilot voice sidecar is found at ~/.local/bin/pax-speech even when the launcher was started without it on the PATH.

Platform	File	Size	SHA-256
Linux (.run)	pax-helios-v0.200.2-linux-x86_64.run	30.2 MB	fed9ad3d705b3583…

What changed

The copilot voice sidecar is found at ~/.local/bin/pax-speech even when the launcher was started without it on the PATH.

v0.200.1 2026-09-29 Linux (.run) The ship computer speaks. Entering a system it names the star, the gates and the stations; once one of your probes comes home with that system's sounding it reads the survey (planets by kind, moons, which worlds hold air or seas, belts, mines, wrecks, sealed ships, machine sites), and it announces the world you arrive at. It also calls out contacts, pirates, attacks, hull and police warnings, entry heat and PULL UP. Every line shows on the glass and in the cockpit COMMS panel.

Platform	File	Size	SHA-256
Linux (.run)	pax-helios-v0.200.1-linux-x86_64.run	30.2 MB	f5add2aff7f3d2ac…

What changed

The ship computer speaks. Entering a system it names the star, the gates and the stations; once one of your probes comes home with that system's sounding it reads the survey (planets by kind, moons, which worlds hold air or seas, belts, mines, wrecks, sealed ships, machine sites), and it announces the world you arrive at. It also calls out contacts, pirates, attacks, hull and police warnings, entry heat and PULL UP. Every line shows on the glass and in the cockpit COMMS panel.
A voice for it: the client looks for a `pax-speech` sidecar (see tools/speech in the repo; not bundled yet). Without one the copilot is text only.
New rows in Settings: COPILOT VOICE VOLUME, COPILOT MUTED (text stays), COPILOT SAYS (everything / alerts + events / alerts only) and COPILOT VOICE, which swaps voices live.
The computer varies its wording from a reviewed phrase bank, so a briefing does not read the same way every time. Warnings never vary.
Servers now remember which systems each pilot's probes have sounded; that is what the computer is allowed to describe.

v0.195.0 2026-09-29 Linux (.run) ALTITUDE ZONE ring: planets and moons you're heading for, or flying near, now show a thin cyan circle around them marking the altitude zone. Once you cross it, the flight display and altimeter come on. It appears once the ring is big enough to see and disappears once you're inside.

Platform	File	Size	SHA-256
Linux (.run)	pax-helios-v0.195.0-linux-x86_64.run	30.2 MB	9abebb0cc30705d5…

What changed

ALTITUDE ZONE ring: planets and moons you're heading for, or flying near, now show a thin cyan circle around them marking the altitude zone. Once you cross it, the flight display and altimeter come on. It appears once the ring is big enough to see and disappears once you're inside.
Steep warning, Elite-style: on the flight display, the horizon line and the lower half of the pitch ladder turn amber, then red, when you're coming in too steep, with TOO STEEP or PULL UP beside the pitch marker. Over worlds with air during a descent, it reflects the entry forecast (and warns TOO SHALLOW if you'd skip out).

v0.194.0 2026-09-29 Linux (.run) Airless planets and moons, flown with the navigation computer.

Platform	File	Size	SHA-256
Linux (.run)	pax-helios-v0.194.0-linux-x86_64.run	30.2 MB	56693ae2626feee4…

What changed

Airless planets and moons, flown with the navigation computer.
Automated descent: at a world's vista, press cruise (C) again and the drive flies you down itself, gliding along your heading (or straight to your surface waypoint) to 5 km above the ground. Where you point the nose no longer matters for the descent.
Surface cruise: at 5 km the drive doesn't let go. It holds its height over the terrain, climbing ahead of ridges, and carries you across the surface. Steer with the nose, set speed with the throttle (up to 3 km/s at 5 km, faster higher), and raise or lower the height with thrust up/down (R/F) between 1 and 15 km. Hold R at 15 km to climb out into normal cruise, or press C to drop into normal flight. Pressing C while flying low over an airless world also starts surface cruise.
Auto-land (F6, below 2 km): sets you down right below, or on the nearest level ground within 100 m. It levels the ship, drops the gear and lands. If there's no level ground nearby it hovers and keeps looking while you move around. Touching the throttle or strafe controls, or F6 again, hands control back.
Worlds with atmospheres are unchanged for now.

v0.193.1 2026-09-28 Linux (.run) Atmospheric entries are much more forgiving: at orbital speed you can now come in at up to about 35 degrees below the horizon and stay IN CORRIDOR. 45-60 degrees runs hot, and even a vertical entry only costs shields. Coming in fast (full cruise throttle) still punishes steep entries, so speed is now the dangerous lever.

Platform	File	Size	SHA-256
Linux (.run)	pax-helios-v0.193.1-linux-x86_64.run	30.2 MB	6641e889f0e5847e…

What changed

Atmospheric entries are much more forgiving: at orbital speed you can now come in at up to about 35 degrees below the horizon and stay IN CORRIDOR. 45-60 degrees runs hot, and even a vertical entry only costs shields. Coming in fast (full cruise throttle) still punishes steep entries, so speed is now the dangerous lever.

v0.193.0 2026-09-28 Linux (.run) Take-off has its own stage: the ASCENT. Press cruise (C) while landed, or while inside a world's hard lock, and the drive climbs you straight up. Flight assist holds the climb and the drive pushes with it, gently near the ground and faster as you rise, and slowly enough through air that the hull stays cool. You keep control of your attitude.

Platform	File	Size	SHA-256
Linux (.run)	pax-helios-v0.193.0-linux-x86_64.run	30.2 MB	7166f7f290a66ee6…

What changed

Take-off has its own stage: the ASCENT. Press cruise (C) while landed, or while inside a world's hard lock, and the drive climbs you straight up. Flight assist holds the climb and the drive pushes with it, gently near the ground and faster as you rise, and slowly enough through air that the hull stays cool. You keep control of your attitude.
Once you're clear of the hard lock, cruise engages on its own along your nose, so point it where you want to go. The world you just left won't stop you at its vista on the way out.
About 40 seconds to clear an Earth-size airless world and about a minute and a half through Earth-like air. Press C again or switch flight assist off to cancel.

v0.192.0 2026-09-28 Linux (.run) Parking orbits. Press F5 (PARK IN ORBIT, rebindable) near a planet or moon. From cruise, the drive drops you onto a circular orbit at your altitude, heading the way your nose points along the horizon. In normal flight, it keeps the orbit you're already on, or circles you if you aren't on one.

Platform	File	Size	SHA-256
Linux (.run)	pax-helios-v0.192.0-linux-x86_64.run	30.2 MB	a7bb6450342e7bc5…

What changed

Parking orbits. Press F5 (PARK IN ORBIT, rebindable) near a planet or moon. From cruise, the drive drops you onto a circular orbit at your altitude, heading the way your nose points along the horizon. In normal flight, it keeps the orbit you're already on, or circles you if you aren't on one.
A parked ship is held exactly on its orbit, with flight assist off; the status panel shows ORBIT with the low and high points and the period. Log out in orbit and you come back where the orbit has carried you.
To leave, fire any thruster (you're then flying the orbit yourself, so a backwards burn brings you down), engage cruise, or press F5 again. Flight assist (Z) also leaves orbit, but it will start braking away your orbital speed.
The lowest orbit is 100 km over worlds with air, and just clear of the mountains over airless ones.

v0.191.0 2026-09-28 Linux (.run) Entry heating is real. Coming into a world's air, your hull soaks up heat, shown on the flight display as HULL n / 1500 K. Past 1500 K your shields burn first, then your hull, and a hull burned to nothing loses the ship (zone rebuy, you wake up docked).

Platform	File	Size	SHA-256
Linux (.run)	pax-helios-v0.191.0-linux-x86_64.run	30.2 MB	96c3f910e291a58f…

What changed

Entry heating is real. Coming into a world's air, your hull soaks up heat, shown on the flight display as HULL n / 1500 K. Past 1500 K your shields burn first, then your hull, and a hull burned to nothing loses the ship (zone rebuy, you wake up docked).
The ENTRY row now simulates your entry ahead of time and tells you what it will do: IN CORRIDOR, HOT, SHIELDS WILL BURN, HULL WILL BURN, LETHAL, SKIPS OUT or IMPACT, with the peak temperature. Adjust your pitch until it's green. As a rule of thumb, at orbital speed 2-8 degrees below the horizon is safe, steeper hurts, and coming in faster narrows it.
During a hot entry the plasma around the hull takes your thrusters' grip (PLASMA - GRIPS n%), so you can't simply burn the speed off in the air. If you want to come in slower, drop out of cruise above the air and brake there first.

v0.190.0 2026-09-28 Linux (.run) The mass drive now helps near the ground. With flight assist on in a world's gravity, its screen takes 70% of the pull, so hovering costs far less power: the GRIP row shows SCREEN 70%. Heavier worlds are landable too; the Sparrow's rating goes from about 1.9 g to 3.4 g, the Mule's from 1.1 g to 2.0 g.

Platform	File	Size	SHA-256
Linux (.run)	pax-helios-v0.190.0-linux-x86_64.run	30.2 MB	e80fe786ba902c5d…

What changed

The mass drive now helps near the ground. With flight assist on in a world's gravity, its screen takes 70% of the pull, so hovering costs far less power: the GRIP row shows SCREEN 70%. Heavier worlds are landable too; the Sparrow's rating goes from about 1.9 g to 3.4 g, the Mule's from 1.1 g to 2.0 g.
Below the hard lock the drive also won't let you fly into the ground: however hard you push the nose down with flight assist on, your descent is held to a safe rate that shrinks as the ground comes up, and the drive brakes if you're falling faster than that (SINK BRAKE on the GRIP row). Switch flight assist off and you're in honest free fall (FREE FALL).
(Also in this build, from v0.189.0) Landing needs ground under 15 degrees of slope and the ship within 20 degrees of level with it.

v0.188.0 2026-09-28 Linux (.run) The hard lock: close to a world (about 12 km up on an Earth-size airless world, 2 km on a small moon, at the top of the air on a world with an atmosphere) the cruise drive cannot run. It drops you there, and refuses to engage until you climb out ("HARD LOCK - <world>").

Platform	File	Size	SHA-256
Linux (.run)	pax-helios-v0.188.0-linux-x86_64.run	30.2 MB	78116f4cc989f1b6…

What changed

The hard lock: close to a world (about 12 km up on an Earth-size airless world, 2 km on a small moon, at the top of the air on a world with an atmosphere) the cruise drive cannot run. It drops you there, and refuses to engage until you climb out ("HARD LOCK - <world>").
Worlds with air now have a real entry. Near them the drive's slowest speed is orbital speed, and dropping at the top of the air leaves you at that speed along your nose — your pitch IS the entry angle. The status panel shows an ENTRY row while you descend: angle, speed and whether you're IN CORRIDOR (about 2-8 degrees below the horizon at orbital speed; coming in faster narrows it). Heating damage arrives in a later build.
Any approach toward a planet or moon now stops at its vista, whether or not it is your nav target. Press cruise again once you're there to descend.
Airless landings work as before: cruise down to the hard lock, then fly the last 12 km.

v0.187.0 2026-09-28 Linux (.run) Cruise no longer crawls past worlds you are only passing: a planet or moon slows the drive only when you are heading into it or flying close alongside. Your destination still brings you in as before.

Platform	File	Size	SHA-256
Linux (.run)	pax-helios-v0.187.0-linux-x86_64.run	30.2 MB	b8a8bb09f73f8eae…

What changed

Cruise no longer crawls past worlds you are only passing: a planet or moon slows the drive only when you are heading into it or flying close alongside. Your destination still brings you in as before.
A world between you and your nav target now bends your cruise path round it — keep the nose on the target and the drive steers the fall. The status panel says CRUISE DEFLECT <world> while it does.
Fixed: the arrival message at a landable world named the wrong key (it said K; it's your cruise key, C by default).
Fixed: hitting something while cruising could leave you tumbling at kilometres per second; you now come out of the drive at a flyable speed.

v0.186.0 2026-09-27 Linux (.run) Normal maps and metal/rough maps: models now carry their surface detail — panel seams, rivets, worn paint and the difference between painted steel and bare metal — instead of being flattened to a single value. The Sparrow ships re-exported with its full texture set.

Platform	File	Size	SHA-256
Linux (.run)	pax-helios-v0.186.0-linux-x86_64.run	30.2 MB	1ebda17a98d232b8…

What changed

Normal maps and metal/rough maps: models now carry their surface detail — panel seams, rivets, worn paint and the difference between painted steel and bare metal — instead of being flattened to a single value. The Sparrow ships re-exported with its full texture set.

v0.185.5 2026-09-27 Linux (.run) Bloom: anything bright enough now glows — engine nozzles, lamps, beacons and the sun spread light into their surroundings instead of reading as flat paint.

Platform	File	Size	SHA-256
Linux (.run)	pax-helios-v0.185.5-linux-x86_64.run	20.1 MB	99d1e2aa7f9e4b89…

What changed

Bloom: anything bright enough now glows — engine nozzles, lamps, beacons and the sun spread light into their surroundings instead of reading as flat paint.
A --gates=a,b,c option runs chosen headless gates in order, for chasing a failure that depends on what ran before it.

v0.185.4 2026-09-27 Linux (.run) Anti-aliasing: the scene renders at 4x multisampling, so struts, landing gear, antennae and grid lines no longer crawl.

Platform	File	Size	SHA-256
Linux (.run)	pax-helios-v0.185.4-linux-x86_64.run	20.1 MB	ac3887baf9731e32…

What changed

Anti-aliasing: the scene renders at 4x multisampling, so struts, landing gear, antennae and grid lines no longer crawl.
Mipmaps (from v0.185.3): textures filter properly at distance instead of shimmering.

v0.185.2 2026-09-27 Linux (.run) The hangar: a HANGAR button on the login page opens a lit room where every model in the game's folder can be looked at under the real light — walk round it, park others beside it, play its clips, read its size and triangle count. The folder is watched, so a fresh export from Blender appears within a second.

Platform	File	Size	SHA-256
Linux (.run)	pax-helios-v0.185.2-linux-x86_64.run	20.1 MB	16c2cf9a0f064344…

What changed

The hangar: a HANGAR button on the login page opens a lit room where every model in the game's folder can be looked at under the real light — walk round it, park others beside it, play its clips, read its size and triangle count. The folder is watched, so a fresh export from Blender appears within a second.
The first bought models: the textured Sparrow hull and a seated pilot.

v0.184.1 2026-09-26 Linux (.run) F4 hides the PAX HELIOS status panel in the top-left corner, and shows it again. The binding is in the settings as STATUS PANEL, rebindable like the rest. The panel comes back on its own when you next start the game.

Platform	File	Size	SHA-256
Linux (.run)	pax-helios-v0.184.1-linux-x86_64.run	8.6 MB	aacb5eb31582c9cb…

What changed

F4 hides the PAX HELIOS status panel in the top-left corner, and shows it again. The binding is in the settings as STATUS PANEL, rebindable like the rest. The panel comes back on its own when you next start the game.

v0.184.0 2026-09-25 Linux (.run) Rougher ground, smaller craters, and ejecta rays.

Platform	File	Size	SHA-256
Linux (.run)	pax-helios-v0.184.0-linux-x86_64.run	8.6 MB	d9765c6b7263a7eb…

What changed

Rougher ground, smaller craters, and ejecta rays.
The ground carries relief it never had below a 3 km wavelength: a grain of hummocks from about 400 m up to 13 km across, tens of metres tall on the highlands and gentle on the plains. It moves every mountain a little; parked ships settle onto the new ground on their next spawn, and pads may shift.
A fourth size of crater, 1 to 3 km across on an Earth-size world and half that on a moon, textures the plains between the big ones.
The youngest third of the craters throw ejecta rays: bright spokes reaching a few crater radii, patchy along their length, visible from orbit on the big basins and on the ground around the small ones.

v0.183.6 2026-09-25 Linux (.run) The ground goes dark when its sun sets. On the night side of a world, with the sun just below the horizon, crater rims and slopes tilted toward it were still lit; the world now blocks the sun for its own ground. A ship high above still sees the sun after the plain beneath it has gone dark, as it should, and a crater floor with the sun a few degrees up stays lit, as before.

Platform	File	Size	SHA-256
Linux (.run)	pax-helios-v0.183.6-linux-x86_64.run	8.6 MB	e7f1fa49cfa7183e…

What changed

The ground goes dark when its sun sets. On the night side of a world, with the sun just below the horizon, crater rims and slopes tilted toward it were still lit; the world now blocks the sun for its own ground. A ship high above still sees the sun after the plain beneath it has gone dark, as it should, and a crater floor with the sun a few degrees up stays lit, as before.

v0.183.5 2026-09-21 Linux (.run)Windows (.zip) The coloured background stars are round again — the cross shape made them look like plus signs.

Platform	File	Size	SHA-256
Linux (.run)	pax-helios-v0.183.5-linux-x86_64.run	8.6 MB	1b0b728b89d12441…
Windows (.zip)	pax-helios-v0.183.5-windows-x86_64.zip	8.1 MB	7e9b8cc253388ad4…

What changed

The coloured background stars are round again — the cross shape made them look like plus signs.
They now twinkle as well as change colour.

v0.183.4 2026-09-21 Linux (.run)Windows (.zip) The coloured background stars are now actually visible: brighter, more saturated, and drawn as small crosses rather than single points.

Platform	File	Size	SHA-256
Linux (.run)	pax-helios-v0.183.4-linux-x86_64.run	8.6 MB	bfe07d77e4942b62…
Windows (.zip)	pax-helios-v0.183.4-windows-x86_64.zip	8.1 MB	d4a9c7d2d6483a03…

What changed

The coloured background stars are now actually visible: brighter, more saturated, and drawn as small crosses rather than single points.

v0.183.3 2026-09-21 Linux (.run)Windows (.zip) A few background stars now carry colour, drifting slowly between red and white, or blue and white.

Platform	File	Size	SHA-256
Linux (.run)	pax-helios-v0.183.3-linux-x86_64.run	8.6 MB	6bc4b8119bdf42f3…
Windows (.zip)	pax-helios-v0.183.3-windows-x86_64.zip	8.1 MB	2f9e0543cf906870…

What changed

A few background stars now carry colour, drifting slowly between red and white, or blue and white.

v0.183.2 2026-09-20 Linux (.run)Windows (.zip) A handful of the background stars now twinkle.

Platform	File	Size	SHA-256
Linux (.run)	pax-helios-v0.183.2-linux-x86_64.run	8.6 MB	a284ea66f1881da4…
Windows (.zip)	pax-helios-v0.183.2-windows-x86_64.zip	8.1 MB	b79efddf6387f184…

What changed

A handful of the background stars now twinkle.

v0.183.1 2026-09-20 Linux (.run)Windows (.zip) Faint clouds of red, pink and blue now drift toward you on the login screen, behind the stars.

Platform	File	Size	SHA-256
Linux (.run)	pax-helios-v0.183.1-linux-x86_64.run	8.6 MB	6d6ef11dcec2ed07…
Windows (.zip)	pax-helios-v0.183.1-windows-x86_64.zip	8.1 MB	73857b3b97d89b0c…

What changed

Faint clouds of red, pink and blue now drift toward you on the login screen, behind the stars.

v0.183.0 2026-09-20 Linux (.run)Windows (.zip) The login screen no longer rotates. Instead the background stars drift slowly toward you while the quick streaks keep running past.

Platform	File	Size	SHA-256
Linux (.run)	pax-helios-v0.183.0-linux-x86_64.run	8.6 MB	352a4ecf1bfd163a…
Windows (.zip)	pax-helios-v0.183.0-windows-x86_64.zip	8.1 MB	cbb97a731df283d0…

What changed

The login screen no longer rotates. Instead the background stars drift slowly toward you while the quick streaks keep running past.

v0.182.4 2026-09-20 Linux (.run)Windows (.zip) The game starts fullscreen again on machines that were wrongly treated as low on memory. The test now looks at how much RAM the machine HAS, not how much happens to be free at that moment.

Platform	File	Size	SHA-256
Linux (.run)	pax-helios-v0.182.4-linux-x86_64.run	8.6 MB	13e2293156eebb4c…
Windows (.zip)	pax-helios-v0.182.4-windows-x86_64.zip	8.1 MB	f1e2cfe98cce2adf…

What changed

The game starts fullscreen again on machines that were wrongly treated as low on memory. The test now looks at how much RAM the machine HAS, not how much happens to be free at that moment.
Settings has a FULLSCREEN toggle, and it is remembered. It is refused on machines running the software-rendering profile, where the window size is what keeps the game from being killed.

v0.182.3 2026-09-20 Linux (.run)Windows (.zip) The login screen now drifts slowly forward through a field of near stars, on top of the turning sky.

Platform	File	Size	SHA-256
Linux (.run)	pax-helios-v0.182.3-linux-x86_64.run	8.6 MB	99a52395bac00517…
Windows (.zip)	pax-helios-v0.182.3-windows-x86_64.zip	8.1 MB	7a186cbf430dad46…

What changed

The login screen now drifts slowly forward through a field of near stars, on top of the turning sky.

v0.182.2 2026-09-20 Linux (.run)Windows (.zip) The login screen shows stars instead of the test zone, and the sky now turns slowly behind it.

Platform	File	Size	SHA-256
Linux (.run)	pax-helios-v0.182.2-linux-x86_64.run	8.6 MB	4ae55b565e86b913…
Windows (.zip)	pax-helios-v0.182.2-windows-x86_64.zip	8.1 MB	b8d10b467d79f9e7…

What changed

The login screen shows stars instead of the test zone, and the sky now turns slowly behind it.
Typing on the login screen no longer flies your ship. Movement keys are ignored whenever a menu is open.

v0.182.1 2026-09-20 Linux (.run)Windows (.zip) The login screen's panel now has the same purple glow as the launcher's.

Platform	File	Size	SHA-256
Linux (.run)	pax-helios-v0.182.1-linux-x86_64.run	8.6 MB	5a1e8a767922a256…
Windows (.zip)	pax-helios-v0.182.1-windows-x86_64.zip	8.1 MB	253d33e06d95fc36…

What changed

The login screen's panel now has the same purple glow as the launcher's.
The glow is thinner and brighter in both.

v0.182.0 2026-09-20 Linux (.run)Windows (.zip) The launcher's panels now sit on a purple glow, as though an LED strip were mounted behind each one.

Platform	File	Size	SHA-256
Linux (.run)	pax-helios-v0.182.0-linux-x86_64.run	8.6 MB	f7b85b981b89f145…
Windows (.zip)	pax-helios-v0.182.0-windows-x86_64.zip	8.1 MB	a6015016c25d0013…

What changed

The launcher's panels now sit on a purple glow, as though an LED strip were mounted behind each one.

v0.181.4 2026-09-20 Linux (.run)Windows (.zip) The launcher's plating uses larger diamonds and drops the lit tiles. The previous version read as busy behind the text.

Platform	File	Size	SHA-256
Linux (.run)	pax-helios-v0.181.4-linux-x86_64.run	8.6 MB	114f2584deff14f4…
Windows (.zip)	pax-helios-v0.181.4-windows-x86_64.zip	8.1 MB	7e858143130a09da…

What changed

The launcher's plating uses larger diamonds and drops the lit tiles. The previous version read as busy behind the text.

v0.181.3 2026-09-20 Linux (.run)Windows (.zip) New plating behind the launcher's panels: diamond tread with violet accents, replacing the flat panel lines.

Platform	File	Size	SHA-256
Linux (.run)	pax-helios-v0.181.3-linux-x86_64.run	8.7 MB	126d18543b2b0b28…
Windows (.zip)	pax-helios-v0.181.3-windows-x86_64.zip	8.2 MB	504bbc527132ddfa…

What changed

New plating behind the launcher's panels: diamond tread with violet accents, replacing the flat panel lines.

v0.181.1 2026-09-20 Linux (.run)Windows (.zip) The opening sound plays at half its previous maximum. If it was still loud with INTERFACE VOLUME turned down, this is the fix.

Platform	File	Size	SHA-256
Linux (.run)	pax-helios-v0.181.1-linux-x86_64.run	8.6 MB	01cc7051eaae7fda…
Windows (.zip)	pax-helios-v0.181.1-windows-x86_64.zip	8.1 MB	7596bcaaf9595a54…

What changed

The opening sound plays at half its previous maximum. If it was still loud with INTERFACE VOLUME turned down, this is the fix.
Note: the opening sound follows INTERFACE VOLUME, not EFFECTS.

v0.181.0 2026-09-20 Linux (.run)Windows (.zip) Settings has two volume levels: INTERFACE (buttons and the opening sound) and EFFECTS (the ship, the world). Each is a bar with - and +, in 5% steps, and takes effect as you press it.

Platform	File	Size	SHA-256
Linux (.run)	pax-helios-v0.181.0-linux-x86_64.run	8.6 MB	ba3ef7d5bd3d39f2…
Windows (.zip)	pax-helios-v0.181.0-windows-x86_64.zip	8.1 MB	b8ce3afe006410d4…

What changed

Settings has two volume levels: INTERFACE (buttons and the opening sound) and EFFECTS (the ship, the world). Each is a bar with - and +, in 5% steps, and takes effect as you press it.
The INTERFACE level applies to the launcher too.
Both are saved with the rest of your settings.

v0.180.3 2026-09-20 Linux (.run)Windows (.zip) Every interface sound is another 15% quieter — the opening sting as well as hover, click and back.

Platform	File	Size	SHA-256
Linux (.run)	pax-helios-v0.180.3-linux-x86_64.run	8.6 MB	44785f66de915eb8…
Windows (.zip)	pax-helios-v0.180.3-windows-x86_64.zip	8.1 MB	84cfe8dd310d72d3…

What changed

Every interface sound is another 15% quieter — the opening sting as well as hover, click and back.

v0.180.2 2026-09-20 Linux (.run)Windows (.zip) The game's opening sound on the login screen is 15% quieter.

Platform	File	Size	SHA-256
Linux (.run)	pax-helios-v0.180.2-linux-x86_64.run	8.6 MB	aa4c77ea97ac74a5…
Windows (.zip)	pax-helios-v0.180.2-windows-x86_64.zip	8.1 MB	86c88c1e0ae21d30…

What changed

The game's opening sound on the login screen is 15% quieter.

v0.180.1 2026-09-20 Linux (.run)Windows (.zip) The hover, click and back sounds are 10% quieter.

Platform	File	Size	SHA-256
Linux (.run)	pax-helios-v0.180.1-linux-x86_64.run	8.6 MB	17c6951392baf9f6…
Windows (.zip)	pax-helios-v0.180.1-windows-x86_64.zip	8.1 MB	2c012cfe4af68945…

What changed

The hover, click and back sounds are 10% quieter.

v0.180.0 2026-09-20 Linux (.run)Windows (.zip) Buttons now make a sound: one when the pointer arrives on them, one when you press them.

Platform	File	Size	SHA-256
Linux (.run)	pax-helios-v0.180.0-linux-x86_64.run	8.6 MB	af19ddb5a06800a8…
Windows (.zip)	pax-helios-v0.180.0-windows-x86_64.zip	8.1 MB	2f332afd8677d67e…

What changed

Buttons now make a sound: one when the pointer arrives on them, one when you press them.
A separate sound for anything that takes you back a level — BACK, RESUME, EXIT TO LOGIN, the CLOSE controls, and ESC where ESC dismisses rather than opens.
Hover is mixed lower than the rest on purpose: it fires whenever the pointer crosses a row, and at equal volume it would drown out the sounds that mean something.

v0.179.0 2026-09-20 Linux (.run)Windows (.zip) Added THIRD-PARTY-NOTICES.txt to the install: every library, font, sound and image in the game that somebody else made, with its licence and copyright.

Platform	File	Size	SHA-256
Linux (.run)	pax-helios-v0.179.0-linux-x86_64.run	8.6 MB	1535dde5cc2c3d2a…
Windows (.zip)	pax-helios-v0.179.0-windows-x86_64.zip	8.1 MB	ab67627f9e681bf3…

What changed

Added THIRD-PARTY-NOTICES.txt to the install: every library, font, sound and image in the game that somebody else made, with its licence and copyright.

v0.178.1 2026-09-20 Linux (.run)Windows (.zip) The opening sound has moved from the launcher to the game. It now plays on the login screen when the client starts, and fades out when you press LAUNCH instead of stopping mid-note.

Platform	File	Size	SHA-256
Linux (.run)	pax-helios-v0.178.1-linux-x86_64.run	8.6 MB	fa8f0b2b5eee49c7…
Windows (.zip)	pax-helios-v0.178.1-windows-x86_64.zip	8.1 MB	f82127df09a58d63…

What changed

The opening sound has moved from the launcher to the game. It now plays on the login screen when the client starts, and fades out when you press LAUNCH instead of stopping mid-note.
The launcher is quiet for now — it is getting a shorter sound of its own.

v0.177.0 2026-09-20 Linux (.run)Windows (.zip) New: the launcher plays a sound when it opens.

Platform	File	Size	SHA-256
Linux (.run)	pax-helios-v0.177.0-linux-x86_64.run	8.5 MB	5fd4e53bd6747e80…
Windows (.zip)	pax-helios-v0.177.0-windows-x86_64.zip	8.0 MB	b3d6dff691c21714…

What changed

New: the launcher plays a sound when it opens.
It fades out when you press PLAY or QUIT rather than stopping mid-note, and if the sound file is missing the launcher just runs silent.

v0.176.0 2026-09-20 Linux (.run) The launcher reads like a modern application.

Platform	File	Size	SHA-256
Linux (.run)	pax-helios-v0.176.0-linux-x86_64.run	6.1 MB	d4f85655da0d56f8…

What changed

The launcher reads like a modern application.
Changed: headings, labels and prose are set in Inter; monospace is kept for versions, file counts and prices, where columns must line up.
The news column fills its width properly now instead of wrapping a third of the way short.

v0.175.0 2026-09-20 Linux (.run) The launcher stops looking like old software.

Platform	File	Size	SHA-256
Linux (.run)	pax-helios-v0.175.0-linux-x86_64.run	5.2 MB	ccf70081827c0bbc…

What changed

The launcher stops looking like old software.
New: a faint orbital drawing sits behind everything, and the panels are slightly translucent so it shows through them.
Changed: the offer rows lost their boxes. They are separated by space and a hairline now, and light up under the pointer.
Removed: the instrument strip added last release. Dials and vent slats are period hardware, and it was the most dated thing in the window.
More room around everything.

v0.174.0 2026-09-20 Linux (.run) New: an instrument strip — vents, modules and two dials — fills the empty space above PLAY, so the launcher reads as a piece of hardware rather than a form with a gap in it.

Platform	File	Size	SHA-256
Linux (.run)	pax-helios-v0.174.0-linux-x86_64.run	4.7 MB	034b7dd0b3c8f4bd…

What changed

New: an instrument strip — vents, modules and two dials — fills the empty space above PLAY, so the launcher reads as a piece of hardware rather than a form with a gap in it.

v0.173.0 2026-09-19 Linux (.run)Windows (.zip) The launcher's panels are machined hull plating now, not flat colour. The texture is part of the program, so there is nothing extra to install and nothing that can go missing.

Platform	File	Size	SHA-256
Linux (.run)	pax-helios-v0.173.0-linux-x86_64.run	4.7 MB	3ff9cd0d7065cf6c…
Windows (.zip)	pax-helios-v0.173.0-windows-x86_64.zip	4.2 MB	75e0b401e38b608f…

What changed

The launcher's panels are machined hull plating now, not flat colour. The texture is part of the program, so there is nothing extra to install and nothing that can go missing.
The login screen keeps its lighter frame on purpose: it floats over your ship and the stars, and they should stay the thing you look at.

v0.172.0 2026-09-19 Linux (.run)Windows (.zip) The shell has a look of its own.

Platform	File	Size	SHA-256
Linux (.run)	pax-helios-v0.172.0-linux-x86_64.run	4.5 MB	653589346e3a9149…
Windows (.zip)	pax-helios-v0.172.0-windows-x86_64.zip	4.0 MB	0123af9139c59192…

What changed

The shell has a look of its own.
New: the launcher and the login screen are framed in machined violet panels with cut corners and lit edges, instead of plain boxes.
The cockpit is unchanged and stays amber: the colour now tells you whether you are flying or standing in front of the ship.
On the launcher, PLAY lights its frame when the build is confirmed — the panel is the status light, not just a button.

v0.171.0 2026-09-17 Linux (.run)Windows (.zip) Sharper ground from altitude. Approaching a world, the ground a hundred kilometres below no longer goes soft and blocky before the close detail arrives.

Platform	File	Size	SHA-256
Linux (.run)	pax-helios-v0.171.0-linux-x86_64.run	4.5 MB	6a73bfcb39fd8bb0…
Windows (.zip)	pax-helios-v0.171.0-windows-x86_64.zip	4.0 MB	4f980b6e005e4212…

What changed

Sharper ground from altitude. Approaching a world, the ground a hundred kilometres below no longer goes soft and blocky before the close detail arrives.
The ground mesh carries twice the vertices in each direction at every distance, so a crater that drew as a hexagon from 140 km is round. The extra work moved off the frame onto worker threads: the main thread never computes terrain now, and a descent refines at least as fast as before on a machine with four or more cores.
The colour of the ground is painted per pixel from its own height once you are close enough that a texel of the from-orbit paint would smear across the screen. Bowls dark and rims bright still, at the mesh's own resolution instead of an 18 km blur.
Climbing back out of a world never opens a hole where a coarse patch was evicted: its four finer children draw until it is rebuilt.

v0.170.3 2026-09-17 Linux (.run)Windows (.zip) The headlight beam no longer ends in a hard edge a few hundred metres ahead. It fell to nothing at a fixed range; it now falls off with distance the way light does, bright near the ship and tapering far into the dark, with the ground ahead of a hover faintly lit out to a couple of kilometres.

Platform	File	Size	SHA-256
Linux (.run)	pax-helios-v0.170.3-linux-x86_64.run	4.5 MB	a35adab0de123300…
Windows (.zip)	pax-helios-v0.170.3-windows-x86_64.zip	4.0 MB	623a0c91f33c8daa…

What changed

The headlight beam no longer ends in a hard edge a few hundred metres ahead. It fell to nothing at a fixed range; it now falls off with distance the way light does, bright near the ship and tapering far into the dark, with the ground ahead of a hover faintly lit out to a couple of kilometres.

v0.170.2 2026-09-17 Linux (.run)Windows (.zip) A deep crater floor no longer blacks out in a hard wedge when the sun is low. The planet-scale eclipse test, the one that darkens a moon inside its planet's shadow, was letting a world eclipse its own ground wherever that ground lies below the reference sphere. A body no longer eclipses points on or under its own surface.

Platform	File	Size	SHA-256
Linux (.run)	pax-helios-v0.170.2-linux-x86_64.run	4.5 MB	efe592145839ed98…
Windows (.zip)	pax-helios-v0.170.2-windows-x86_64.zip	4.0 MB	2166499d14970396…

What changed

A deep crater floor no longer blacks out in a hard wedge when the sun is low. The planet-scale eclipse test, the one that darkens a moon inside its planet's shadow, was letting a world eclipse its own ground wherever that ground lies below the reference sphere. A body no longer eclipses points on or under its own surface.

v0.170.1 2026-09-17 Linux (.run)Windows (.zip) Craters no longer fill with hard-edged black polygons that change shape as you descend. The ground was casting sun shadows onto itself through the ship's 2 km shadow map, which cannot hold a crater's shadow; the ground now only receives shadows. Your ship and the stations still throw theirs onto it, and a crater's bowl reads by its lighting.

Platform	File	Size	SHA-256
Linux (.run)	pax-helios-v0.170.1-linux-x86_64.run	4.5 MB	9b68fd822f3721f3…
Windows (.zip)	pax-helios-v0.170.1-windows-x86_64.zip	4.0 MB	407be9dc8c7ddb2e…

What changed

Craters no longer fill with hard-edged black polygons that change shape as you descend. The ground was casting sun shadows onto itself through the ship's 2 km shadow map, which cannot hold a crater's shadow; the ground now only receives shadows. Your ship and the stations still throw theirs onto it, and a crater's bowl reads by its lighting.

v0.170.0 2026-09-17 Linux (.run)Windows (.zip) Headlights. Two lamps on the nose light the ground ahead, warm white, out to about 600 m, so the night side of a world is no longer black. They are on by default; H toggles them (while the surface map is open H still means north-up), and the binding is in the settings as HEADLIGHTS. They go dark in the fitting bay.

Platform	File	Size	SHA-256
Linux (.run)	pax-helios-v0.170.0-linux-x86_64.run	4.5 MB	8cc3d2f1b8506cf7…
Windows (.zip)	pax-helios-v0.170.0-windows-x86_64.zip	4.0 MB	81058d37d3323c58…

What changed

Headlights. Two lamps on the nose light the ground ahead, warm white, out to about 600 m, so the night side of a world is no longer black. They are on by default; H toggles them (while the surface map is open H still means north-up), and the binding is in the settings as HEADLIGHTS. They go dark in the fitting bay.

v0.169.2 2026-09-17 Linux (.run)Windows (.zip) The ship's shadow on a world holds still and has edges. It jittered because the shadow map's grid was pinned to the ship's absolute position in the world, which at planetary distances turned any float of noise in the sun's direction into a random shift every frame; it is pinned to the ship now. And the map covered a 2 km box wherever you were, a metre per texel, so a 6 m hull threw a six-texel blob; near the ground the box shrinks with your height, down to 100 m when landed.

Platform	File	Size	SHA-256
Linux (.run)	pax-helios-v0.169.2-linux-x86_64.run	4.5 MB	cdca86ca5d1a82ef…
Windows (.zip)	pax-helios-v0.169.2-windows-x86_64.zip	4.0 MB	cbd222ecb39bf536…

What changed

The ship's shadow on a world holds still and has edges. It jittered because the shadow map's grid was pinned to the ship's absolute position in the world, which at planetary distances turned any float of noise in the sun's direction into a random shift every frame; it is pinned to the ship now. And the map covered a 2 km box wherever you were, a metre per texel, so a 6 m hull threw a six-texel blob; near the ground the box shrinks with your height, down to 100 m when landed.

v0.169.1 2026-09-17 Linux (.run)Windows (.zip) The outside view no longer sinks into the ground or jitters over a world. The chase camera smoothed its position in the world, and a ship carried along by a planet's orbit moves hundreds of metres every frame, so the camera trailed kilometres behind the ship — through the terrain when the planet happened to be moving that way. It now smooths its offset from the ship instead. The cockpit view was never affected.

Platform	File	Size	SHA-256
Linux (.run)	pax-helios-v0.169.1-linux-x86_64.run	4.5 MB	d8b200370387d597…
Windows (.zip)	pax-helios-v0.169.1-windows-x86_64.zip	4.0 MB	3335de22849e732a…

What changed

The outside view no longer sinks into the ground or jitters over a world. The chase camera smoothed its position in the world, and a ship carried along by a planet's orbit moves hundreds of metres every frame, so the camera trailed kilometres behind the ship — through the terrain when the planet happened to be moving that way. It now smooths its offset from the ship instead. The cockpit view was never affected.

v0.169.0 2026-09-16 Linux (.run)Windows (.zip) From the first flight over the new ground:

Platform	File	Size	SHA-256
Linux (.run)	pax-helios-v0.169.0-linux-x86_64.run	4.5 MB	fd4e8a01b4a88f15…
Windows (.zip)	pax-helios-v0.169.0-windows-x86_64.zip	4.0 MB	a55ddd65ed610da7…

What changed

From the first flight over the new ground:
A world's face from orbit is four times sharper and no longer goes blocky on the approach. The sharp paint bakes in the background after you arrive in a system; the old one shows until it lands, a few seconds per world.
The ground keeps its face all the way down. Terrain you have not yet flown over was drawn flat and untextured, so a world's paint vanished the moment the terrain took over from the sphere. It is drawn in full now; the surface map's coverage is unchanged.

v0.168.0 2026-09-16 Linux (.run)Windows (.zip) Water. Seas and lakes on rock worlds with air have a surface now, and it is a surface you can land on: a ship settles on the water instead of sinking to the bed, the altimeter and the descent read to it, and a ship that logged out on a lake wakes on the lake.

Platform	File	Size	SHA-256
Linux (.run)	pax-helios-v0.168.0-linux-x86_64.run	4.5 MB	e6dff3b926770aff…
Windows (.zip)	pax-helios-v0.168.0-windows-x86_64.zip	4.0 MB	f3a5c2cb208cc880…

What changed

Water. Seas and lakes on rock worlds with air have a surface now, and it is a surface you can land on: a ship settles on the water instead of sinking to the bed, the altimeter and the descent read to it, and a ship that logged out on a lake wakes on the lake.
Landing pads stay dry: sites under the sea or in a lake are rejected, so a few pads on sea worlds have moved.
Ice worlds are frozen through: the sheet is the ground, nothing to land on but ice.
The water is opaque and still for now. Depth, ripples and rivers as water come later.

v0.167.0 2026-09-16 Linux (.run)Windows (.zip) The paint matches the ground. A world's face from orbit is now drawn from the same surface function you land on: the continents, seas, highlands and snow you see from space are the ones under your gear.

Platform	File	Size	SHA-256
Linux (.run)	pax-helios-v0.167.0-linux-x86_64.run	4.5 MB	09320b0e7f1da219…
Windows (.zip)	pax-helios-v0.167.0-windows-x86_64.zip	4.0 MB	154ec36228705b0c…

What changed

The paint matches the ground. A world's face from orbit is now drawn from the same surface function you land on: the continents, seas, highlands and snow you see from space are the ones under your gear.
Seas read dark and cool from orbit, deeper water darker; a frozen sea reads pale; high ground on worlds with air carries snow.
The sensor view shows the sea: the bed dimmed, a bright line along the waterline, on the scan and on the surface map.

v0.166.0 2026-09-16 Linux (.run)Windows (.zip) Lakes, ponds and level landing pads. Worlds with air have lake beds on their plains, tens of kilometres across, and ponds a few kilometres across almost anywhere: flat-floored dishes cut into the ground, each with a level the water will fill to when water comes. There is no water in them yet.

Platform	File	Size	SHA-256
Linux (.run)	pax-helios-v0.166.0-linux-x86_64.run	4.5 MB	d3f5e7237f1ecd49…
Windows (.zip)	pax-helios-v0.166.0-windows-x86_64.zip	4.0 MB	d9aeba616eb60e68…

What changed

Lakes, ponds and level landing pads. Worlds with air have lake beds on their plains, tens of kilometres across, and ponds a few kilometres across almost anywhere: flat-floored dishes cut into the ground, each with a level the water will fill to when water comes. There is no water in them yet.
Every landing pad now stands on a levelled apron: the ground is pulled flat to the pad's own height across the apron and blends back into the terrain around it. A ship on a pad, the pad marker and the outpost beside it all sit on one plane.
Airless worlds and moons are unchanged apart from their pad aprons.

v0.165.0 2026-09-16 Linux (.run)Windows (.zip) Rivers and streams. Worlds with air are cut by river valleys, wider and deeper across the lowlands with a flat floodplain either side, and by streams in the hills. The thinner the air, the fainter the channels: a thin-air world shows dry beds among its craters, an airless world none. There is no water in them yet.

Platform	File	Size	SHA-256
Linux (.run)	pax-helios-v0.165.0-linux-x86_64.run	4.5 MB	27c3f03f491d4947…
Windows (.zip)	pax-helios-v0.165.0-windows-x86_64.zip	4.0 MB	e6c44909a376d32b…

What changed

Rivers and streams. Worlds with air are cut by river valleys, wider and deeper across the lowlands with a flat floodplain either side, and by streams in the hills. The thinner the air, the fainter the channels: a thin-air world shows dry beds among its craters, an airless world none. There is no water in them yet.
Rivers stop at the coast; nothing under the sea changed.
Every other world is exactly as it was in v0.164.

v0.164.1 2026-09-16 Linux (.run)Windows (.zip) The sensor view's contour lines and the ground palette now measure height from each terrain patch's own anchor instead of from the planet's centre. On the Windows build machine's software renderer the old way speckled the scan view over the new fine relief; on a real GPU it was a metre of jitter you never noticed. Pictures on every machine now agree.

Platform	File	Size	SHA-256
Linux (.run)	pax-helios-v0.164.1-linux-x86_64.run	4.5 MB	90836fb12eaba797…
Windows (.zip)	pax-helios-v0.164.1-windows-x86_64.zip	4.0 MB	995c85505b8faa6b…

What changed

The sensor view's contour lines and the ground palette now measure height from each terrain patch's own anchor instead of from the planet's centre. On the Windows build machine's software renderer the old way speckled the scan view over the new fine relief; on a real GPU it was a metre of jitter you never noticed. Pictures on every machine now agree.

v0.164.0 2026-09-16 Linux (.run) The ground is reshaped. Every world's terrain changed in this release: mountain ranges in long belts with sharp crests and foothills, plains that are actually flat, fine relief you can see from a hovering ship, and coastlines with bays and peninsulas. Worlds with air may have a sea: below sea level the ground is a shelf, a slope and an abyssal plain, and ice worlds may carry a frozen sea, a flat sheet. There is no water yet, only the ground it will fill.

Platform	File	Size	SHA-256
Linux (.run)	pax-helios-v0.164.0-linux-x86_64.run	4.5 MB	42a9638fb1818eef…

What changed

The ground is reshaped. Every world's terrain changed in this release: mountain ranges in long belts with sharp crests and foothills, plains that are actually flat, fine relief you can see from a hovering ship, and coastlines with bays and peninsulas. Worlds with air may have a sea: below sea level the ground is a shelf, a slope and an abyssal plain, and ice worlds may carry a frozen sea, a flat sheet. There is no water yet, only the ground it will fill.
The ground is painted by height and slope: beds dark and cool, a pale shore band, bare rock on steep faces, a snow line high on worlds with air, the frozen sheet pale on ice.
A ship that logged out landed wakes on the new ground, not floating over it or buried in it. Landing pads may have moved to a level site.
Rivers, streams, lakes and ponds are next.

v0.163.1 2026-09-15 Linux (.run)Windows (.zip) The launcher no longer depends on your OpenGL driver: it draws with SDL's software renderer, so a broken GL stack cannot stop you getting into the game. If the launcher would not start with a GLX error, run it once with `SDL_RENDER_DRIVER=software` and it will update itself.

Platform	File	Size	SHA-256
Linux (.run)	pax-helios-v0.163.1-linux-x86_64.run	4.5 MB	25c5be41c9d968e3…
Windows (.zip)	pax-helios-v0.163.1-windows-x86_64.zip	3.9 MB	a99f790f8b30c460…

What changed

The launcher no longer depends on your OpenGL driver: it draws with SDL's software renderer, so a broken GL stack cannot stop you getting into the game. If the launcher would not start with a GLX error, run it once with `SDL_RENDER_DRIVER=software` and it will update itself.

v0.163.0 2026-09-15 Linux (.run)Windows (.zip) Fixed: the ground and the pad jittered under a hovering ship, worst on big worlds, and stopped once you landed. The world's spin angle was stored at single precision, which moved every ground point by metres from one frame to the next; the ship rode the exact carry and saw the ground jump. It is double precision now.

Platform	File	Size	SHA-256
Linux (.run)	pax-helios-v0.163.0-linux-x86_64.run	4.5 MB	e558a5138cd02f10…
Windows (.zip)	pax-helios-v0.163.0-windows-x86_64.zip	3.9 MB	c2a843baba7e5abd…

What changed

Fixed: the ground and the pad jittered under a hovering ship, worst on big worlds, and stopped once you landed. The world's spin angle was stored at single precision, which moved every ground point by metres from one frame to the next; the ship rode the exact carry and saw the ground jump. It is double precision now.
Ground high above a world's reference sphere, a plateau or a highland pad, refines to the same fine detail as low ground.

v0.162.2 2026-09-15 Linux (.run)Windows (.zip) Fixed, properly: the link drop on docking after a low flight. The ground-survey filing was sending a malformed message, so the server hung up the moment you docked with unfiled ground. It files correctly now, and your survey gets paid.

Platform	File	Size	SHA-256
Linux (.run)	pax-helios-v0.162.2-linux-x86_64.run	4.5 MB	615fa74d65a5c03f…
Windows (.zip)	pax-helios-v0.162.2-windows-x86_64.zip	3.9 MB	16f0caa15bf50f29…

What changed

Fixed, properly: the link drop on docking after a low flight. The ground-survey filing was sending a malformed message, so the server hung up the moment you docked with unfiled ground. It files correctly now, and your survey gets paid.

v0.162.1 2026-09-15 Linux (.run)Windows (.zip) Fixed: docking after a long low flight could drop the link and leave you reconnecting forever. The ground survey is now filed in smaller batches, and the server accepts larger ones. Docking at a pad no longer asks for a shipyard it does not have.

Platform	File	Size	SHA-256
Linux (.run)	pax-helios-v0.162.1-linux-x86_64.run	4.5 MB	409ec38b8897bc36…
Windows (.zip)	pax-helios-v0.162.1-windows-x86_64.zip	3.9 MB	b920c62e1ad68a24…

What changed

Fixed: docking after a long low flight could drop the link and leave you reconnecting forever. The ground survey is now filed in smaller batches, and the server accepts larger ones. Docking at a pad no longer asks for a shipyard it does not have.

v0.162.0 2026-09-15 Linux (.run)Windows (.zip) Fixed: logging out docked forgot where you were, and the core stopped charging afterwards. The game now starts you docked where you left the ship, with the dock screen up. Docked at a pad, you wake on that pad, the core keeps charging in the sun, and the ship keeps riding the world. A ground outpost no longer pulls a landing ship into its own frame.

Platform	File	Size	SHA-256
Linux (.run)	pax-helios-v0.162.0-linux-x86_64.run	4.5 MB	0edecf65b173b5da…
Windows (.zip)	pax-helios-v0.162.0-windows-x86_64.zip	3.9 MB	3dbb416fbc229da2…

What changed

Fixed: logging out docked forgot where you were, and the core stopped charging afterwards. The game now starts you docked where you left the ship, with the dock screen up. Docked at a pad, you wake on that pad, the core keeps charging in the sun, and the ship keeps riding the world. A ground outpost no longer pulls a landing ship into its own frame.

v0.161.1 2026-09-15 Linux (.run)Windows (.zip) Correction: you enter a ground outpost with INTERACT (Enter by default), the same key that plants a transceiver. K is still cruise.

Platform	File	Size	SHA-256
Linux (.run)	pax-helios-v0.161.1-linux-x86_64.run	4.5 MB	99550f64d77548bd…
Windows (.zip)	pax-helios-v0.161.1-windows-x86_64.zip	3.9 MB	a11383b91eb29b0d…

What changed

Correction: you enter a ground outpost with INTERACT (Enter by default), the same key that plants a transceiver. K is still cruise.

v0.161.0 2026-09-15 Linux (.run)Windows (.zip) Ground outposts. Beside about half the frontier and corporate landing pads stands a settlement the Murmur took. Set down on the pad and press K to go in: it is a dive, with the usual stakes. While the outpost is theirs, the pad's market runs at half stock; purge it and the pad reopens at full.

Platform	File	Size	SHA-256
Linux (.run)	pax-helios-v0.161.0-linux-x86_64.run	4.5 MB	d1abda69037b9c60…
Windows (.zip)	pax-helios-v0.161.0-windows-x86_64.zip	3.9 MB	92292d95ca92ec9d…

What changed

Ground outposts. Beside about half the frontier and corporate landing pads stands a settlement the Murmur took. Set down on the pad and press K to go in: it is a dive, with the usual stakes. While the outpost is theirs, the pad's market runs at half stock; purge it and the pad reopens at full.

v0.160.0 2026-09-15 Linux (.run)Windows (.zip) Finer ground under a landing ship: the last split now reaches 1.2 m between vertices, half what it was, in the final fifty metres of a descent. The terrain cache grew to hold it. The software-rendering profile keeps its previous ground.

Platform	File	Size	SHA-256
Linux (.run)	pax-helios-v0.160.0-linux-x86_64.run	4.5 MB	d0e4b8fda7535ff2…
Windows (.zip)	pax-helios-v0.160.0-windows-x86_64.zip	3.9 MB	95c06c9f3b4c23ea…

What changed

Finer ground under a landing ship: the last split now reaches 1.2 m between vertices, half what it was, in the final fifty metres of a descent. The terrain cache grew to hold it. The software-rendering profile keeps its previous ground.

v0.159.0 2026-09-15 Linux (.run)Windows (.zip) Moons with ground have landing pads now, and they stand on the moon.

Platform	File	Size	SHA-256
Linux (.run)	pax-helios-v0.159.0-linux-x86_64.run	4.5 MB	fae161384e0a8ef5…
Windows (.zip)	pax-helios-v0.159.0-windows-x86_64.zip	3.9 MB	12421250d6951bf6…

What changed

Moons with ground have landing pads now, and they stand on the moon.
A pad's market is its house's: the Accord's pads are stations on the ground, frontier pads are fuel stops that buy ore, corporate pads are company stores.
The pilots list says where a docked pilot is docked.

v0.158.0 2026-09-15 Linux (.run)Windows (.zip) The drive costs more in a steep well. Cruising down through a world's descent shell, pushing the throttle past the crawl costs the grips' hold at the local pull, and the core pays for it. The crawl is free.

Platform	File	Size	SHA-256
Linux (.run)	pax-helios-v0.158.0-linux-x86_64.run	4.5 MB	6d0fefc4e76dd7c9…
Windows (.zip)	pax-helios-v0.158.0-windows-x86_64.zip	3.9 MB	ed9a0c99f175bd72…

What changed

The drive costs more in a steep well. Cruising down through a world's descent shell, pushing the throttle past the crawl costs the grips' hold at the local pull, and the core pays for it. The crawl is free.
The GRIP row reads CRUISE HOLD while it bites, with the same colours.
The CORE row shows the net rate: sunlight coming in, or the grips going out.

v0.157.0 2026-09-15 Linux (.run)Windows (.zip) The dock is honest.

Platform	File	Size	SHA-256
Linux (.run)	pax-helios-v0.157.0-linux-x86_64.run	4.5 MB	c70334f9e5279f05…
Windows (.zip)	pax-helios-v0.157.0-windows-x86_64.zip	3.9 MB	b002bdf006d054e0…

What changed

The dock is honest.
REPAIR and REFUEL at the dock are real: repair brings every part back to full for a fraction of its price per point of wear, refuel tops the tank at the local fuel price, pads included.
Docking at a station needs you within 5 km of it. From further away the dock is refused and tells you how far you are.
Dock and fitting messages say what happened and why, in words.

v0.156.0 2026-09-14 Linux (.run)Windows (.zip) Fixed: terrain flickering close to a world. Parked low, the ground popped between a flat slab and the hills every few seconds. A patch built ahead of its siblings was being thrown away before they arrived, and the cache could not hold the whole ground at that height. Both are fixed; the ground now settles and stays.

Platform	File	Size	SHA-256
Linux (.run)	pax-helios-v0.156.0-linux-x86_64.run	4.5 MB	2dc25dfc3eb76a0c…
Windows (.zip)	pax-helios-v0.156.0-windows-x86_64.zip	3.9 MB	bce92b18273d8262…

What changed

Fixed: terrain flickering close to a world. Parked low, the ground popped between a flat slab and the hills every few seconds. A patch built ahead of its siblings was being thrown away before they arrived, and the cache could not hold the whole ground at that height. Both are fixed; the ground now settles and stays.

v0.155.3 2026-09-14 Linux (.run)Windows (.zip) Documentation only: the plan to test Windows builds under WINE is dropped, now that the checks run on Windows itself. Nothing in the game changes.

Platform	File	Size	SHA-256
Linux (.run)	pax-helios-v0.155.3-linux-x86_64.run	4.5 MB	a0ed8acbce95b63a…
Windows (.zip)	pax-helios-v0.155.3-windows-x86_64.zip	3.9 MB	d7dbc1422ca47a95…

What changed

Documentation only: the plan to test Windows builds under WINE is dropped, now that the checks run on Windows itself. Nothing in the game changes.

v0.155.2 2026-09-14 Linux (.run)Windows (.zip) Windows self-update is confirmed working on Windows 11. No change to the game; this release records the result.

Platform	File	Size	SHA-256
Linux (.run)	pax-helios-v0.155.2-linux-x86_64.run	4.5 MB	63d3865953ede25c…
Windows (.zip)	pax-helios-v0.155.2-windows-x86_64.zip	3.9 MB	d559101b2d4044c2…

What changed

Windows self-update is confirmed working on Windows 11. No change to the game; this release records the result.

v0.155.1 2026-09-14 Linux (.run)Windows (.zip) The line after an update now just says which version you are on, instead of asking you to restart something you do not need to restart.

Platform	File	Size	SHA-256
Linux (.run)	pax-helios-v0.155.1-linux-x86_64.run	4.5 MB	4ded4488083e5c74…
Windows (.zip)	pax-helios-v0.155.1-windows-x86_64.zip	3.9 MB	e3e0326e8ef99924…

What changed

The line after an update now just says which version you are on, instead of asking you to restart something you do not need to restart.

v0.155.0 2026-09-14 Linux (.run)Windows (.zip) Fixed: after an automatic update the launcher closed and did not come back — it was restarting the game, which refuses to start on its own, so nothing appeared. It now installs the update without closing at all: you watch it find, download and install the new build, and then PLAY lights up.

Platform	File	Size	SHA-256
Linux (.run)	pax-helios-v0.155.0-linux-x86_64.run	4.5 MB	ee889d5cc8de0a85…
Windows (.zip)	pax-helios-v0.155.0-windows-x86_64.zip	3.9 MB	eaeb9872da2532db…

What changed

Fixed: after an automatic update the launcher closed and did not come back — it was restarting the game, which refuses to start on its own, so nothing appeared. It now installs the update without closing at all: you watch it find, download and install the new build, and then PLAY lights up.
Changed: the launcher window opens in the middle of the screen.
The launcher's own program is swapped on the next start; the game you press PLAY on is already the new one.

v0.154.0 2026-09-14 Linux (.run)Windows (.zip) Sunlight refills the core. Park in the sun, or fly through it, and your piles breed their fuel back: about eight minutes of Earth-like daylight per lift-off, faster the closer the star, nothing at night, in a world's shadow, or in a hangar.

Platform	File	Size	SHA-256
Linux (.run)	pax-helios-v0.154.0-linux-x86_64.run	4.5 MB	282b863e1bb8e3f5…
Windows (.zip)	pax-helios-v0.154.0-windows-x86_64.zip	3.9 MB	b119559ca95c70a1…

What changed

Sunlight refills the core. Park in the sun, or fly through it, and your piles breed their fuel back: about eight minutes of Earth-like daylight per lift-off, faster the closer the star, nothing at night, in a world's shadow, or in a hangar.
The status panel shows a CORE row whenever the core is below full or charging, with the rate the light is giving you.
RECORE at a yard is still the instant way, for money.

v0.153.0 2026-09-14 Linux (.run)Windows (.zip) The core burns. Every lift-off from a world charges your piles three minutes of the grips' hold at that world's gravity, and the fitting screen's CORE reading moves. A parked ship burns nothing.

Platform	File	Size	SHA-256
Linux (.run)	pax-helios-v0.153.0-linux-x86_64.run	4.5 MB	53bcb3893a277884…
Windows (.zip)	pax-helios-v0.153.0-windows-x86_64.zip	3.9 MB	352f23693346fb2d…

What changed

The core burns. Every lift-off from a world charges your piles three minutes of the grips' hold at that world's gravity, and the fitting screen's CORE reading moves. A parked ship burns nothing.
RECORE at a yard refills the cores, priced by what was burnt.
One warning when the core drops under a tenth.

v0.152.0 2026-09-14 Linux (.run)Windows (.zip) The grips have a readout. Over a world the flight display gains a GRIP row: the local pull in g and what holding it costs the plant in MW, cyan while the plant covers it, amber when the hold would dim the shields, red past your fit's rating. On the ground it reads GROUND.

Platform	File	Size	SHA-256
Linux (.run)	pax-helios-v0.152.0-linux-x86_64.run	4.5 MB	bc5db7d04afdda1c…
Windows (.zip)	pax-helios-v0.152.0-windows-x86_64.zip	3.9 MB	1dc3e2bfa87af596…

What changed

The grips have a readout. Over a world the flight display gains a GRIP row: the local pull in g and what holding it costs the plant in MW, cyan while the plant covers it, amber when the hold would dim the shields, red past your fit's rating. On the ground it reads GROUND.
Every fit now has a gravity rating, the world pull above which the grips' hold cannot be paid even with shields and weapons shed. The map panel shows it beside a world's GRAVITY, LANDABLE says NO with the reason above it, and the flight display warns on the way in.
The fitting screen shows the pile count, the grips rating, and what is left of the core.

v0.151.0 2026-09-14 Linux (.run)Windows (.zip) Worlds pull now. Inside a planet's or moon's bubble the ship falls toward it. Flight assist holds your height for you, the drive pads doing the work, and descends at the rate you command rather than the rate you fall. Switch assist off over a world and you fall, and through air you settle at terminal velocity (about 115 m/s at 1 g at sea level).

Platform	File	Size	SHA-256
Linux (.run)	pax-helios-v0.151.0-linux-x86_64.run	4.5 MB	cc757b446628acf2…
Windows (.zip)	pax-helios-v0.151.0-windows-x86_64.zip	3.9 MB	6dcbea54a40d9531…

What changed

Worlds pull now. Inside a planet's or moon's bubble the ship falls toward it. Flight assist holds your height for you, the drive pads doing the work, and descends at the rate you command rather than the rate you fall. Switch assist off over a world and you fall, and through air you settle at terminal velocity (about 115 m/s at 1 g at sea level).
Landed ships are held by the ground as before; docked, nothing changes.
Nothing pulls in deep space, at stations, or inside instances.
The GRAVITY row on the map panel is the number the physics uses.

v0.150.0 2026-09-12 Linux (.run)Windows (.zip) New: hover an offer in GET THE GAME to see what is in it.

Platform	File	Size	SHA-256
Linux (.run)	pax-helios-v0.150.0-linux-x86_64.run	4.5 MB	82a990e24ed896dc…
Windows (.zip)	pax-helios-v0.150.0-windows-x86_64.zip	3.9 MB	0b82ed0f56f29d83…

What changed

New: hover an offer in GET THE GAME to see what is in it.
The launcher window is a little taller so the whole ladder fits, and if there are more offers than will fit it says how many rather than quietly leaving them out.

v0.149.0 2026-09-12 Linux (.run)Windows (.zip) The launcher can sell you the game.

Platform	File	Size	SHA-256
Linux (.run)	pax-helios-v0.149.0-linux-x86_64.run	4.5 MB	3685aaffafcd4201…
Windows (.zip)	pax-helios-v0.149.0-windows-x86_64.zip	3.9 MB	931febe12b63adc1…

What changed

The launcher can sell you the game.
New: a GET THE GAME section in the launcher listing what is on offer and what it costs. Clicking one opens the portal in your browser, where your account and payment already live.
Offers and prices come from the portal, so they can change without a new launcher.
If there is nothing on offer the section simply is not there.

v0.148.0 2026-09-12 Linux (.run)Windows (.zip) The launcher has news.

Platform	File	Size	SHA-256
Linux (.run)	pax-helios-v0.148.0-linux-x86_64.run	4.5 MB	af5440f7931fa783…
Windows (.zip)	pax-helios-v0.148.0-windows-x86_64.zip	3.9 MB	a97da43e8f130534…

What changed

The launcher has news.
New: a news panel beside the door — notices from us, and what changed in each of the last few builds. It fills itself in; there is nothing to open.
The launcher window is wider to make room. PLAY and QUIT have not moved and never will: the launcher grows to the right.
If the portal is unreachable the news panel says so and nothing else changes — news never affects whether you can play.

v0.147.0 2026-09-12 Linux (.run)Windows (.zip) The launcher is now its own program.

Platform	File	Size	SHA-256
Linux (.run)	pax-helios-v0.147.0-linux-x86_64.run	4.5 MB	01a12d5eb666fddd…
Windows (.zip)	pax-helios-v0.147.0-windows-x86_64.zip	3.9 MB	6036d5ac8af3fab0…

What changed

The launcher is now its own program.
Changed: the launcher is a separate application, `pax-helios-launcher`. Run it to check your files, take any update, and start the game; the installer's shortcut points at it. The game no longer starts on its own.
It opens instantly — it is a tenth of the client's size and loads no 3D at all — and it can now grow features without touching the game.
Everything it enforced before is unchanged: PLAY appears only when the build is confirmed current, updates install themselves, and broken files lock the door.
Linux installs and Windows zips now contain both programs.

v0.146.0 2026-09-12 Linux (.run)Windows (.zip) Windows can update itself now.

Platform	File	Size	SHA-256
Linux (.run)	pax-helios-v0.146.0-linux-x86_64.run	4.1 MB	8b66cb6394b0ab95…
Windows (.zip)	pax-helios-v0.146.0-windows-x86_64.zip	3.5 MB	166f63f93fffcb91…

What changed

Windows can update itself now.
New: on Windows the launcher downloads and installs a new build the same way Linux does — it waits for the launcher to close, unpacks the release zip over your copy, and starts back up. Previously Windows could only tell you an update existed; you had to fetch it by hand.
Note: a Windows copy installed before this build cannot recognise itself as an install, so it will not self-update. Install this version by hand once and it updates itself from then on.
Windows downloads now carry a README.txt. Not yet verified on Windows: this was written and type-checked but no Windows machine was available to run it. The Linux path is unchanged and tested.

v0.145.0 2026-09-11 Linux (.run)Windows (.zip) The launcher is its own window now, and it is the way in.

Platform	File	Size	SHA-256
Linux (.run)	pax-helios-v0.145.0-linux-x86_64.run	4.1 MB	b6fb9b82b26c9764…
Windows (.zip)	pax-helios-v0.145.0-windows-x86_64.zip	3.5 MB	4a023fcc9c4fab00…

What changed

The launcher is its own window now, and it is the way in.
New: running pax-helios opens the launcher — a plain panel, no game world behind it. It checks your files and your version, and PLAY starts the game as a separate program.
New: updates install themselves. A newer build downloads as soon as it is found and installs as soon as it lands, then brings the launcher back. There is nothing to click.
Changed: PLAY does not appear until this build is confirmed to be the newest one. If the portal cannot be reached it stays hidden and offers RETRY — an unverified client no longer flies.
Changed: an installed copy only enters the game through the launcher.
Fixed: the file-health details (16 compiled, 9 meshes…) redrew as line noise after the first frame.
Fixed: a development tree was mistaken for an install, so an update could have unpacked itself over your working copy.

v0.144.2 2026-09-11 Linux (.run)Windows (.zip) Fixed: when a nav target sits behind a world, the BEHIND line under the nav marker could have a nearby object's name printed across it. The name placement now keeps that line's space clear, as it already did for the nav name and the cruise ETA.

Platform	File	Size	SHA-256
Linux (.run)	pax-helios-v0.144.2-linux-x86_64.run	4.1 MB	262d97d098b7f3f4…
Windows (.zip)	pax-helios-v0.144.2-windows-x86_64.zip	3.5 MB	05ee3df5e1c0502b…

What changed

Fixed: when a nav target sits behind a world, the BEHIND line under the nav marker could have a nearby object's name printed across it. The name placement now keeps that line's space clear, as it already did for the nav name and the cruise ETA.

v0.144.0 2026-09-11 Linux (.run)Windows (.zip) Pads are places.

Platform	File	Size	SHA-256
Linux (.run)	pax-helios-v0.144.0-linux-x86_64.run	4.1 MB	8dec3712f47b3f4c…
Windows (.zip)	pax-helios-v0.144.0-windows-x86_64.zip	3.5 MB	5fd45cb083ff9263…

What changed

Pads are places.
New: land inside a pad's apron and press G to dock AT the pad. The dock screen names it and the house that built it, and opens the pad's own market: a thinner shelf than a station's, thinnest at a frontier pad, fullest at an Accord one. There is no shipyard or fitting bay on a pad; that is station work. Undock and lift off as before.
New: landing pads are now rolled on every world a default hull can land on, thin atmospheres included, so worlds like WAZ-109h II have somewhere to aim at. Pads already placed did not move.
Docking anywhere else works as it did: at the nearest station.

v0.143.0 2026-09-11 Linux (.run)Windows (.zip) Craters.

Platform	File	Size	SHA-256
Linux (.run)	pax-helios-v0.143.0-linux-x86_64.run	4.1 MB	7130b8ffd4af8bde…
Windows (.zip)	pax-helios-v0.143.0-windows-x86_64.zip	3.5 MB	0ec3e157c95c8224…

What changed

Craters.
New: airless worlds and every moon are pockmarked. Three sizes of impact craters, from a handful of great basins down to pocks a few kilometres across, each a bowl with a raised rim, with the plains smoother than the highlands. Thin atmospheres keep some, softened; by a moderate atmosphere they are gone. The craters are real ground: the altimeter reads them, you can land in them, the surface map shows them, and the biggest become nameable landmarks.
From orbit, cratered worlds and moons show their craters in the paint as well, so a moon looks pockmarked on the approach, not only up close.
Landing pads are now rolled onto level ground: a site on a crater wall or a ridge is re-rolled up to eight times.
Existing airless worlds change: this is the same ground with the impacts added, so any hills you knew have moved. Nothing named or parked was on airless ground yet.

v0.142.0 2026-09-11 Linux (.run)Windows (.zip) Ground you can measure.

Platform	File	Size	SHA-256
Linux (.run)	pax-helios-v0.142.0-linux-x86_64.run	4.1 MB	0b12a52906b2af3a…
Windows (.zip)	pax-helios-v0.142.0-windows-x86_64.zip	3.5 MB	6869b116fb8fc730…

What changed

Ground you can measure.
New: a TERRAIN row on the status panel while you are low over a world. It shows how finely the ground under you is built (the level and the distance between vertices), how many patches are held, and how many are still pending. Pending in amber means the builder is behind you; hover a moment and watch it fall.
Changed: the terrain builder now works by the second instead of by the frame, so a slow machine refines the ground about as fast as a fast one, with a guard so it never eats a whole frame.

v0.141.0 2026-09-11 Linux (.run)Windows (.zip) Air you can fly through.

Platform	File	Size	SHA-256
Linux (.run)	pax-helios-v0.141.0-linux-x86_64.run	4.1 MB	1028790dab15ae33…
Windows (.zip)	pax-helios-v0.141.0-windows-x86_64.zip	3.5 MB	f17eaf1190e5a644…

What changed

Air you can fly through.
Fixed: atmospheric drag was far too strong. Below about 12 km, where cruise hands off, a ship at full burn could only crawl at 10 m/s, twenty minutes from the ground it was pointing at. Drag is now sized to the hull: a full burn reaches a few hundred m/s at sea level and more higher up. Wind, hull heating and the cockpit muffle are unchanged.

v0.140.0 2026-09-11 Linux (.run)Windows (.zip) Mountains on the slow machine.

Platform	File	Size	SHA-256
Linux (.run)	pax-helios-v0.140.0-linux-x86_64.run	4.1 MB	df7199087eb6a127…
Windows (.zip)	pax-helios-v0.140.0-windows-x86_64.zip	3.5 MB	ee97344a30d068dd…

What changed

Mountains on the slow machine.
Fixed: with the software renderer (no GPU, or --gpu=software) the ground never sharpened past a smooth dome, so hills and valleys the altimeter could read were invisible. The terrain builder was throttled far harder than the memory it saves justified. It now builds at the same rate and keeps the same detail as on a GPU; the memory savings that matter (windowed, no sky bake) are unchanged.

v0.139.0 2026-09-10 Linux (.run)Windows (.zip) Which way round.

Platform	File	Size	SHA-256
Linux (.run)	pax-helios-v0.139.0-linux-x86_64.run	4.1 MB	cea4e01e8cda4b31…
Windows (.zip)	pax-helios-v0.139.0-windows-x86_64.zip	3.5 MB	12c90c965b93ce51…

What changed

Which way round.
New: when the nav target is behind a world, a red ring marks the way round: the point where the shortest path past the world grazes it, held clear above the ground, labelled AROUND and the world's name. Aim at the ring and keep it ahead; it rolls along the limb as you go, and the target comes out from behind it. When the ring is off the glass a red chevron at the edge points to it. If you are too low for a clear line round, no ring shows: fly round by eye.

v0.138.0 2026-09-10 Linux (.run)Windows (.zip) You can tell when the target is round the back.

Platform	File	Size	SHA-256
Linux (.run)	pax-helios-v0.138.0-linux-x86_64.run	4.1 MB	515957137224ed1f…
Windows (.zip)	pax-helios-v0.138.0-windows-x86_64.zip	3.4 MB	0351cb56e2b8969f…

What changed

You can tell when the target is round the back.
New: when the nav target is behind a world, such as a landing pad on the far side of its planet or a station behind a moon, the nav marker gets a red X and a red line naming what is in the way, on the diamond and on the edge chevron alike. The status panel's NAV row turns red and says BEHIND and the world's name. Fly around it, not at it. A surface waypoint on the far side is flagged the same way.

v0.137.1 2026-09-10 Linux (.run)Windows (.zip) The same build as v0.137.0, now for Windows too.

Platform	File	Size	SHA-256
Linux (.run)	pax-helios-v0.137.1-linux-x86_64.run	4.1 MB	2338402be7cca871…
Windows (.zip)	pax-helios-v0.137.1-windows-x86_64.zip	3.4 MB	2d44114422e81432…

What changed

The same build as v0.137.0, now for Windows too.
Fixed: worlds with an atmosphere looked like grey balls from above about 250 km, with the ground washed out until you were inside the air. The haze is now a proper column through the atmosphere, about one part in ten straight down, so terrain reads from orbit again.
New: the SENSOR VIEW on P, cycling LIT, SCAN and WIRE. SCAN paints everything in one phosphor green with no sunlight needed: hulls shaded by shape, terrain banded by height with a contour line every 200 m and a brighter one every kilometre, black sky. WIRE draws the terrain as a wireframe. Both skip the lighting, shadow and haze work, so they are also the fast views on a slow machine. The key is rebindable in Settings.

v0.137.0 2026-09-10 Linux (.run) See the ground: the sensor view, and a haze that no longer hides worlds from orbit.

Platform	File	Size	SHA-256
Linux (.run)	pax-helios-v0.137.0-linux-x86_64.run	4.1 MB	d386e0504a05814a…

What changed

See the ground: the sensor view, and a haze that no longer hides worlds from orbit.
Fixed: worlds with an atmosphere looked like grey balls from above about 250 km, with the ground washed out until you were inside the air. The haze is now a proper column through the atmosphere, about one part in ten straight down, so terrain reads from orbit again.
New: the SENSOR VIEW on P, cycling LIT, SCAN and WIRE. SCAN paints everything in one phosphor green with no sunlight needed: hulls shaded by shape, terrain banded by height with a contour line every 200 m and a brighter one every kilometre, black sky. WIRE draws the terrain as a wireframe. Both skip the lighting, shadow and haze work, so they are also the fast views on a slow machine. The key is rebindable in Settings.

v0.136.0 2026-09-10 Linux (.run)Windows (.zip) Cruise descent reaches the ground again.

Platform	File	Size	SHA-256
Linux (.run)	pax-helios-v0.136.0-linux-x86_64.run	4.1 MB	f635c65847985ba1…
Windows (.zip)	pax-helios-v0.136.0-windows-x86_64.zip	3.4 MB	3519a644f8ecab48…

What changed

Cruise descent reaches the ground again.
Fixed: cruising down to a world could stall at one height, the readout stuck at the same distance and ETA forever, while manoeuvre flight still closed at a crawl. Inside a world's gravity well the drive was counting the world's own motion twice. Approaching a station inside 200 km had the same fault. (Pilot report: WAZ-109h II.)

v0.135.0 2026-09-10 Linux (.run)Windows (.zip) Air. Worlds with atmospheres can be flown into, and it shows.

Platform	File	Size	SHA-256
Linux (.run)	pax-helios-v0.135.0-linux-x86_64.run	4.1 MB	7ff6f4047d3367b5…
Windows (.zip)	pax-helios-v0.135.0-windows-x86_64.zip	3.4 MB	92ee8f6b1113771d…

What changed

Air. Worlds with atmospheres can be flown into, and it shows.
Every hull now has an atmosphere rating. Thin and moderate atmospheres are open to land on; dense ones still refuse, and the flight display says by how much.
Atmospheres look like air: a sky with a gradient from horizon to zenith, haze over the far ground, a glowing limb seen from orbit, and the stars fading as the air thickens. The night side stays dark.
Air pushes back: drag slows you as you descend, there is a steady wind that leans on the ship, and the cockpit hum muffles as the air outside thickens. Come in fast and the flight display shows the hull heating (HULL +N K), amber then red. No damage yet.
Fixed: cruise could never reach a station running its own fast orbit, such as an Anchorage, sitting at 300 km and 7 s forever. The drive now shares the target's motion and arrives.

v0.134.0 2026-09-10 Linux (.run)Windows (.zip) Name the mountains you reach first, and see who is parked where.

Platform	File	Size	SHA-256
Linux (.run)	pax-helios-v0.134.0-linux-x86_64.run	4.1 MB	2989a5b946406181…
Windows (.zip)	pax-helios-v0.134.0-windows-x86_64.zip	3.4 MB	e204bbda2f043c75…

What changed

Name the mountains you reach first, and see who is parked where.
Every landable world now has landmarks: its highest peaks and deepest basins, shown on the surface map once you have registered that ground. They are the same landmarks for every pilot.
Be the first to land on a landmark, or fly low over it, and you claim it. A claimed landmark of yours shows a star; press N on the surface map to name it, and the name shows to everyone.
The surface map now marks every ship parked on that world, with its pilot's name, whether they are online or not.

v0.133.0 2026-09-10 Linux (.run)Windows (.zip) Probes: your ship now carries a swarm that maps where you go.

Platform	File	Size	SHA-256
Linux (.run)	pax-helios-v0.133.0-linux-x86_64.run	4.1 MB	661cd54cc19daadb…
Windows (.zip)	pax-helios-v0.133.0-windows-x86_64.zip	3.4 MB	ed1c4182e084c442…

What changed

Probes: your ship now carries a swarm that maps where you go.
Buy probes at any station market. Every time you jump out of a system, one probe drops where you left and follows you through the gates, a few minutes per hop. When it catches up it comes back aboard.
A probe that comes back has sounded the systems it passed through: every landable world there shows in full on the surface map, for everyone. Its survey data is paid when you dock in the Core.
Jump out of a system while a probe is still on its way there and that probe is lost, data and all. Watch the PROBES line on the SHIP panel: it goes amber when the hold is empty and shows how many are still inbound.
A dropped probe is visible in the system it sits in, as a small beacon you can fly back to.

v0.132.0 2026-09-10 Linux (.run)Windows (.zip) Landing pads on the ground.

Platform	File	Size	SHA-256
Linux (.run)	pax-helios-v0.132.0-linux-x86_64.run	4.1 MB	14697bb94ba0eafa…
Windows (.zip)	pax-helios-v0.132.0-windows-x86_64.zip	3.4 MB	0bf4f944dfb182ef…

What changed

Landing pads on the ground.
Landable worlds now have landing pads: up to two per world, placed on the real terrain and turning with it. Who built a pad depends on where you are: the Accord in the Core, frontier operators in the Verge, corporate leftovers past the last gate.
Pads show on the map panel (position, apron size, who built it) and as a ring with a name on the surface map.
Set down gently inside a pad's apron and the touchdown message names the pad. Docking services on pads come later.

v0.131.0 2026-09-10 Linux (.run)Windows (.zip) The surface map now has fog of war.

Platform	File	Size	SHA-256
Linux (.run)	pax-helios-v0.131.0-linux-x86_64.run	4.1 MB	7ff2040869c4fe41…
Windows (.zip)	pax-helios-v0.131.0-windows-x86_64.zip	3.4 MB	a426881d2ecc7b77…

What changed

The surface map now has fog of war.
Ground you have not flown over shows as fog: you can see its shape but not its face. Fly low to register it — under 20 km for a rough picture, under 10 km for medium detail, under 5 km for full detail.
Dock at a station in the Core and the registry downloads what your ship computer registered, and pays you for ground it did not already have. Ground filed by any pilot becomes visible to everyone.
The surface map header shows how much of a world is registered and how many cells are still aboard, unfiled.

v0.130.0 2026-09-10 Linux (.run)Windows (.zip) A new surface map, and waypoints you can fly to.

Platform	File	Size	SHA-256
Linux (.run)	pax-helios-v0.130.0-linux-x86_64.run	4.0 MB	f1dd139a2e125bf9…
Windows (.zip)	pax-helios-v0.130.0-windows-x86_64.zip	3.4 MB	2d6be1d7f07bf5fa…

What changed

A new surface map, and waypoints you can fly to.
On the system map, select a planet or moon and press Y to open its surface map. Zoom from the whole disc down to a 1 km field with the mouse wheel, drag to pan, Q and E to rotate, H for north-up.
Click anywhere on the ground to set a waypoint. Press K and the cruise drive descends to that spot and hands off above it; the glass shows a WAYPOINT marker. U clears the waypoint.
Known: at the closest zoom the ground is smooth. Fine terrain detail is coming with the terrain work, not the map.

v0.129.0 2026-09-09 Linux (.run)Windows (.zip) remote poses ride the server's tick timeline — arrival jitter no longer twitches a peer

Platform	File	Size	SHA-256
Linux (.run)	pax-helios-v0.129.0-linux-x86_64.run	4.0 MB	8ddb8fea26c18bfd…
Windows (.zip)	pax-helios-v0.129.0-windows-x86_64.zip	3.4 MB	2b8c60c94156eaf6…

What changed

remote poses ride the server's tick timeline — arrival jitter no longer twitches a peer
Snapshots were timestamped on ARRIVAL. Frame pacing quantises arrival (a 10 FPS client to 100 ms) and the network adds its own wobble, and every wobble stretched or squeezed the interpolation window: a hovering peer twitched while a landed one, whose pose is constant, sat still — exactly what the first two-client test showed.
Timestamps now come from the server tick (one per broadcast, fixed 2 Hz) plus ONE estimated offset: a running minimum over arrivals (the earliest are the least delayed), creeping up at 5 ms/s to follow a lasting latency change, re-anchored outright on a >2 s jump (tick reset after a server restart). The previous pose is re-stamped from its tick distance so spans are exact server time. Jitter up to a full interval is absorbed by the existing one-interval render delay; beyond it the pose holds, never extrapolates, as before. remote_pose itself is unchanged.
Test: a 200 m/s peer under up to 180 ms of arrival jitter renders within metres of its true line (arrival stamping put it ~36 m off); a tick reset re-anchors instead of freezing the peer.

v0.128.0 2026-09-08 Linux (.run)Windows (.zip) a landed peer sits on its pad — remotes render from their body-frame pose

Platform	File	Size	SHA-256
Linux (.run)	pax-helios-v0.128.0-linux-x86_64.run	4.0 MB	01af636aa145bf4a…
Windows (.zip)	pax-helios-v0.128.0-windows-x86_64.zip	3.4 MB	a0766af2b8dabd3f…

What changed

a landed peer sits on its pad — remotes render from their body-frame pose
What a peer saw of a landed ship: an inertial offset from the planet's centre, refreshed twice a second, while the surface turned underneath at a few hundred metres a second — drift ~200 m, snap back, repeat.
The pos report already carried the body-frame pose (bo/bq/ld) for the saved-pose work; the server now relays it in every ship snapshot, and a remote that has one is resolved the way our own ground pin is: offset and attitude interpolated in the BODY frame, then rotated by the body as it stands this frame (remote_pose reuses spawn_resolve_body). Exact between snapshots, not just at them. Every caller — draw, HUD brackets, cockpit blips, map, status screen, the collision sweep — passes the scene, so a landed peer's bracket sits on its hull. Remotes without a body pose (old clients, station frames, open space) render as before.
Test: a body-frame remote stays on the same ground point after the world turns a tenth of a day with no new snapshot; the no-scene and no-body paths are unchanged.

v0.127.0 2026-09-08 Linux (.run)Windows (.zip) the Windows binary passes its own render gates on the box — over SwiftShader

Platform	File	Size	SHA-256
Linux (.run)	pax-helios-v0.127.0-linux-x86_64.run	4.0 MB	679f0e535d3abac1…
Windows (.zip)	pax-helios-v0.127.0-windows-x86_64.zip	3.4 MB	cb37adf2378fb0fa…

What changed

the Windows binary passes its own render gates on the box — over SwiftShader
The W11-lab box has no GPU. Its Vulkan driver is now SwiftShader, Google's CPU implementation that Windows 11 ships inside Edge (Microsoft-signed): copied to C:\tools\swiftshader and registered as the ICD. The full gate suite passes on the Windows exe in ~70 s with numbers identical to fries. Mesa's lavapipe was tried first and is not installed: Defender flags both mesa-dist-win packages as a Trojan (a known false positive) and quarantined them; no exclusion was added.
win-build.ps1 runs the headless gates on the freshly built exe before zipping; the zip does not exist unless they pass (-SkipGates to skip). Native stderr under Windows PowerShell's Stop preference is handled.
gpu=software on Windows no longer warns about Linux ICD paths: the registry picks the driver, the flag engages the throttled profile.
docs/WINDOWS.md records the driver, the Defender finding, the timing, and the user's WINE test on shake.

v0.126.0 2026-09-08 Linux (.run)Windows (.zip) builds move in-house — gates on fries, Windows on W11-lab, GitHub is just the remote

Platform	File	Size	SHA-256
Linux (.run)	pax-helios-v0.126.0-linux-x86_64.run	4.0 MB	2cfc523470454cc5…
Windows (.zip)	pax-helios-v0.126.0-windows-x86_64.zip	3.4 MB	9dc3f2b26e3e258a…

What changed

builds move in-house — gates on fries, Windows on W11-lab, GitHub is just the remote
User decision (2026-09-08): no more GitHub Actions. CI had been red and unread since Aug 28, every push metered minutes on private repos, and the "green" Windows job shipped exe-less artifacts for weeks. Mac is months out and stays a parked placeholder.
release.sh runs the headless render gates on fries against the binary that ships (2 s on its GPU); a red gate stops the release.
make-windows-zip.sh builds on the Windows box over SSH (`ssh w11-lab`, a VM on shake reached through shake): copies scripts/win-build.ps1, runs it for HEAD's sha, brings the zip back. Exit 2 if the box is down — the Linux release still goes out.
win-build.ps1: fetch + detached checkout from GitHub (read-only deploy key), odin build with MSVC, exe must carry APP_VERSION, stage exe/SDL3.dll/joltc.dll/assets, Compress-Archive. Every failure is an exit code. First build: 29 s.
ci.yml keeps only the macOS job, workflow_dispatch, never on push.
docs/WINDOWS.md: the box, its layout, the gotchas, the ritual.

v0.125.0 2026-09-05 Linux (.run)Windows (.zip) the Windows exe compiles again — and can never rot silently

Platform	File	Size	SHA-256
Linux (.run)	pax-helios-v0.125.0-linux-x86_64.run	4.0 MB	ad146bc076d0178f…
Windows (.zip)	pax-helios-v0.125.0-windows-x86_64.zip	3.4 MB	b929fce3e31be7fa…

What changed

the Windows exe compiles again — and can never rot silently
Wiring the Windows zip surfaced it: every "green" Windows artifact since the launcher landed held SDL3.dll, joltc.dll and assets/ — and no exe. launcher.odin called posix.getpid(), which core:sys/posix does not have on Windows; CI's Build step ran under cmd, which reports only the LAST command's exit code, so xcopy's success hid odin's failure.
process_id() lives in two build-tagged files (proc_id_posix.odin / proc_id_windows.odin); the launcher no longer imports posix.
CI checks errorlevel after odin build and requires build\pax-helios.exe.
test.sh runs `odin check src -target:windows_amd64` after the tests: a Windows-only compile error now fails locally, before a push.
docs/WINDOWS.md records the finding.

v0.124.0 2026-09-05 Linux (.run) Windows zips ship — package the client CI already builds

Platform	File	Size	SHA-256
Linux (.run)	pax-helios-v0.124.0-linux-x86_64.run	4.0 MB	99cd3d08dcd1eab1…

What changed

Windows zips ship — package the client CI already builds
CI's windows job has built pax-helios.exe on every push and thrown it away after a day (docs/WINDOWS.md). Now:
scripts/make-windows-zip.sh fetches HEAD's `pax-helios-windows` artifact (waiting for the windows job alone with --wait; the linux/macos gate jobs may be red without affecting it), refuses an exe that does not carry this APP_VERSION, and writes dist/pax-helios-vX.Y.Z-windows-x86_64.zip — unzip anywhere, run.
release.sh tries it once and warns rather than blocking the Linux release on CI; RELEASE_WAIT_WINDOWS=1 waits instead.
CI artifact retention 1 -> 7 days.
The portal already served .zip beside .run.
Open, recorded: WINE verification, Windows self-update, signing, NSIS.

v0.122.0 2026-09-05 Linux (.run) moons are landable — one resolver for "does this body have ground"

Platform	File	Size	SHA-256
Linux (.run)	pax-helios-v0.122.0-linux-x86_64.run	4.0 MB	2fd6226432f040ee…

What changed

moons are landable — one resolver for "does this body have ground"
Every question the landing path asks — render terrain or a sphere, collide against h() or the reference radius, what the altimeter reads, whether cruise descends, whether touchdown counts, what the map's LANDABLE row says — now goes through terrain_params(scene, body) and body_landable(scene, idx). Planets read their manifest planet; moons read their manifest moon's new terrain_seed (rock in this wave).
the terrain patch cache is keyed per BODY (terrain_body_key): a moon must never share its planet's patches — same face/level addresses, different ground.
the ground pin and the landed spawn accept moons.
the map's moon panel gains ATMOSPHERE/TERRAIN/LANDABLE/MINERALS/ BIOLOGICALS rows; [LANDABLE] tags moons too.
tested: params per body kind, distinct cache keys, the landing rule body-wide, and the radar altimeter reading 2 km over a moon's ground.

v0.121.0 2026-09-05 Linux (.run) land, log out, wake up on the pad — the pose rides the world's frame

Platform	File	Size	SHA-256
Linux (.run)	pax-helios-v0.121.0-linux-x86_64.run	4.0 MB	d85ffd315c041777…

What changed

land, log out, wake up on the pad — the pose rides the world's frame
While mass-locked to a planet or moon, the pos report now carries the ship's pose in the BODY frame — the frame that turns with the ground — beside the absolute position peers already read: bo (offset), bq (attitude), ld (on the ground). The server keeps exactly that and hands it back at welcome tagged with its frame id.
The client resolves it here, against the body as it stands at THIS login (spun and orbited), on the sim tick after the world clock syncs. A landed ship re-arms its ground pin with the saved numbers — the very ones touchdown stored — and wakes up on its pad, same heading, gear down. The body transform stays the client's alone: terrain_body_rotate.
spawn_frame.odin: frame_body_report, spawn_resolve_body, frame_body_index, Pending_Spawn; tested (round trip on a world that turned a third of a day while we were away lands on the same ground).
net_link: bo/bq/ld on the wire, spawn_fr/spawn_landed from welcome, clock_epoch so a pending spawn waits for this session's clock.

v0.120.0 2026-09-05 Linux (.run) PLAY is greyed out while an update downloads or waits to install

Platform	File	Size	SHA-256
Linux (.run)	pax-helios-v0.120.0-linux-x86_64.run	4.0 MB	146efc7b4003dbe0…

What changed

PLAY is greyed out while an update downloads or waits to install
Pilot report: click DOWNLOAD on the launcher and PLAY stays live; click it and the OLD build starts while the new installer sits in /tmp ignored. Same once the download had finished — Ready looked like "go" and still launched the stale binary.
launcher_play_allowed(state): Downloading and Ready lock PLAY and say why; Idle/Checking/Up_To_Date/Available/Failed keep it open, so a failed download or install never locks anyone out of the game they have. Pure, tested.
ui_button gains `disabled`: greyed, no hover response, never reports a click.
the launcher shows the reason under the greyed button; the path out of Ready is INSTALL & RESTART.

v0.119.0 2026-09-05 Linux (.run) the flight display's scales are screen-fixed — only the horizon rolls

Platform	File	Size	SHA-256
Linux (.run)	pax-helios-v0.119.0-linux-x86_64.run	4.0 MB	6a0148b646454009…

What changed

the flight display's scales are screen-fixed — only the horizon rolls
Pilot's second pass on the planetary flight display, from four screenshots of a real descent: at 109 degrees of bank the conformal pitch rungs lay diagonal across the glass, and at PIT -88 the +/-30 ladder drew nothing near the reticle at all.
Pitch tape: a vertical, screen-fixed scale left of the reticle, marks every 5 degrees from -90 to +90 past a fixed pointer, dashed below the horizon, faded at the ends. A vertical dive now reads -60..-90.
Heading tape along the top: every 10 degrees, cardinals as letters, the rest in tens like a compass card, wrapping the short way round.
The horizon ring and its cardinals stay conformal — the one thing that should tilt with the ship.
hud_flight_tape_dy / hud_flight_hdg_rel are pure and tested.

v0.118.0 2026-09-04 Linux (.run) the planetary flight display — horizon, cardinals, ladder, flight block

Platform	File	Size	SHA-256
Linux (.run)	pax-helios-v0.118.0-linux-x86_64.run	4.0 MB	e8e11beca0f0ebd0…

What changed

the planetary flight display — horizon, cardinals, ladder, flight block
Pilot request: an altimeter on the glass with direction, altitude and a horizon. Once the mass lock has you in a world's frame (hud_agl >= 0, inside 1.5 radii of a terrain world), the windshield grows the instruments an aircraft has: an artificial horizon ring in the local horizontal plane (it tilts as you roll and slides as you pitch — only what is ahead survives projection, which is the horizon by definition), cardinal points and 30-degree ticks sitting ON the horizon at their true bearings (turn, and N slides to where north is), a pitch ladder of horizon-parallel arcs at +/-10/20/30 ahead of the nose, and a flight block right of centre: HDG, ALT over the real ground (amber inside 2 km), VS (red when sinking hard with little ground left), GS, PIT/ROL.
The local frame is honest: up is radial, north is toward the world's tilted spin axis, east is north x up — the direction a prograde surface turns — and speeds are ground-relative for free because the mass lock already made ship.vel frame-relative. Conventions are pinned by a self-checking test that builds a LEVEL ship from the local basis first: N toward the pole, flying east reads 090, north reads 000, nose-up is positive pitch, right bank is positive roll, a ship lying on its side reads 90 of bank, the poles never NaN. 127 tests, all 8 gates.

v0.117.0 2026-09-04 Linux (.run) 'K again' is instant, the altimeter is where you look, a valley isn't negative

Platform	File	Size	SHA-256
Linux (.run)	pax-helios-v0.117.0-linux-x86_64.run	4.0 MB	ac3599c7e02c380a…

What changed

'K again' is instant, the altimeter is where you look, a valley isn't negative
Re-tracing the pilot's landing on v0.116.1: at the vista, K began the ordinary 4 s charge — a silent countdown — and a second K in that window CANCELS it. Hence 'went back to maneuver', then 92 km of manual descent onto the ground in a valley, where the status row read '-380 m' because it measured to the reference sphere. Three fixes, one release:
1. Inside a landable world's descent shell, cruise_toggle goes STRAIGHT to cruising — no spool. You dropped out of this drive seconds ago, the well already has you, and the charge's vulnerability window has no purpose on a landing approach (it is untouched everywhere else: combat drops still pin you for 4 s). The hint 'K again to cruise down' now means now. Cruise also spools from the 1 km/s idle instead of jumping to the 30 km/s floor on engage: re-engaging 15 km above a world used to mean 14 km of travel in the first second. 2. surface_distance_m: every pilot-facing distance to a terrain world is to the REAL ground (h()), floored at zero — status NAV row, dash TGT, MAP label, map panel. The sphere is kept only for non-terrain bodies and for geometry. 3. The radar altimeter (ship_agl_m, computed once a frame) now rides the top-left status panel as an AGL row, amber inside 2 km — the dash-only reading went unseen through an entire landing.
Tests: instant re-engage inside the shell, ordinary charge outside; 126 total, all 8 gates.

v0.116.1 2026-09-04 Linux (.run) one distance convention — every readout to a body is to its SURFACE

Platform	File	Size	SHA-256
Linux (.run)	pax-helios-v0.116.1-linux-x86_64.run	4.0 MB	8fab9d8852e9d208…

What changed

one distance convention — every readout to a body is to its SURFACE
Pilot at Fellowship I: the glass nav label said 8,300 km, the dash TGT line said 3,700 km. Both were 'right' — one measured to the centre, one to the surface, and the 4,600 km between them is the planet's radius. The cockpit TGT line, the look-at labels and the status NAV row already subtracted the radius; the HUD nav label (on-glass and off-screen chevron), the cruise ETA arc, the 'MAP ... away' label and the new map panel's DISTANCE did not. Now every pilot-facing distance to a scene body is surface distance, floored at zero; the centre vector is kept only where it does geometry (normalizing the nav direction) and where centre IS the right measure (dock envelopes, ship-to-ship brackets — untouched). The cruise ETA now counts to the surface, which is what the governor brakes for. This was a quiet contributor to tonight's landing confusion; a pilot reading 12,800 km at 500 m/s deserved one number.

v0.116.0 2026-09-04 Linux (.run) descent cruise — the drive brings you down, not just to the vista

Platform	File	Size	SHA-256
Linux (.run)	pax-helios-v0.116.0-linux-x86_64.run	4.0 MB	7abd1c2a686f6075…

What changed

descent cruise — the drive brings you down, not just to the vista
Pilot report: 12,800 km out at 500 m/s, 'it's going to take all day to land.' The v0.94 vista hand-off (2% of radius, 30 km/s governed floor) is right for ARRIVING at a world and wrong for LANDING on one: it leaves 130-230 km of manoeuvre descent on an Earth-size planet — minutes at the Sparrow's ceiling, hours from where the pilot actually was.
Now: re-engage cruise inside a LANDABLE nav target's vista shell (1.5x the drop distance) and the drive is in DESCENT. The 30 km/s floor relaxes to the 1 km/s idle so dist/tau can shrink all the way down, and the governor tracks the GROUND — speed = AGL over the real terrain / tau (h(), not the sphere), so the hand-off at 12 km AGL always meets the same ~1.5 km/s whether the ground below is a plain or a 10 km peak. From 100 km that is tau*ln(100/12) ~ 17 s. The cockpit shows CRUISE DESCENT; the vista-arrival toast at a landable world now says 'K again to cruise down' — the first approach still gives you the vista on purpose, the second K gives you the ground. Fiction unchanged: managed fall relative to THAT mass. New gate proves it: from 100 km up, cruising, the drive hands off between 8 and 13 km AGL in well under a minute of sim time.

v0.115.0 2026-09-04 Linux (.run) the map tells you what a body IS — and whether you can land on it

Platform	File	Size	SHA-256
Linux (.run)	pax-helios-v0.115.0-linux-x86_64.run	4.0 MB	8b5d85700f9ba305…

What changed

the map tells you what a body IS — and whether you can land on it
Pilot request: 'flying around hoping to find a planet to land on.' The map already had selection; it just said nothing. Click a body in map mode and a panel opens on the right of the glass — for a planet: type, radius (km and x Earth), surface gravity (the server's own density table, so it matches the physics), orbit in AU, year, day (or TIDALLY LOCKED, retrograde noted), axial tilt, equilibrium temperature from the star's temp_k and radius (Earth at 1 AU reads ~255 K, as the new test pins), atmosphere (NONE/THIN/MODERATE/DENSE with the density), terrain relief (from the parity-locked amplitude), moon count, distance — and LANDABLE, stated as the rule touchdown ACTUALLY enforces today: rock or ice with a terrain seed. Gas giants say crush depth. A world with an atmosphere says 'YES - atmosphere not yet modelled', because the airless-first gate is recorded in TERRAIN.md and not yet coded — the panel tells the truth rather than the plan. Moons, the star, stations, gates, facilities and machine sites each get their own short card.
Minerals and biologicals read UNSURVEYED, deliberately: the game has no such data yet, and inventing a roll here would pre-empt the registry's survey mechanics, which is where that knowledge belongs. Landable bodies also carry a [LANDABLE] tag on the MAP label line so a list can be scanned. Map previews of other systems get the panel too, minus the meaningless distance. Nothing is invented: every number is read off the manifest the server already sends.

v0.114.0 2026-09-04 Linux (.run) a dead server fails fast with a reason, instead of a frozen 'Killed'

Platform	File	Size	SHA-256
Linux (.run)	pax-helios-v0.114.0-linux-x86_64.run	4.0 MB	9a9d3eba6e77d108…

What changed

a dead server fails fast with a reason, instead of a frozen 'Killed'
The real root cause of the pilot's evening, after the memory trail falsified the OOM theory (RSS 75-91 MB, dying before any scene line): the tag:extended -> tag:core grant's port list omits tcp 8137, so tailscale DROPS the game-server connect — silently, no RST. The client did a plain blocking net.dial_tcp on the main thread, so the UI froze for the kernel's ~2-minute connect timeout, the pilot force-quit, and the terminal printed 'Killed' — indistinguishable from an OOM kill.
Now the dial runs on a self-cleaning worker thread and the caller waits at most WS_CONNECT_TIMEOUT_S (8 s). Ownership is a single 0->1/0->2 CAS on the shared Ws_Dial: exactly one side wins and cleans up, results are published before the worker's exchange, and an abandoned dial closes its own socket when the kernel finally lets go. Every ws_connect failure now records a static last_error, and the shell shows the REASON: 'CANNOT REACH fries:8137 - TIMED OUT - server unreachable (tailnet grant for tcp 8137?)' — the ACL fix is in the error message.
Proof against a black-hole address (192.0.2.1, TEST-NET-1 — swallows packets exactly like an ACL drop): before, still hanging at a 20 s cap with no output; after, exit 1 in 8 s with the reason line. The -> bool contract is unchanged, so the Play handler, the --connect CLI, and the --bot harness all inherit it. 122 tests, all 8 gates.

v0.113.0 2026-09-04 Linux (.run) the Play path leaves a memory trail, and low RAM engages the profile

Platform	File	Size	SHA-256
Linux (.run)	pax-helios-v0.113.0-linux-x86_64.run	4.0 MB	60e8af89924250f3…

What changed

the Play path leaves a memory trail, and low RAM engages the profile
The pilot's box turned out NOT to be GPU-less: it has an Intel Haswell iGPU, and Mesa logs 'Haswell Vulkan support is incomplete'. Hardware Vulkan SUCCEEDS there, so v0.112.0's lavapipe auto-fallback never fired and the software-rendering profile never engaged without the flag — an auto-fallback can only catch a MISSING Vulkan, not a present-but-broken one. The hardware-agnostic signal is RAM: the profile now also engages when MemAvailable is under 2 GB, whatever the GPU (logged as a warning with the number).
And the thing the pilot asked for outright — debug logging. 'Killed' was the whole story before; now the Play path leaves a trail with the process RSS at each step: 'scene: manifest N bytes, building (RSS)', 'scene: built N bodies, sky baked|skipped (RSS)', 'scene: first frame drawn (RSS)', plus RSS on the GPU-driver line at startup. The last line standing when a small box kills the client says WHERE and HOW BIG. src/sys_mem.odin reads VmRSS and MemAvailable from /proc — no platform branching: off Linux the read fails and readers get -1, which every caller treats as 'unknown'. Verified on fries: RSS 129 MB at startup. All 122 tests, all 8 gates, both profiles.

v0.112.0 2026-09-04 Linux (.run) a GPU-less box loads instead of getting OOM-killed

Platform	File	Size	SHA-256
Linux (.run)	pax-helios-v0.112.0-linux-x86_64.run	4.0 MB	66ad26958c81409d…

What changed

a GPU-less box loads instead of getting OOM-killed
A pilot on a 3.8 GB machine (Brave, LibreOffice and Nextcloud already holding most of it) launched with --gpu=software, clicked Play, and got 'Killed' — SIGKILL with nothing in dmesg, which is Ubuntu's systemd-oomd reacting to memory PRESSURE, not exhaustion (swap was free). Under lavapipe every GPU resource is system RAM, and entering a system spikes: framebuffers at desktop resolution, the ~35 MB sky bake, terrain.
New: the software-rendering profile (g_low_memory), engaged by --gpu=software or by an AUTO-FALLBACK — if hardware Vulkan fails, retry on lavapipe, so a GPU-less tester never has to know the flag. Under the profile: windowed instead of fullscreen (the framebuffers are the biggest lever and scale with the window), no sky bake (the shader's procedural stars stand in — zero-risk, that fallback already existed), and the terrain builder throttled to 1 patch/frame, 300 resident. The profile logs itself at startup. Installer hint mentions the flag.
Tried and CUT: a 1024 shadow map. It saves only 12 MB, and it tripped SHADOW-SLIDE — the gate's fixed camera start straddles a snap cell at 1024 (it passes at 2048 by locked-in alignment, not by construction). Not worth touching a twice-shipped-bug invariant for the smallest lever; gpu_renderer.odin is byte-identical to before. All 122 tests and all 8 gates pass under BOTH profiles (the terrain gate visibly shows the throttle: 50 patches vs 150).

v0.111.0 2026-09-04 Linux (.run) you can land — analytic terrain collision, touchdown, lift-off

Platform	File	Size	SHA-256
Linux (.run)	pax-helios-v0.111.0-linux-x86_64.run	4.0 MB	200b4198ce2334ec…

What changed

you can land — analytic terrain collision, touchdown, lift-off
docs/TERRAIN.md step 4. The ground is solid now: near a rocky or ice world, collision tests altitude against the parity-locked h() at the step's endpoint and midpoint (radial push-out; the midpoint halves the ridge a cruise-speed ship could tunnel) — a lookup, exact everywhere, blind to LOD. Gentle contact with the gear down becomes a TOUCHDOWN: the surface point is stored geodetically and the pose recomputed exactly every frame, so a landed ship rides the planet's spin and orbit with zero drift, through any time warp, forever — the parked random-walk goes with it. Gentle contact without gear warns; hard contact scrapes as before. Lift-off on deliberate input only (throttle, strafe, or drive spool — never mouse noise). The centre dash grows a radar altimeter (AGL over real terrain, amber under 2 km) that becomes LANDED on the ground.
Found by analysis before it could ship: terrain anchors rotated by the CONJUGATED spin (about the tilted axis vector) while patch vertices used the true body quat — invisible on the zero-tilt gate world, kilometres of shell displacement on a tilted live one. One f64-orthonormalized body transform (terrain_body_rotate) now serves anchors, camera, collision, and the ground pin; the f32 quat basis alone was half a metre off orthonormal at planet radius, enough for the pin and the push-out to fight.
Known gap, recorded: landed poses server-side — log out on a surface today and the planet rotates your raw-offset pose away overnight.

v0.110.1 2026-09-04 Linux (.run) the winding test probes interior triangles, not skirts

Platform	File	Size	SHA-256
Linux (.run)	pax-helios-v0.110.1-linux-x86_64.run	4.0 MB	b53e57bd8df3d57c…

What changed

the winding test probes interior triangles, not skirts
v0.110.0 shipped with this test failing — the release chain read the grep's exit status instead of the runner's, a new variant of the recorded test.sh|grep lesson. The winding itself was always right (the render gate proves the patch survives backface culling); the test was probing skirt quads, whose normals legitimately point sideways. Now it probes interior cells against the local radial.

v0.110.0 2026-09-04 Linux (.run) mountains exist — cube-sphere LOD terrain over h()

Platform	File	Size	SHA-256
Linux (.run)	pax-helios-v0.110.0-linux-x86_64.run	4.0 MB	bd0f3c12e6a75313…

What changed

mountains exist — cube-sphere LOD terrain over h()
docs/TERRAIN.md step 3, the renderer-scale one. Inside 2.5 radii a rocky or ice world stops being a textured sphere and becomes quadtree patches of the parity-locked surface function: six cube faces, leaf walk in the planet's unrotated frame every frame, splits down to ~4 m vertex spacing, skirts hiding LOD cracks, and a split only takes effect when all four children are built — the parent keeps covering, so refinement never opens holes. Patch meshes build on a 3-per-frame budget (descent never hitches) and evict when unwatched. Vertices are f32 relative to a per-patch anchor that is spun by the planet's live rotation in f64 each frame — the M1 no-jitter lesson applied to the ground — and the UV matches the sphere convention exactly, so the from-orbit texture is the ground texture and the swap doesn't rotate the paint. Patches live on the heap because draw_mesh_lit queues ^Mesh pointers and a map rehash moves entries mid-frame (found as a segfault, fixed as a comment).
New TERRAIN render gate: builds a demo world with a granted seed, proves 150 patches at orbit height, 168k px of difference against the bare sphere under grazing light, and 510 patches after a descent to 6 km — where the horizon shows real mountain silhouettes (shot dumps verified by eye). VISUAL ONLY this release: collision is still the reference sphere — touchdown is step 4, next.

v0.109.0 2026-09-04 Linux (.run) the ground carries you — mass lock learns to spin

Platform	File	Size	SHA-256
Linux (.run)	pax-helios-v0.109.0-linux-x86_64.run	4.0 MB	ff2638970c88f765…

What changed

the ground carries you — mass lock learns to spin
Mass lock phase 2 (docs/TERRAIN.md §2): planets rotate for real, so the surface is a rotating frame — an Earth-like equator does ~460 m/s sideways forever, and a landed ship must ride it. Inside the grip band (full co-rotation below 1.2 radii, smoothly fading to none by 2.0) the locked carry rotates the ship's offset AND orientation about the spin axis — Rodrigues in f64, because at 1e7 m offsets f32 rotation would jitter a landed ship by a metre a frame. A smooth band instead of a boundary composition, deliberately: no jolt exists anywhere; flight assist absorbs the tangential frame velocity gradually on descent, and climbing away sheds the spin the same gentle way — the well's grip fading is the mass-drive fiction doing the work. Axial tilt now comes from the manifest (server authority, hash-derived) instead of a client-cosmetic roll: the frame and the coming lat/lon anchoring need both repos to agree where the axis points. New gate proves a landed ship rides exactly 15 degrees per hour with the ground, turns with it, partial grip mid-band, and an untouched sky above the band.

v0.108.0 2026-09-04 Linux (.run) the client knows where the ground is — terrain parity port

Platform	File	Size	SHA-256
Linux (.run)	pax-helios-v0.108.0-linux-x86_64.run	4.0 MB	823a43257f83a364…

What changed

the client knows where the ground is — terrain parity port
src/terrain.odin mirrors the server's surface function operation for operation: terrain_height(seed, kind, radius, lat, lon) from the manifest's new terrain_seed, golden vectors pinned against the server's (matched to 1e-6 first run). Nothing renders it yet — this is the parity foundation docs/TERRAIN.md step 1; the LOD renderer, rotating frame, and touchdown build on it next. Man_Planet also carries atmo_density for the airless-first landability gate.

v0.107.0 2026-09-03 Linux (.run) names obey the inner cone; close things are named anywhere

Platform	File	Size	SHA-256
Linux (.run)	pax-helios-v0.107.0-linux-x86_64.run	4.0 MB	8829123f495a1029…

What changed

names obey the inner cone; close things are named anywhere
The naming test now reads as three claims in order of strength: the reticle is on it, or it is simply close (near range, anywhere in the survey cone), or it is inside the inner cone AND within its kind's sight range. Everything else in the survey cone stays a bare locator — out of range is not out of mind, it is just not worth words yet.
Verified online at survey 50 / inner 8: two names hold near the aim while three bodies further out wear bare circles, and the boundary tracks the nose as you turn.

v0.106.0 2026-09-03 Linux (.run) object locators — I toggles bare circles on the unnamed

Platform	File	Size	SHA-256
Linux (.run)	pax-helios-v0.106.0-linux-x86_64.run	4.0 MB	f9ae86a2fc7c9299…

What changed

object locators — I toggles bare circles on the unnamed
A pilot could see what the HUD chose to name and nothing else, so anything out of range or crowded out was invisible until stumbled on. I now toggles a locator pass: every body the label pass declines to name gets a bare dim circle, no text. Point at one and the focus cone names it — locators say WHERE, focus says WHAT, and the two close the loop that the range caps opened.
Locators deliberately ignore the sight ranges. Out of range is not out of mind: the whole point is seeing the thing you then aim at. They are also not counted by the label cap, which now counts names only, so a sky full of circles can never starve the names.
Off by default — the names were just decluttered and this puts marks back on the glass — and bound to I for 'identify'.

v0.105.0 2026-09-03 Linux (.run) names obey ship rules — per-kind range, and a focus cone

Platform	File	Size	SHA-256
Linux (.run)	pax-helios-v0.105.0-linux-x86_64.run	4.0 MB	e00fa248390c7854…

What changed

names obey ship rules — per-kind range, and a focus cone
The look-to-identify pass takes a rule set (HUD_Label_Rules) instead of a bare cone: survey cone, focus cone, per-kind sight ranges, and the label cap that used to be a constant. Online they arrive with the loadout from the server's admin-tunable ship rules; offline the client defaults stand, and any field left at zero falls back rather than switching the cockpit off.
FOCUS. A body is 'under the reticle' if it is inside the focus cone of its centre OR the crosshair is within its disc — close up a planet spans tens of degrees, so centre-distance alone would fail exactly when the answer is most obvious. Focused bodies bypass the range caps, sort first so the label cap can never crowd them out, and read at full brightness.
RESERVED GLASS. The nav target is skipped by this pass but its amber label still occupies the screen, and the focus cone surfaces moons right beside their nav-targeted parent — which printed straight through it. The placement pass now reserves the nav label's box and the ETA line under it.

v0.104.0 2026-09-03 Linux (.run) in-system names — ranked, de-overlapped, legible on a lit sky

Platform	File	Size	SHA-256
Linux (.run)	pax-helios-v0.104.0-linux-x86_64.run	4.0 MB	dd6b78bcb6387ae1…

What changed

in-system names — ranked, de-overlapped, legible on a lit sky
Three complaints in one pass (pilot call, screenshots names_now.png):
RANK. Every body in the cone had equal weight, so a moon 19 AU out crowded a planet at 2.3. Labels are scored by how BIG a thing looks (angular radius) weighted toward where the nose points, best nine kept, and alpha falls with rank — ranking by distance alone would bury a station five km away behind a moon.
OVERLAP. The old pass nudged a colliding label once and never re-checked, so labels still landed on each other (the unreadable stack bottom-right). Placement now steps a label down until its box is genuinely clear, measuring real text width (the atlas is fixed-advance), and drops the label rather than overlap. A label pushed clear of its body gets a leader line home.

v0.103.0 2026-09-03 Linux (.run) true black — the sky texture learns gamma

Platform	File	Size	SHA-256
Linux (.run)	pax-helios-v0.103.0-linux-x86_64.run	4.0 MB	e2707b53cf9571ce…

What changed

true black — the sky texture learns gamma
The gray pixels had a mechanical cause, not a taste one: the equirect stored LINEAR HDR in 8 bits, and 8-bit linear cannot hold darkness — its bottom step (1/255) already displays as ~7% gray after the sRGB transform, so the anti-banding dither flickered dark texels between black and visibly gray. The bake now stores sqrt(v) and the shader squares it back: the bottom step decodes to (1/255)^2 — nothing — and true black is representable. With the floor gone, the band drops to its pure physical integral (curve 1.0), gain set so the core bulge still renders ~50% gray while ambient in-disc glow sits at ~5%, and the deep-space base falls to a whisper of blue. Verified by eye: black sky, no speckle, point stars, the bulge as the one landmark. All 113 tests (band test compares decoded linear) and 7 gates pass.

v0.102.0 2026-09-03 Linux (.run) more black — sky exposure tuned to pilot taste

Platform	File	Size	SHA-256
Linux (.run)	pax-helios-v0.102.0-linux-x86_64.run	4.0 MB	da476f0d5b05a3df…

What changed

more black — sky exposure tuned to pilot taste
Keep the bulge, darken everything else (pilot direction): band compression curve 0.6 -> 0.8 with gain matched so the core-ward glow holds ~0.18 HDR while the ambient in-disc band drops to ~0.007 (~8% gray); analytic stars slightly smaller (0.0008-0.0022 rad) and cooler (x3.2); twice the analytic budget (256) so more stars render as crisp points instead of texture dust; dust culled harder (min intensity 0.10) and dimmed (HDR x2.5); the deep-space base halved — space is mostly black. Verified by eye on the gate shots: black sky, point stars, subtle band, bright core. All 113 tests and 7 gates pass.

v0.101.0 2026-09-03 Linux (.run) crisp stars, quiet sky, and cruise rides the well

Platform	File	Size	SHA-256
Linux (.run)	pax-helios-v0.101.0-linux-x86_64.run	4.0 MB	3bec57830ea05d63…

What changed

crisp stars, quiet sky, and cruise rides the well
Two pilot reports, one release. The sky's macro-blocking (galaxy_sky_macro_blocking_bug): bright stars were 3x3 texel splats in a 2048 equirect, magnified ~5x at cockpit fov into soft blocks, and the shader's x4 exposure amplified the bake dither into visible speckle. Now the top 128 stars leave the texture entirely and ride the sky uniforms as an analytic list — drawn as exact-direction discs in the shader, crisp at any resolution, same technique as the sun — while the texture keeps only the band and single-texel dust with HDR premultiplied at bake (no shader gain, dither sub-perceptual).
And mass lock in cruise: a planet ran a cruising pilot down — inside the radius where governed speed falls below orbital speed, cruise physically cannot outrun the body. The carry now runs while cruising (capture/handoff/release too), but velocity composition NEVER — the drive owns its invented speed and the drop deposits as always. The governor was always mass-aware; near a dominant mass, managed fall now means managed fall relative to THAT mass. Lock toasts stay quiet in cruise (wells are crossed wholesale); the LOCK chip carries the state.
All 113 tests, all 7 render gates; night-side gate shots verified by eye: smooth band, point stars, no speckle.

v0.100.0 2026-09-03 Linux (.run) the real sky — the background stars ARE the galaxy

Platform	File	Size	SHA-256
Linux (.run)	pax-helios-v0.100.0-linux-x86_64.run	4.0 MB	f660cd7fc828dc91…

What changed

the real sky — the background stars ARE the galaxy
The sky's starfield was a direction-hashed lattice: the same fake sky in every system, unmoved by any jump. Now the scene build bakes an equirect sky texture from the galaxy's actual stars around the system's galactic position (src/sky_map.odin): the complete near field to 60 ly — every nav-relevant neighbour genuinely present — plus a strided far field to 350 ly, flux from stellar class over distance squared, tinted by class, splatted with the compressed response curve the eye uses. The galactic band is the real ∫density integral per direction (measured range 22..1260, 0.6-power compressed so the core-ward glow is dramatic and the in-disc ambient is the Milky Way's barely-there gray). Jump and the constellations change; cruise toward a neighbour and its star is truly there; the band points at the core, which makes the Coreline, the Deep, and the Barrier real directions a pilot can face.
Bake is deterministic (CI byte-identical gates hold), costs ~0.4 s once per system entry, and is skipped for map peek previews (they never draw the sky pass). The shader keeps its procedural lattice as the fallback for demo scenes. Verified by eye via the gate shot dumps: point stars of varied brightness, restrained band, black night discs. All 7 render gates and 113 tests pass; the SUNLIT gate caught the first two exposure calibrations (linear-vs-sRGB, then band gain) before any pilot did.

v0.99.2 2026-09-02 Linux (.run) ship the compiled sky shader with its source

Platform	File	Size	SHA-256
Linux (.run)	pax-helios-v0.99.2-linux-x86_64.run	4.0 MB	32a50486f70d3641…

What changed

ship the compiled sky shader with its source
The .spv/.msl outputs are tracked and v0.99.1 committed only the .frag.

v0.99.0 2026-09-02 Linux (.run) the Mule flies on grips — drive pads, the mass drive made visible

Platform	File	Size	SHA-256
Linux (.run)	pax-helios-v0.99.0-linux-x86_64.run	4.0 MB	6a6d4540fabb6ea6…

What changed

the Mule flies on grips — drive pads, the mass drive made visible
Four gimballed drive pads on corner arms replace thrusters on the Mule hull (docs/MASSDRIVE.md §10, pilot decisions 2026-09-02): each pad is a bundle of six virtual axis-effectors through the standard allocator — 240 kN through the disc each way, 150 kN in-plane — so lever arms, damage redistribution, and flight feel are all real physics, and the presentation derives FROM the solve. Discs aim along their bundle's net force inside a ±70° cone with a slew limit (pads snap to attitude a beat before the ship surges); the pull/push sign flip covers the far hemisphere. Working faces glow by load — pull cyan-white, push amber — and a fixed pool of emissive spark slivers crackles at the rim, rate following load. The loadout wire now carries the hull id, and the client finally builds a different flight body per hull: buy a Mule, fly a Mule. Remotes still render as Sparrows (hull-on-snapshot is a follow-up). Four new test gates prove 6-DOF authority through the bundles and the cone/flip gimbal math.

v0.98.0 2026-09-02 Linux (.run) mass-lock review fixes — facilities get frames, six seams closed

Platform	File	Size	SHA-256
Linux (.run)	pax-helios-v0.98.0-linux-x86_64.run	4.0 MB	249b3409201c286f…

What changed

mass-lock review fixes — facilities get frames, six seams closed
Adversarial review findings, all verified against the code by hand: facilities ride the planet's orbital TRACK billions of meters from the planet at full orbital speed, so they now carry their own 200 km frame (wire id f<pi>) — without it every dive/ghost approach was an unwinnable stern chase. Ghost sessions keep the carry (nothing else owns ship.pos at the standoff). Undock rides the dock pin one extra tick so the pilot leaves from where the bay IS, not ~600 m behind it. The T-tour teleport clears the lock instead of composing the old frame's 24 km/s onto the destination. Deposits are consumed by their first evaluation (an armed flag let a sweeping bubble fling a parked ship to orbital velocity). Degenerate/backward game_dt defers boundary transitions rather than crossing without composing. Remote frames resolve after the snapshot drain and a frame change invalidates the cached origin. Two new test gates.

v0.97.0 2026-09-02 Linux (.run) announcements land on every screen

Platform	File	Size	SHA-256
Linux (.run)	pax-helios-v0.97.0-linux-x86_64.run	4.0 MB	186a00f09f7417da…

What changed

announcements land on every screen
The 'announce' event paints a centered amber banner near the top of the 2D pass — which runs on every screen: cockpit, chase, map, bay, dive, even the ESC menu — with a drop-shadow copy for bright scenes and a scale that shrinks so one line always stays one line. 20 s on screen, a chime on arrival, and a toast copy so the comms ring keeps the history after the banner fades.

v0.96.0 2026-09-02 Linux (.run) mass lock — the well owns you when the screen is down

Platform	File	Size	SHA-256
Linux (.run)	pax-helios-v0.96.0-linux-x86_64.run	4.0 MB	744b8d61ff106b7d…

What changed

mass lock — the well owns you when the screen is down
Live frame capture (docs/FRAMES.md §3, pilot call 'option B'): with the cruise drive off, the deepest body within reach captures the ship and carries it by exact integer position deltas — a parked ship rides its planet instead of watching it leave at 24 km/s, and the Anchorage (35 km/s, faster than minimum cruise) is approachable at all. Deepest frame wins by distance/capture-radius; hysteresis on release; velocity composes exactly at boundaries except the deposit (cruise drop/spawn), where the screen fiction eats the difference. The pose wire keeps absolute p and adds fr/off so peers render locked and docked ships in the body's live frame instead of a snapshot-interval behind it. NAV dash shows LOCK <body>; capture and release toast.

v0.95.0 2026-09-02 Linux (.run) the sky moves — client celestial motion

Platform	File	Size	SHA-256
Linux (.run)	pax-helios-v0.95.0-linux-x86_64.run	4.0 MB	d3ae555898d4ac37…

What changed

the sky moves — client celestial motion
celestial.odin: the server's Kepler math, byte-for-byte in Odin, held by a golden-vector parity test. system_scene_tick recomputes every time-anchored body from the game clock each frame — planets on their orbits, moons around the moving planet, stations/facilities on their anchors, axial spin now manifest-driven (the v0.86 placeholder retired). Everything downstream — cruise governor, nav ETA, eclipses, holo, map, orbit rings — reads body positions and inherits the motion free.
Game time rides world_clock events (link_game_time extrapolates through warps). Docked ships pin to their station so a long dock at the moving Anchorage doesn't strand you. Parented props (parent+offset from the server) resolve against their planet every frame. Manifest anchors are value types with a set flag — Odin json cannot unmarshal pointers, and the pointer version silently broke the ENTIRE manifest parse (no planets at all) until the golden test and a live probe caught it.
Verified: parked at a gas giant, warped 2 game days on the world clock, watched it orbit away and its moons swing out — no relog.

v0.94.0 2026-09-02 Linux (.run) cruise hands off at a distance worthy of the destination

Platform	File	Size	SHA-256
Linux (.run)	pax-helios-v0.94.0-linux-x86_64.run	4.0 MB	059d7abe5b32ed2b…

What changed

cruise hands off at a distance worthy of the destination
The flat drop distance treated a 400 m station and a gas giant as the same arrival. Now it is 2% of the body's radius above the surface, floored at the just-tuned 10 km, capped at 20,000 km: stations and machine masts keep their tight 10 km handoff, an Earth-sized world greets you at ~130 km, a gas giant at 500-1,400 km, a star never closer than ~14,000 km. The arrival speed gate scales with the same number (a star-sized handoff never sees governed speed near the floor, and should not have to). One rule, every scale — the vista arrives before the wall does.

v0.93.1 2026-09-02 Linux (.run) cruise auto-drop at 10 km, down from 25

Platform	File	Size	SHA-256
Linux (.run)	pax-helios-v0.93.1-linux-x86_64.run	4.0 MB	68ae5d6e097aa014…

What changed

cruise auto-drop at 10 km, down from 25
Pilot call: carry cruise 15 km closer before the Newtonian handoff. The other drop gate (governed speed near the floor) is satisfied long before either distance across the whole tunable tau range, so the distance gate is the trigger and this is the whole change. The arrival test asserts against the constant and rode along.

v0.93.0 2026-09-02 Linux (.run) the governor tau is server-tunable

Platform	File	Size	SHA-256
Linux (.run)	pax-helios-v0.93.0-linux-x86_64.run	4.0 MB	fd446516f4282025…

What changed

the governor tau is server-tunable
cruise_cap events now carry tau_s beside max_c; Cruise.tau_s overrides CRUISE_TAU when set (cruise_tau() is the one accessor, and the nav ETA uses it too so the estimate stays honest under a tuned governor). The toast reads the whole tune: 'CRUISE TUNE: ceiling 200c, governor 2.0s'.

v0.92.0 2026-09-01 Linux (.run) cruise ceiling can be server-set

Platform	File	Size	SHA-256
Linux (.run)	pax-helios-v0.92.0-linux-x86_64.run	4.0 MB	a883db322997c3a9…

What changed

cruise ceiling can be server-set
The cruise cap (CRUISE_MAX_MS, ~67c) yields to a server-pushed value when one arrives: cruise_cap events (admin dev slider) raise or lower this pilot's ceiling, applied live and echoed as a toast. Cruise.max_ms overrides the constant when > 0; the seconds-away governor is unchanged, so this only lifts the lid.

v0.91.3 2026-09-01 Linux (.run) the target panel tells you WHY not just what

Platform	File	Size	SHA-256
Linux (.run)	pax-helios-v0.91.3-linux-x86_64.run	4.0 MB	6bb9deea2a8294f0…

What changed

the target panel tells you WHY not just what
Playtest round two: the pilot killed the mast (gen 2), then filed 'I can't target it' — because the cycle skipped non-standing sites, so their own kill made the thing unlockable and nothing said so.
Every machine site cycles now, whatever its state. The panel reads destroyed/rebuilding/standing with a per-state line (rubble - nothing left to hit / the swarm is working - hit THEM / IN RANGE - attack to fire), and a refused attack explains itself in a toast instead of silently doing nothing.

v0.91.2 2026-09-01 Linux (.run) machine sites are targets

Platform	File	Size	SHA-256
Linux (.run)	pax-helios-v0.91.2-linux-x86_64.run	4.0 MB	f77bd3aa8767dac3…

What changed

machine sites are targets
Pilot report: 'I can't target the mast as an enemy.' Correct — TAB only cycled the remotes roster. It now continues past ships into any standing machine site: the TARGET panel shows the site in machine violet with distance, state, rebuild count and an in-range line, the attack key prioritizes the locked site (range-checked against IT, not whatever is nearest), and machine sites join the N nav cycle so finding one no longer requires the map.

v0.91.1 2026-09-01 Linux (.run) machine sites change state while you watch

Platform	File	Size	SHA-256
Linux (.run)	pax-helios-v0.91.1-linux-x86_64.run	4.0 MB	c4fdf781819888f0…

What changed

machine sites change state while you watch
site_state events from the wave tick patch the scene in place — rubble grows scaffolding, scaffolding becomes the mast, live, with toasts narrating (THE SWARM IS HERE / MACHINE mast STANDS AGAIN). States map to static literals so scene bodies never point into event strings.
Verified in one unbroken session: rubble -> +4h warp -> scaffold and swarm -> +45h -> standing gen 1, no relog.

v0.91.0 2026-09-01 Linux (.run) the wave is visible — machine sites in the cockpit

Platform	File	Size	SHA-256
Linux (.run)	pax-helios-v0.91.0-linux-x86_64.run	4.0 MB	feb536029f0b7b06…

What changed

the wave is visible — machine sites in the cockpit
The second wave (docs/SECOND-WAVE.md) reaches the windshield. Machine sites parse from the manifest and render procedurally in a violet no shipyard uses: masts out of all proportion to their bases, foundries, flat dead depots, spiked strongholds. Three states — standing, scaffolding with a pulsing frame while the swarm rebuilds, and flattened rubble with one dying ember. No bays, no pads, no windows: nothing docks here, and the geometry says so.
K attacks the nearest standing site within 20 km when no pilot is in reach; the kill event flips the scene to rubble live and warns you the wave will notice. Machine-report filings toast beside survey pay. Sites are solid at the core (rubble mostly flyable-over).
Verified end to end against the live server under the world clock: mast photographed standing, killed to rubble, warped ten game hours to its scaffolding with three SWARM units on site, warped twelve more to find it standing at generation 1.

v0.90.0 2026-08-31 Linux (.run) the splash says when caps lock is on

Platform	File	Size	SHA-256
Linux (.run)	pax-helios-v0.90.0-linux-x86_64.run	4.0 MB	c5c8fb44119e3e7b…

What changed

the splash says when caps lock is on
The password field is masked, so a shouted password looks identical to the right one and comes back "wrong username or password" with no way to see why. It cost a real debugging session.
The warning shows whenever the lock is on rather than only while the password field has focus: the damage is done at typing time, and by the time LAUNCH is pressed the reason would be offscreen.

v0.89.1 2026-08-30 Linux (.run) CLAUDE.md — committing is not releasing

Platform	File	Size	SHA-256
Linux (.run)	pax-helios-v0.89.1-linux-x86_64.run	4.0 MB	448cf43e6c959c8b…

What changed

CLAUDE.md — committing is not releasing
Five versions (v0.88.2 through v0.89.0, including the Mule) sat in git while the portal still served v0.88.1 and every launcher's auto-update saw nothing. The rule was already in this file; it needed to be a consequence, not a footnote.
Now says: if a change touches anything a tester runs — code, shaders, assets, models — releasing is part of finishing it. Docs-only commits are exempt.

v0.89.0 2026-08-30 Linux (.run) the Mule's blockout — first user-authored ship

Platform	File	Size	SHA-256
Linux (.run)	pax-helios-v0.89.0-linux-x86_64.run	4.0 MB	cd5a9c519399da61…

What changed

the Mule's blockout — first user-authored ship
art/ship_mule.blend + assets/models/ship_mule.glb, blocked out by the user across one session, and added to the architect palette (now 8 models) so it can be eyeballed in-engine.
30 m hauler designed backwards from its own stat block: six cargo bays and one gun means a truck, so the six bays became a walkable hold with six container racks and a 2 m walkway, per docs/INTERIORS.md. Ships as 9 nodes / 108 triangles / 12 KB: hull, engine_block, cockpit, 6 racks. Measured 29.23 m long, 8 m wide against a 30 m target.
Every room shares one deck at Z = -1.5, and the volumes abut without gaps (hold ends +3, corridor starts +2.88; corridor ends +8.88, cockpit starts +8.73) so the interior is walkable end to end when the character controller lands.

v0.88.1 2026-08-29 Linux (.run) map orbits are traced ellipses again, with their tilt

Platform	File	Size	SHA-256
Linux (.run)	pax-helios-v0.88.1-linux-x86_64.run	4.0 MB	ba02551fcbb343ff…

What changed

map orbits are traced ellipses again, with their tilt
The map drew each orbit as a flat circle at the planet's height — radius |p.xz|, centred on the star's axis. That predates v0.86.0 (the sky moves: real elliptical, inclined orbits), and it survived unnoticed because the old mesh rings were dim grey; v0.88.0 turned them into bright blue lines and the flat plane became obvious (pilot call).
Orbits now trace planet_orbit_pos — the same parity-locked function the bodies fly and the windshield lines draw — through the map's log squeeze, so an orbit and the planet riding it land on the same curve by construction. Eccentricity and inclination are both back.
map3d_compress is that squeeze, factored out of map3d_pos/_pos_planet so the trace and the body position cannot drift apart. Moon rings stay schematic circles on purpose: map moons are pushed out to a readable radius, so their true orbit is not what is being drawn.

v0.88.0 2026-08-29 Linux (.run) map orbits are vector lines; selection highlights its orbit

Platform	File	Size	SHA-256
Linux (.run)	pax-helios-v0.88.0-linux-x86_64.run	4.0 MB	2506093ad7e05003…

What changed

map orbits are vector lines; selection highlights its orbit
The system map's orbit rings were stretched-cube meshes — the same lit-slab problem the windshield orbit lines had. They are 1px vector polylines now, still dashed at the old 55% duty so they read as a plot rather than solid hoops.
Selection now carries into the orbit: unselected rings stay blue, the selected body's OWN orbit goes gold — for a planet the ring about the star, for a moon the ring it rides about its parent (drawn only when that moon is picked, so moon rings never clutter). Colours are held saturated and pushed past 1 because lines are unlit and pre-tonemap: a pale blue mix washed to near-white on the way through.
map3d_moon_parent is now one proc feeding both the moon's map position and its ring, so the two cannot disagree about who the parent is.

v0.87.1 2026-08-29 Linux (.run) fix glide test, evict stray src.bin from the repo

Platform	File	Size	SHA-256
Linux (.run)	pax-helios-v0.87.1-linux-x86_64.run	4.0 MB	e1f62b7ffcd57212…

What changed

fix glide test, evict stray src.bin from the repo
test_selecting_a_body_moves_the_camera now drives map3d_input frames (the glide moves focus over ticks, not at selection) and a new test pins pan-cancels-glide. src.bin was an untracked build artifact a git add -A swept into v0.87.0 — removed and gitignored. v0.87.0 shipped with the failing test because a grep pipeline ate the test runner's exit status; the release itself flies correctly.

v0.87.0 2026-08-29 Linux (.run) map selection glides to centre instead of snapping

Platform	File	Size	SHA-256
Linux (.run)	pax-helios-v0.87.0-linux-x86_64.run	4.0 MB	1a976a225978a63f…

What changed

map selection glides to centre instead of snapping
Clicking a body on the system map eased the orbit centre with an exponential glide (5/s — fast out of the gate, gentle into the stop) instead of teleporting it, so a selection reads as a camera move, not a cut (user call). A manual pan or MMB slide mid-glide cancels it — the hand on the stick outranks the autopilot. Tier crossings still reset the focus hard: the units change under the glide.

v0.86.3 2026-08-29 Linux (.run) previews die in a graveyard, not mid-frame

Platform	File	Size	SHA-256
Linux (.run)	pax-helios-v0.86.3-linux-x86_64.run	4.0 MB	9c7f4be566401004…

What changed

previews die in a graveyard, not mid-frame
Zooming out of a map preview (or peeking a new system over one) destroyed the preview scene in the middle of the frame — but the renderer defers draws into a queue that frame_resolve replays at end of frame, holding ^Mesh pointers into the scene. map3d_draw had already queued the preview's spheres; the destroy freed their GPU buffers; frame_resolve bound them: SIGSEGV in VULKAN_BindVertexBuffers (and zeroing the struct instead binds nil — same funeral, different casket). Now the preview is heap-allocated, retiring it only parks the pointer in a graveyard, and the sweep at the top of the next frame — before anything queues — is the only place a preview is destroyed.

v0.86.0 2026-08-29 Linux (.run) the sky moves — elliptical orbits and spinning planets

Platform	File	Size	SHA-256
Linux (.run)	pax-helios-v0.86.0-linux-x86_64.run	4.0 MB	697ad7111a4d2d32…

What changed

the sky moves — elliptical orbits and spinning planets
Orbits render as the inclined ellipses the server now generates, traced through orbit_pos — parity-locked with universe.OrbitPos on the server, both ends computing from the same manifest numbers (ecc, incl_rad, argp_rad, node_rad; absent fields mean circles, so old manifests still parse). Planets get axial spin — 6-20 minute days seeded from the name, occasional retrograde, up to 25 deg of tilt — and procedural equirect albedos (gas bands, ice caps, rock continents) so the turning is visible: a flat-colored sphere spinning is a flat-colored sphere. Headless gate renders pass now=0 for determinism; all lighting gates still pass with textures on.

v0.85.0 2026-08-29 Linux (.run) look-at cone 20° default, server-tunable per ship rules

Platform	File	Size	SHA-256
Linux (.run)	pax-helios-v0.85.0-linux-x86_64.run	4.0 MB	697b6e32cfc6049e…

What changed

look-at cone 20° default, server-tunable per ship rules
The cone widens 12->20° (user call) and becomes a delivered setting: the loadout push carries hud_lookat_deg from the server's admin-editable ship rules; offline keeps the client default.

v0.84.0 2026-08-29 Linux (.run) look-to-identify — bodies near the nose introduce themselves

Platform	File	Size	SHA-256
Linux (.run)	pax-helios-v0.84.0-linux-x86_64.run	3.9 MB	7e914d9849be6969…

What changed

look-to-identify — bodies near the nose introduce themselves
Point the nose within 12° of any body and it gets a thin circle hugging its disc plus name and surface distance — no targeting needed (user report, screenshots/screen_hud_missing_object_names_*: three objects in view, visible only by nav-cycling each). Nav target keeps its diamond (skipped), ships keep their ticks. Look-at labels sit BELOW the body line (nav labels own the space above) and stack greedily when bodies align — a buoy in front of the star, a moon before its planet — instead of interleaving their text.

v0.83.0 2026-08-29 Linux (.run) holo tank seated on the centre panel, rebuilt in vector lines

Platform	File	Size	SHA-256
Linux (.run)	pax-helios-v0.83.0-linux-x86_64.run	3.9 MB	5417d0c2e63e3c34…

What changed

holo tank seated on the centre panel, rebuilt in vector lines
The tank moves from floating mid-sightline to sitting tangent on the centre control panel (panel centre + dash normal * R), slightly smaller (R 0.072 -> 0.060). Every ring, stalk and blip is now the 1px line pipeline instead of stretched-cube bars and sphere blips — the 'chunky' pilot report; blips are vector crosses, colors pushed past 1 for HDR pop, pedestal retired (it IS panel furniture now). Panel readouts deliberately untouched — their re-layout is the user's next call.

v0.82.0 2026-08-29 Linux (.run) holo tank sees the system — rim 200 km -> 1 AU

Platform	File	Size	SHA-256
Linux (.run)	pax-helios-v0.82.0-linux-x86_64.run	4.0 MB	4de7a33de3ff9b9d…

What changed

holo tank sees the system — rim 200 km -> 1 AU
The tank began life as a combat radar: 200 km rim, hard cull at 10,000 km. The game outgrew it — a planet filling the canopy sits millions of km out and never entered the volume (pilot report, screenshots/holo_map_range_bug_*). The rim is now 1 AU with the same log compression, which is what lets one instrument serve both jobs: a ship at 2 km still sits a third of the way out, the planet you are visiting lands in the outer band, only the deep outer system pins to the rim. Star and planet blips got their own colors/sizes; label reads HOLO 1 AU.

v0.81.0 2026-08-29 Linux (.run) windshield HUD phase 3 — arrival arc, ETA, approach corridors

Platform	File	Size	SHA-256
Linux (.run)	pax-helios-v0.81.0-linux-x86_64.run	4.0 MB	401b46996f884deb…

What changed

windshield HUD phase 3 — arrival arc, ETA, approach corridors
Cruise: ETA mm:ss under the nav label and an amber arc ringing the diamond that sweeps closed over the last ~10 s of the approach — no 'slow down' bar by design, the governor owns deceleration; the pilot's question is when. Manual flight: nav-target a gate or station inside 30 km and an amber ring funnel leads to the aperture / dock envelope in true world space (bullseye head-on, occluded by bodies); cruise suppresses it. LOWER GEAR callout inside 8 km when auto-gear is off. Dev harness: 'aim nav' aims at the current nav target. Verified on a hand-built test-range manifest (station funnel, gate bullseye, ETA countdown 00:11→00:06 with the arc at half sweep).

v0.80.0 2026-08-29 Linux (.run) windshield HUD phase 2 — target brackets + contact ticks

Platform	File	Size	SHA-256
Linux (.run)	pax-helios-v0.80.0-linux-x86_64.run	4.0 MB	265811c039dcf65f…

What changed

windshield HUD phase 2 — target brackets + contact ticks
The TAB target wears four corner brackets hugging its angular size (min-clamped legible), name + distance beside; every other contact is a small diamond tick, unlabeled — identifying a tick is what TAB is for. Disposition colors key off the server's role-tagged NPC names (PIRATE red, WARDEN law-blue, players/haulers white); docked contacts fade. The top-right remote roster text is retired — contacts live on the glass now. Brackets cull off-screen; the nav marker keeps the only edge chevron. Verified online with a two-account rendezvous (bracket handoff on TAB, tick demotion, distances live).

v0.79.0 2026-08-29 Linux (.run) windshield HUD phase 1 — reticle, velocity vector, nav chevron

Platform	File	Size	SHA-256
Linux (.run)	pax-helios-v0.79.0-linux-x86_64.run	3.9 MB	2c7dd63a615652d1…

What changed

windshield HUD phase 1 — reticle, velocity vector, nav chevron
docs/HUD.md captures the design (locked 2026-08-29): vector widgets on a glass sphere 4 m out, anchored to the head frame so head-look inherits it; both views; existing color meanings. src/hud.odin: vector reticle at the nose (glyph hack retired), prograde circle+ticks / retrograde circle+X on actual velocity, nav diamond that clamps to the glass edge as a great-circle chevron ([]/></NAV BEHIND text retired). Line queue now empties at upload, not frame_begin — the HUD queues lines before frame_begin in the main loop's draw order and they were being wiped.

v0.78.0 2026-08-29 Linux (.run) orbit lines are vector lines — new unlit line pipeline

Platform	File	Size	SHA-256
Linux (.run)	pax-helios-v0.78.0-linux-x86_64.run	3.9 MB	c41536465eb30a2e…

What changed

orbit lines are vector lines — new unlit line pipeline
The mesh dashes read as lit 3D slabs up close (pilot screenshots). New renderer primitive: draw_line3d queues camera-relative Line_Vertex pairs, uploaded at frame_resolve and drawn as 1px LINELIST into the HDR pass — flat color, alpha-blended, depth-tested so bodies occlude, no depth write, no lighting, no shadow casting. Orbit rings are now 256-segment polylines (planets, blue) and 96-segment (moons, amber). Windshield-HUD geometry, the seam future HUD widgets draw through. Gates untouched: lines never draw headless (software rasterizers mis-draw grazing lines, grid.vert's old warning).

v0.77.2 2026-08-29 Linux (.run) splash remembers the last pilot; password box full height

Platform	File	Size	SHA-256
Linux (.run)	pax-helios-v0.77.2-linux-x86_64.run	3.9 MB	452edadd74e5ed5d…

What changed

splash remembers the last pilot; password box full height
The global player_name default ('pilot') overwrote the saved login name every launch, so the splash never remembered the last pilot — the default now lives only in the shell-skipping paths (bots, scripted --connect). Field boxes get a fixed height so the empty password field no longer sits squashed until focus adds the caret.

v0.77.1 2026-08-29 Linux (.run) scripts/release.sh — build+publish+verify in one step

Platform	File	Size	SHA-256
Linux (.run)	pax-helios-v0.77.1-linux-x86_64.run	3.9 MB	db96df7d47c39fcb…

What changed

scripts/release.sh — build+publish+verify in one step
Releasing was three manual steps across two repos and got skipped by two sessions running. Now: release.sh refuses a dirty tree, builds the installer, warns if the Windows zip is missing, syncs the portal, and fails unless /api/releases actually serves the version. AGENTS.md says user-facing work ends with it.

v0.77.0 2026-08-29 Linux (.run) orbital lines in flight, O toggles them

Platform	File	Size	SHA-256
Linux (.run)	pax-helios-v0.77.0-linux-x86_64.run	3.9 MB	d100f55422317312…

What changed

orbital lines in flight, O toggles them
Dashed schematic rings at true scale drawn from the canopy: planets ring the star, moons ring their parent. New rebindable action ORBIT LINES (default O) toggles them; on by default. Dash thickness scales with distance (~1 px anywhere), emissive above 1 so the shadow pass treats them as HUD. Live flight path only — headless gates stay byte-identical. Dev script learns the 'o' key.

v0.76.1 2026-08-29 Linux (.run) shadow shimmer — pin the texel grid to the world, cull front faces

Platform	File	Size	SHA-256
Linux (.run)	pax-helios-v0.76.1-linux-x86_64.run	3.9 MB	d9c5343a1aa41653…

What changed

shadow shimmer — pin the texel grid to the world, cull front faces
The camera-centred shadow box rode the camera, so sliding re-rasterized the world into a shifted texel grid every frame; decks blinked lit/dark under a grazing sun wherever the depth compare sat at the bias margin. Snap the light window by the sub-texel remainder of the camera's absolute position (f64 — AU magnitudes) so the grid steps only by whole texels, and enable the front-face culling the depth pass comment always promised, which removes grazing-incidence acne outright. gate_shadow_slide holds it closed: half-texel camera slide, 0.00% pixels flipped (was 2.7%).

v0.76.0 2026-08-28 Linux (.run) account login — splash password field, auth verdicts, supersede UX

Platform	File	Size	SHA-256
Linux (.run)	pax-helios-v0.76.0-linux-x86_64.run	3.9 MB	b20c34bbee5d0474…

What changed

account login — splash password field, auth verdicts, supersede UX
The client half of heliopause docs/ACCOUNTS.md: the splash grows a masked PASSWORD field (Shell-owned, never written to the cfg), hello carries it (JSON-escaped), and --password= serves scripted/bot logins. A rejected login or a server-closed session (superseded, kicked, disabled) bounces to the splash with the reason in red — never a silent limbo. Root fix: link_update returned early on a closed socket without draining the reader's inbox, losing the server's last words; the drain now runs first and only an unexplained drop toasts LINK LOST. Verified live: credentialed login in world, wrong password and SIGNED IN FROM ANOTHER COMPUTER both land on the splash. 97 tests.

v0.71.0 2026-08-27 Linux (.run) the models open in Blender now

Platform	File	Size	SHA-256
Linux (.run)	pax-helios-v0.71.0-linux-x86_64.run	3.9 MB	15241ac319fd353c…

What changed

the models open in Blender now
art/<name>.blend for every content model (crystal, the three console parts, ship_sparrow, station_anchorage), imported from the shipping .glb so what you open is what the game loads. export_glb.py sends an edited .blend back to assets/models/ with the settings helios expects (GLB, +Y up, apply modifiers, NLA-track clips); make_blends.py rebuilds art/ from the .glb files. Round-trip verified lossless — node names, clips, materials, emissive flags — and the parse gates pass on round-tripped files. docs/MODELS.md carries the workflow and the two hard-won winding rules. The .py generators stay as frozen bootstrap; an edited .blend outranks them.

v0.70.2 2026-08-27 Linux (.run) the hangar bay gets an interior

Platform	File	Size	SHA-256
Linux (.run)	pax-helios-v0.70.2-linux-x86_64.run	3.9 MB	f1683ab7befd4b44…

What changed

the hangar bay gets an interior
The bay shell was a single outward-wound skin, so from the mouth every wall was a culled backface and the bay was full of stars. box() grows an inner=True mode that reverses the winding, and the shell gets an inward lining — inset 0.8 on the five closed sides, flush at the mouth, with the rim between the skins hidden behind the glow frame.

v0.70.1 2026-08-27 Linux (.run) the anchorage ring gets its skin back

Platform	File	Size	SHA-256
Linux (.run)	pax-helios-v0.70.1-linux-x86_64.run	3.9 MB	2e837e665720cf95…

What changed

the anchorage ring gets its skin back
torus_tube swept its octagonal section counter-clockwise, which with bridge()'s quad order put every normal INSIDE the tube. helios culls backfaces, so the habitat ring's outer skin vanished and you looked straight through it at the far side's interior. Blender's preview renders are double-sided, which is why they never showed it. The section now runs clockwise; glb and previews regenerated.

v0.70.0 2026-08-27 Linux (.run) architect glass goes quiet; the dash does the talking

Platform	File	Size	SHA-256
Linux (.run)	pax-helios-v0.70.0-linux-x86_64.run	3.9 MB	1e795bfa34138120…

What changed

architect glass goes quiet; the dash does the talking
The overlay lines (TRACTOR ON ..., ARCHITECT model ...) duplicated the dash panels and then sat on top of them. Gone. In F9 the left dash carries EVERY tractor and object stat — state, model, id, position in AU, scale, range, count, and the controls that apply right now — and the right dash becomes CONSOLE: the toast feed, newest at the bottom, clipped to the panel because the world-text path has no clipping of its own. Glass toasts stay for every view without a dash (chase, map, bay); the delete confirmation stays on the glass because a warning should get in the way.

v0.69.0 2026-08-27 Linux (.run) the dash flies architect mode too

Platform	File	Size	SHA-256
Linux (.run)	pax-helios-v0.69.0-linux-x86_64.run	3.9 MB	74ef2689b60b9dc1…

What changed

the dash flies architect mode too
In F9 the PAX HELIOS status panel comes down — the builder is looking at the world — and the two dash panels flanking nav become the tractor beam's instruments. Left: TRACTOR, with the state (CLEAR / CONTACT / PLACING / HOLD) and what the wheel and buttons do right now. Right: OBJECT, with the touched prop's model, id, position in AU, scale, and how many objects are placed in the system. The centre nav panel stays a nav panel.
While MMB carries a prop the beam scan is paused, so the panels resolve the held prop by id rather than by hit index.

v0.68.1 2026-08-27 Linux (.run) the architect's beam is the tractor beam now

Platform	File	Size	SHA-256
Linux (.run)	pax-helios-v0.68.1-linux-x86_64.run	3.9 MB	45ae974f47cc3119…

What changed

the architect's beam is the tractor beam now
The pilot named it. TRACTOR BEAM when bare (with its reach), TRACTOR ON when it touches a prop, TRACTOR HOLD while MMB carries one.

v0.68.0 2026-08-27 Linux (.run) the wheel stretches a bare cursor's reach

Platform	File	Size	SHA-256
Linux (.run)	pax-helios-v0.68.0-linux-x86_64.run	3.9 MB	ee2cc2d2588818fb…

What changed

the wheel stretches a bare cursor's reach
A 500x station has to be placed from kilometres out, and a fixed 400 m pole meant flying into its lap to touch it. The wheel already scales the armed ghost or the touched prop; now, when the cursor touches nothing, it lengthens or shortens the pole instead — 1.25x per notch, 25 m to 100 km — and the idle HUD line shows the current reach.

v0.67.0 2026-08-27 Linux (.run) architect mode is a beam cursor now

Platform	File	Size	SHA-256
Linux (.run)	pax-helios-v0.67.0-linux-x86_64.run	3.9 MB	7c9a89b55eaea16f…

What changed

architect mode is a beam cursor now
F9 shows a nose laser with a sphere cursor at the end — nothing armed, nothing attached. [ ] arms a model riding the cursor; LMB places it and returns to the bare cursor. Props only move while the beam touches them AND MMB is held (release drops and commits); wheel scales the armed ghost or the touched prop; DEL/BACKSPACE on a touched prop asks first.
Also: the touched-prop highlight is four bracket dots, not an enclosing sphere (the mesh pass has no transparency — around a 9x prop the old ring was an opaque wall filling the canopy), and the architect HUD rows moved to y=462/486, off the toast rows they were overprinting.

v0.66.0 2026-08-27 Linux (.run) you can see the beam now

Platform	File	Size	SHA-256
Linux (.run)	pax-helios-v0.66.0-linux-x86_64.run	3.9 MB	3d7f5921cc890048…

What changed

you can see the beam now
Pilot report: no beam in F9 mode. It was there and it worked — the grab test passed — but it was a 1.2 metre column starting at the camera's own position: the near section sat outside the windscreen and the far section was one pixel wide at a kilometre. A selector nobody can see is not a selector.
Three changes: the beam starts below the hull so its near section enters the cockpit view, its thickness scales with reach (a 4 km beam is now a 30 m column), and contact lights an impact blob at the landing point. And because the beam points DOWN while the pilot looks FORWARD, the HUD now narrates what it is doing regardless: "BEAM: no contact", "BEAM CONTACT: crystal - RMB to grab", or the full holding-controls line. You aim with the HUD; the beam is the confirmation.

v0.65.0 2026-08-27 Linux (.run) architect mode grows hands — grab, carry, nudge, drop

Platform	File	Size	SHA-256
Linux (.run)	pax-helios-v0.65.0-linux-x86_64.run	3.9 MB	870cb8ee2fd26742…

What changed

architect mode grows hands — grab, carry, nudge, drop
Placed props can finally be edited, which mattered the moment a station got scaled 3x from inside itself and there was no way to step back.
The belly beam: in F9 mode a laser runs straight down from the ship. Whatever it touches glows cyan; RMB grabs it. A held prop glows green and is TETHERED — its offset lives in the ship's frame, so flying carries it with you at whatever distance you took it, exactly as asked. MMB drags it across the view (screen-right, screen-up). Arrows rotate it, -/= rescale it, all redirected from the placement ghost to the held prop. RMB (or ENTER) drops it — one prop_update to the server, not sixty a second — and BACKSPACE deletes the held prop by name instead of guessing at the nearest.
Verified live end to end: place, pitch the belly at it, GRABBED toast, drop, "architect: pilot moved prop-4" in the server log. The drop was silently dead on the first attempt — the update message used single braces, and Odin's fmt eats those as placeholders, sending the server unparseable JSON. The grab worked, the drop did nothing: the exact gotcha this repo's own notes warn about, walked into anyway.

v0.64.0 2026-08-27 Linux (.run) a signed throttle, a velocity gauge, and the bars nobody had ever seen

Platform	File	Size	SHA-256
Linux (.run)	pax-helios-v0.64.0-linux-x86_64.run	3.9 MB	0041391a4bf6e720…

What changed

a signed throttle, a velocity gauge, and the bars nobody had ever seen
THE THROTTLE IS SIGNED NOW, one axis, one knob, as asked: the forward key raises it, the slow key lowers it — and does not stop at zero. Hold it past zero and the ship backs up, down to the reverse ceiling the flight model already had (35% of forward). The forward key brings a reversing ship back through zero into forward. Readouts show REV n% in amber when negative. Gated in physics: full reverse settles on the rearward cap, and full forward from reverse crosses zero and gets there.
THE VELOCITY GAUGE: a vertical bar on the centre console. Middle line is zero, top line is 100% of forward speed, bottom is 100% of reverse speed, and the fill grows from the middle toward whichever ceiling you are approaching — green up, amber down. Verified live at full reverse: the bar fills middle-to-bottom exactly.
AND A FOSSIL: the gauge did not render, and neither, it turns out, had the shield and hull bars — ever. panel_bar's 4 mm lift off the panel plane loses the depth test to something within a couple of centimetres of the glass, so every bar it ever drew was buried; the numbers printed beside them read fine, so nobody missed them. Found by lifting a magenta probe 20 cm off the dash and watching it appear. Bars now sit 2 cm off the glass — empirically clear, imperceptible parallax — which resurrects the shield and hull bars along with the new gauge.

v0.63.0 2026-08-27 Linux (.run) log in where you logged out

Platform	File	Size	SHA-256
Linux (.run)	pax-helios-v0.63.0-linux-x86_64.run	3.9 MB	72646d36a3efd41b…

What changed

log in where you logged out
The client half of pose persistence (server v20260827.0.8): a welcome that carries a saved spot spawns the ship there — position, facing, at rest — instead of at the system default. Only welcomes do this; a jump arrival still spawns at the destination's default like it always has.
A degenerate stored quaternion is guarded against NaN-ing the ship.

v0.62.0 2026-08-27 Linux (.run) the map no longer touches the throttle, and you can find yourself

Platform	File	Size	SHA-256
Linux (.run)	pax-helios-v0.62.0-linux-x86_64.run	3.9 MB	ba026c164b0b6695…

What changed

the map no longer touches the throttle, and you can find yourself
Pilot report: cruise at 3c, open the map, and the speed spools down to 1 km/s — the cruise idle floor, which is the tell. Opening the map zeroes the movement inputs so WASD can pan the chart, and the cruise drive read that zero as throttle-zero. The throttle is persistent state, not a held key: the keys now only ADJUST it outside the map, but the setting keeps APPLYING everywhere. Verified live: 0.1 c and climbing with the chart open.
The ship marker is now the same red pin the galaxy chart uses — stalk, head, YOU ARE HERE — at constant angular size. The old green cube was a fixed-world-size speck that hid among station markers and sat entirely off-frame after a long cruise; "where am I" is the same question at every scale and now has the same answer.
Also closed a stuck-preview path found while reproducing: arriving anywhere (gate, mass jump, reconnect) now ends any map preview, so reopening the map always shows the sky you are actually under rather than the last system you peeked at — which could hide the ship marker with no visible explanation.

v0.61.0 2026-08-27 Linux (.run) UNCHARTED — the map shows what the charts know

Platform	File	Size	SHA-256
Linux (.run)	pax-helios-v0.61.0-linux-x86_64.run	3.9 MB	e6bc2daa12e8f6c3…

What changed

UNCHARTED — the map shows what the charts know
The client half of the registry (server v20260827.0.7). Peek an unsurveyed system and the preview is a telescope's view: one star, an UNCHARTED watermark, and "somebody has to go there first". Your own discoveries preview in full before filing — you were there — and everyone's do once the survey is filed.
Discovering now also tells you what you are carrying: "survey aboard — dock in the Core to file it with the registry". Docking home lands it with a REGISTRY toast naming the count and the pay.

v0.60.0 2026-08-27 Linux (.run) the real lighting fix, your system's real name, and peeking

Platform	File	Size	SHA-256
Linux (.run)	pax-helios-v0.60.0-linux-x86_64.run	3.9 MB	7c347813ae8bafde…

What changed

the real lighting fix, your system's real name, and peeking
THE LIGHTING, actually fixed this time. The previous fix traded one wrong picture for another — planets right, stations and cockpit flipped — and that contradiction is what finally exposed the root cause: the sphere mesh's triangles wound INWARD while every other mesh wound outward. With backface culling, every sphere on screen was showing the inside of its far hemisphere: a disc that looks identical but whose normals belong to the other side of the planet. Every correctly-reasoned light direction therefore looked inverted on spheres and correct on cubes, and no sign flip could ever satisfy both. The winding is fixed, both sign flips are reverted to the plain travel-direction convention, and the sunlit gate now dumps its renders (--shot) — looking at them is how the gate's own camera bug was caught: its "sun in frame" shot had the sun 150 degrees behind the camera, and the glow it found was a random sky star. The gate's angled frame is now literally the pilot's screenshot — star beside planet, near face must be dark — as pixels.
YOUR SYSTEM'S REAL NAME on the chart. A pilot sat in Kessels Folly while the map called it WAA-001c: the chart derives names locally and cannot know server-side renames. For the one system the client holds the manifest for, the manifest now wins — the chart recognises it by galactic id. Other pilots' renames still await a known-space sync.
PEEKING. Select a star, press ENTER (or double-click): that system's schematic opens as a PREVIEW — planets, stations, gates — labelled "you are not here", with no ship markers and travel keys disabled. ENTER climbs back to the chart; zooming out or closing the map drops the preview. Server-side it is read-only and gated: browsing writes nothing.

v0.59.0 2026-08-27 Linux (.run) night sides are dark now, and a pixel gate makes sure

Platform	File	Size	SHA-256
Linux (.run)	pax-helios-v0.59.0-linux-x86_64.run	3.9 MB	e835150487f0d84b…

What changed

night sides are dark now, and a pixel gate makes sure
The planet lighting fix in v0.57.0 did not fix it, and lighting_bug_002 proved it: same pilot, same setup, star visibly behind the planet, near face in full colour. The claim had now shipped wrong twice on reasoning that read correctly — the shader says dir_light_dir is the direction the light travels, the code fed it exactly that, and the screen disagreed. Somewhere in the pipeline the effective convention is inverted (inward sphere normals are the prime suspect; recorded, not yet chased).
So the truth lives in pixels now. A SUNLIT gate joins the headless suite: it renders one planet from the day side, the night side, and an angle with the sun itself in frame, and asserts that the day face is bright, the night face is dark, and the lit half of the disc is the half the sun glow is on — reading the sun's position from the rendered pixels, not from anybody's basis algebra, because the gate's own first version got the expected side wrong while the render was right.
Against the pre-fix code the gate reports the bug in one line: "day face 19.1 vs night face 163.9 — the night side is lit". After the sign flip: day 163.9, night 19.1, lit half agreeing with the sun glow. The global near-field light carried the same inversion and is aligned too.

v0.58.0 2026-08-27 Linux (.run) YOU ARE HERE, on the star chart too

Platform	File	Size	SHA-256
Linux (.run)	pax-helios-v0.58.0-linux-x86_64.run	3.9 MB	4bf18da62bb1d613…

What changed

YOU ARE HERE, on the star chart too
Pilot report: the you-are-here marker vanishes when the star chart is zoomed under ~100 ly. It was never gone — it was camouflaged. Home was a gold ring, which read fine at far zoom where the whole settled bubble is one gold knot, and disappeared entirely zoomed in, where every Core system wears a gold halo and home was one more gold dot among a hundred.
It is a map pin now: red head on a red stalk floating above the star — nothing else on the chart is red-on-a-stalk — at constant angular size so it reads the same at 90 ly across as at 900. The pin floats above the star rather than covering it, and a red YOU ARE HERE label is drawn outside the label budget: it is the one name that must never lose its slot to a prettier neighbour.

v0.57.0 2026-08-27 Linux (.run) planets are lit by their star, and the map stops stealing colour

Platform	File	Size	SHA-256
Linux (.run)	pax-helios-v0.57.0-linux-x86_64.run	3.9 MB	c345da3f4c405d40…

What changed

planets are lit by their star, and the map stops stealing colour
Two pilot reports, one root cause between them and one honest geometry bug.
THE GREYSCALE. Frame.lighting was a POINTER into the scene's own lighting, and every view that "locally" tweaked the frame's light — the system map, dives, ghost links — was actually writing through into the scene, permanently. Opening the map once replaced the star's warm colour (power 2.4) with the map's white at 0.8 and the world came back desaturated; measured, saturation fell 0.42 to 0.19 across one map toggle. Frame.lighting is a VALUE now: frame_begin copies the scene lighting, per-view tweaks die with the frame — which is what every one of those call sites already believed they were doing — and the whole class of bug is unrepresentable. Saturation now measures identical before and after.
THE LIT DARK SIDE. The one directional light pointed star -> CAMERA: a headlight shining out of your eyes, correct only for things near you. Stand on a planet's night side and its face was lit anyway (lighting_bug_001: star visibly BEHIND the planet, near face in full pink). Every body is now sunlit per draw, star -> body, which the value-typed frame makes safe; ships and cockpit still use star -> camera, which at their distance is the same thing and correct. Planets show a real terminator now — lit limb sunward, black past it.

v0.56.0 2026-08-27 Linux (.run) FIRST DISCOVERY — and F10 to put your name on it

Platform	File	Size	SHA-256
Linux (.run)	pax-helios-v0.56.0-linux-x86_64.run	3.9 MB	60520b10cb47dffd…

What changed

FIRST DISCOVERY — and F10 to put your name on it
The client half of discovery claims (server v20260827.0.4). Arrive somewhere no one has ever been and the game says so: a FIRST DISCOVERY toast, a FIRST CHARTED line in the HUD from the manifest's new provenance fields, and F10 opens a naming prompt — type, ENTER, and the system carries your name for everyone who comes after.
The prompt is a tiny modal that owns the keyboard while open, enforcing the server's charset at the door. It is gated on the MANIFEST, not on the discovery event: the event is the fanfare, but the claim is a fact about the system, and a discoverer who reconnects is still the discoverer.
Also fixes a map bug that this work's own verification kept tripping over: the galaxy pick was purely angular, so clicking squarely on a fat nearby star kept selecting a speck hundreds of light years behind it — dozens of far stars fall inside any pick cone, and one is always angularly closer than the near star's exact centre. The pick now measures the angle to each marker's EDGE, so the thing under the pointer wins. Extracted to map3d_galaxy_pick and gated by a test that aims at the nearest star's projected centre and demands the pick agree.

v0.55.0 2026-08-24 Linux (.run) gates work again, and now you can just fly through them

Platform	File	Size	SHA-256
Linux (.run)	pax-helios-v0.55.0-linux-x86_64.run	3.9 MB	6f9e6990b298f0ac…

What changed

gates work again, and now you can just fly through them
"Jump denied: internal" was mine, one release old. A gate body carried a single string used both as the label a pilot reads and as the address sent to the server. Naming gates in v0.54.0 changed that string to "The Drift", so every jump asked for a system by that name, and there isn't one — there is one called "verge-drift" that is NAMED The Drift.
Split: `name` is what you read, `dest` is where you go. Gated on both sides — the client asserts they are different strings and that an unnamed gate still falls back to a jumpable id, and the server asserts over the wire that the id works and the LABEL is refused.
FLYING THROUGH ONE NOW WORKS. It should always have: a doorway you have to stop and press a key at is not a doorway. Come within 260 m of the centre — well inside the 600 m structure, so it is the aperture and not the pylons — and it takes you. There is a six second lockout afterwards, because you arrive beside a gate on the far side and falling straight back through it would be a loop.

v0.54.0 2026-08-24 Linux (.run) the HUD shows names, not addresses

Platform	File	Size	SHA-256
Linux (.run)	pax-helios-v0.54.0-linux-x86_64.run	3.9 MB	19a627c2312889ff…

What changed

the HUD shows names, not addresses
From a pilot's screenshot at a gate: SYSTEM read "mw:2598,-1,-1:4" and the gate was labelled "mw:2598,-2,0:0". Both are ids — perfectly correct and completely useless to a person standing there.
SYSTEM shows the manifest's name now, falling back to the id only if there isn't one. Gates are labelled with where they GO, using the destination name the server started sending in v20260824.0.5.
This is the naming work from v0.44.0 finally reaching the place you actually read names. The galactic map has been showing "Helios Prime" and "The Drift" for ten releases while the cockpit showed coordinates.

v0.53.0 2026-08-24 Linux (.run) the throttle works in cruise, so you can orbit something

Platform	File	Size	SHA-256
Linux (.run)	pax-helios-v0.53.0-linux-x86_64.run	3.9 MB	d0ff49ae71e57877…

What changed

the throttle works in cruise, so you can orbit something
Cruise ignored the throttle entirely: it zeroed the linear input and flew at whatever the seconds-away governor said. So the only speeds available near a planet were "arriving" and "dropped out at 150 m/s" — and a lap around a planet at 150 m/s takes five days, which is what "takes days" meant.
The governed speed is the CEILING now and the throttle picks where in that range you fly. Full throttle is the seconds-away speed; backing off lets you loiter, orbit, or just look at something.
Two details that decide whether this actually works:

v0.52.0 2026-08-24 Linux (.run) a centre reticle, and stars that are the colour they are

Platform	File	Size	SHA-256
Linux (.run)	pax-helios-v0.52.0-linux-x86_64.run	3.9 MB	00161c6922a0b764…

What changed

a centre reticle, and stars that are the colour they are
CENTRE RETICLE. Four ticks around an empty middle rather than a solid cross, so the one pixel you are trying to aim at is the one pixel the reticle does not cover. Drawn from HUD glyphs like the nav marker, and hidden wherever aiming is not the point — maps, the fitting bay, dives, ghost links, docked, and the shell.
The glyph offsets are measured off a rendered frame, not derived: '-' and '|' do not sit in the same place inside their cells, so one set of metrics leaves the cross visibly askew. My first guess was three pixels low, which is exactly the kind of thing that is invisible in code and obvious on screen.
STAR COLOURS. They were already keyed to spectral class — the problem was that they never survived the trip. The chart draws stars as emissive markers, and the tonemapper compresses anything bright toward white: measured on a real frame, 42% of star pixels came back with almost no colour and the average was cream. Two changes, both needed. Emissive is near 1 instead of 2, so the hue is not crushed before it reaches the screen; and the palette is deliberately deeper than true blackbody, since what matters is that a red dwarf reads red at a glance rather than that it matches a spectrum.

v0.51.0 2026-08-24 Linux (.run) dropping out of cruise by hand leaves a speed you can fly

Platform	File	Size	SHA-256
Linux (.run)	pax-helios-v0.51.0-linux-x86_64.run	3.9 MB	55adde58929b9ea7…

What changed

dropping out of cruise by hand leaves a speed you can fly
Pilot report: manually stopping cruise leaves the velocity enormous and bleeding off VERY slowly — you sail past what you were aiming at, and if you turn to face it you are now flying away from it.
Both halves are one cause, and it is a good example of a fake number escaping into a real system. Cruise does not accelerate the ship: it integrates POSITION directly and writes ship.vel purely so the HUD has something to show. That number reaches the 1e9 m/s presentation cap. The automatic arrival knew this and replaced it with a real exit velocity. The manual drop did not touch ship.vel at all — so the moment the drive let go, the integrator inherited the HUD's number as though it were momentum. At 1e9 m/s against a Sparrow's retros, stopping takes about 263 days. The reversed vector is the same fact from the other side: you are still doing cruise speed along your old heading, so turning toward the thing you overshot points you away from it.
Every exit now goes through one cruise_drop: manual, automatic, or forced. Cancelling mid-charge still leaves velocity alone, because during the spool-up you are flying normally and it is really your velocity.

v0.50.0 2026-08-24 Linux (.run) the star chart pans between rebuilds

Platform	File	Size	SHA-256
Linux (.run)	pax-helios-v0.50.0-linux-x86_64.run	3.9 MB	33f68a825c5a70d1…

What changed

the star chart pans between rebuilds
The slides stopped working below 1 kly — and this was a second, different bug that my own performance fix uncovered.
The star chart caches a field of absolute galactic positions and rebuilds it only when the view has moved a fair fraction of its radius. But it was DRAWING that field relative to the centre it was built at, so a pan moved nothing until the next rebuild and then everything jumped at once. At the old threshold (12% of a 1.4x radius) rebuilds were frequent enough that this read as "choppy". Raising it to 22% of a 1.75x radius to stop the dropped frames turned choppy into dead: you now have to slide 150 ly before anything happens at all.
m.gal_centre is for deciding WHEN to rebuild and for nothing else. The draw path — stars, labels, and home — works against the live centre now, so the picture follows the pointer every frame and a rebuild only extends the field rather than moving it.

v0.49.0 2026-08-24 Linux (.run) the system map can look at things again

Platform	File	Size	SHA-256
Linux (.run)	pax-helios-v0.49.0-linux-x86_64.run	3.9 MB	57c099e1934f5510…

What changed

the system map can look at things again
Three reported symptoms — rotation stuck on the centre star, WSADRF doing nothing, mouse slides doing nothing — were one missing term, and it was mine.
map3d_cam_pos and map3d_galaxy_eye have identical bodies. In v0.43.0 I ran a sed over one of them to prove a test gate caught the double-counted-pan bug, and the revert stripped m.focus out of BOTH. map3d_galaxy_eye is correct without it — up there the pan is baked into the field's centre and adding it twice is the bug. map3d_cam_pos needs it: it is what makes the system camera orbit the thing you selected.
So for five releases the system map orbited its own star no matter what you clicked, WSADRF moved a focus the camera ignored, and the slides wrote to the same ignored focus. Selection was working the whole time, which is why it looked like three unrelated bugs.

v0.48.0 2026-08-24 Linux (.run) smooth panning below 1 kly, and the system view is a key now

Platform	File	Size	SHA-256
Linux (.run)	pax-helios-v0.48.0-linux-x86_64.run	3.9 MB	bc2604ae1dbf4bb5…

What changed

smooth panning below 1 kly, and the system view is a key now
Two pilot reports, both right.
CHOPPY SLIDING under 1 kly. Measured rather than guessed: the star chart's field rebuild was 11-16 ms and fired about four times a second while dragging — a dropped frame every time, which is exactly what "choppy" looks like. Most of that cost was one dynamic array allocated per sector, and a full-view rebuild visits a few thousand sectors; sectors now append into a caller-owned buffer. The Core membership index was another millisecond, indexing all seven thousand stars when only the handful within 60 ly of the anchor can possibly be settled.
5 ms now. The field also carries more slack (1.75x the view rather than 1.4x, which costs almost nothing because the stride scales with radius) so it rebuilds a third as often. The chart tier felt fine already because it rebuilds far less often, not because it was cheaper.

v0.47.0 2026-08-24 Linux (.run) the grid was my sampler, and three more from the same report

Platform	File	Size	SHA-256
Linux (.run)	pax-helios-v0.47.0-linux-x86_64.run	3.9 MB	58d7b387cd9bc587…

What changed

the grid was my sampler, and three more from the same report
Pilot report on map_bug_006/007/008: one zoom step changes everything and is disorienting, and the star clusters sit in straight lines like a grid. Both were real, and they share a cause.
THE GRID. To stay fast the star chart visits every Nth sector — a regular lattice — so stars could only EXIST on that lattice, and a lattice seen in perspective reads as rays radiating from the camera. The stride now defines blocks and one sector is picked from inside each, hashed from the block so it stays put when you pan away and back. Same cost, scattered instead of aligned, and there is a test that fails if the sampled sectors ever share a residue again.
THE BLOBS at 007 were a marker-size compensation I let run unbounded: at a stride of 25 it drew stars twelve times oversized. Capped.

v0.46.0 2026-08-24 Linux (.run) a galaxy chart, so the map says what you are looking at

Platform	File	Size	SHA-256
Linux (.run)	pax-helios-v0.46.0-linux-x86_64.run	3.9 MB	4dac269268ccf51f…

What changed

a galaxy chart, so the map says what you are looking at
Pilot report: "im not sure what im looking at, when zoomed out are these stars or galaxy's". Fair — and the label saying GALAXY was the least of it. The map had no top tier: you could only pull back to ~900 ly of a 100,000 ly galaxy, 0.9% of it, so the view looked identical at every zoom and gave no anchor at all.
So there are two tiers up there now and each says what its dots ARE:
STAR CHART - each dot is a star system you can fly to GALAXY CHART - each point is a region where stars are thick

v0.45.0 2026-08-24 Linux (.run) the mass drive — pick a star, fall toward it

Platform	File	Size	SHA-256
Linux (.run)	pax-helios-v0.45.0-linux-x86_64.run	3.9 MB	ce6afc7d24f7367c…

What changed

the mass drive — pick a star, fall toward it
The galactic map now quotes a jump before you take it: distance, fuel and seconds, coloured by whether the drive reaches, whether the hold can pay, or whether you are clear to go. J commits it, sending the server's own id for the selected star — rebuilt from the identity the map holds, which is gated by a test because a wrong id would silently jump you somewhere else.
A crossing draws its own readout. While it runs you are between stars, somewhere the map cannot show, so it says where you are falling, how far is left, and that X cuts the screen — dropping you back where you started with the fuel already spent.
Drive reach and hold fuel ride the snapshot's law block, for the same reason credits do: the map has to draw range every frame and cannot depend on being docked to read a fit.

v0.44.0 2026-08-24 Linux (.run) the map knows what places are called

Platform	File	Size	SHA-256
Linux (.run)	pax-helios-v0.44.0-linux-x86_64.run	3.9 MB	a34d563b609a1afb…

What changed

the map knows what places are called
Mirrors the server's naming (internal/galaxy/naming.go, core.go) so the galactic map can name what it draws without a round trip, parity-gated against values generated by the Go side.
Catalog designations are positional now — PXQ-451c is a 100 ly region, one of its 1,000 sectors, and the star's index inside it. Neighbours share a prefix, so the sky has geography, and galaxy_parse_designation turns a name back into a location: nothing is stored, so a name typed into nav has to carry its own address.
The settled bubble wears warm halos and hand names. Two things this needed:

v0.43.0 2026-08-24 Linux (.run) the galactic map tier — zoom out and the galaxy is there

Platform	File	Size	SHA-256
Linux (.run)	pax-helios-v0.43.0-linux-x86_64.run	3.9 MB	9add2d573f026a78…

What changed

the galactic map tier — zoom out and the galaxy is there
Past 150 units the system schematic hands over to a star field generated locally from the same model the server uses. The client carries its own copy of the generator (src/galaxy.odin) rather than fetching: panning across light years has to feel instant, and both sides already share PCG32/splitmix64, so the same coordinate yields the same star. The parity gate pins sectors, classes, seeds, positions and designations against values from internal/galaxy — if the two ever drifted, the map would lie about where you can fly.
Three things this had to get right:
Count the pan once. The field centres on your system plus the pan and the camera orbits that same centre; adding it to both put the galaxy in the corner while every individual star still looked correct.
Cache the field. A 200 ly view spans ~650,000 sectors, and regenerating those per frame is a slideshow.
Sample rather than draw everything. Each star is a draw call, so the stride comes from a star budget and the local density: 32,700 stars measured 25 fps, the budgeted field holds 60.

v0.42.1 2026-08-23 Linux (.run) the fitting bay is a room, not a windscreen

Platform	File	Size	SHA-256
Linux (.run)	pax-helios-v0.42.1-linux-x86_64.run	3.9 MB	02d11b0ec2a91e1e…

What changed

the fitting bay is a room, not a windscreen
The bay rendered the ship correctly but kept drawing the cockpit frame in front of it, so you were looking at a parked Sparrow through your own canopy struts. The bay now owns the whole view: no cockpit, no own-ship chase model, no remote pilots drifting past, and no nav reticle painted over the hull you are working on.

v0.42.0 2026-08-23 Linux (.run)

Platform	File	Size	SHA-256
Linux (.run)	pax-helios-v0.42.0-linux-x86_64.run	3.9 MB	2655dd5d932d5b9c…

No notes recorded for this build.

v0.41.0 2026-08-23 Linux (.run)

Platform	File	Size	SHA-256
Linux (.run)	pax-helios-v0.41.0-linux-x86_64.run	3.9 MB	284d293497851956…

No notes recorded for this build.

v0.40.1 2026-08-23 Linux (.run) rotating the map no longer hovers or selects

Platform	File	Size	SHA-256
Linux (.run)	pax-helios-v0.40.1-linux-x86_64.run	3.9 MB	25cb8dfd133b6f66…

What changed

rotating the map no longer hovers or selects
Drag-rotate shared the pointer with selection, so letting go of a rotation while the cursor happened to sit over a body selected it and re-centred the camera on it — the view jumped mid-gesture. The hover highlight fired during rotation too, whenever the pointer paused.
The map now distinguishes a click from a drag by how far the pointer travelled since the button went down: 5 px of slop still counts as a click, anything more is a rotation and its release selects nothing. Hover is live only while the button is up. Quick click to select and plain hover-to-highlight work exactly as before when you are not rotating.

v0.40.0 2026-08-23 Linux (.run) map labels that stay with their objects, and a hover highlight

Platform	File	Size	SHA-256
Linux (.run)	pax-helios-v0.40.0-linux-x86_64.run	3.9 MB	b6800747a13084a3…

What changed

map labels that stay with their objects, and a hover highlight
The map labelled all thirty-odd bodies in a system and resolved every collision by pushing the loser a full row down, unbounded. The result was a staircase of names cascading off the bottom of the screen, each one nowhere near the dot it described — worst when zoomed out, where the bodies collapse into a cluster and the labels formed a column twenty deep.
Labels are ranked now by what a pilot actually navigates to: stars, stations and gates first, then facilities and planets, then moons, with the selection, the hover target and the nav target promoted above all of it. The list is budgeted to fourteen, and every label is kept on a leash — three rows of nudge at most, and a label that still cannot find a clear spot is dropped rather than exiled to the far side of the screen. Anything displaced draws a thin leader line back to its body, so a name is never ambiguous. Moons only earn a label once the camera is close enough for them to separate from their parent.
The pointer also highlights whatever it is over with a bright shell and always labels it, so clicking to select is no longer a guess about which dot is under the cursor.

v0.39.0 2026-08-23 Linux (.run) pilot-controlled landing gear; settings panel that fits on screen

Platform	File	Size	SHA-256
Linux (.run)	pax-helios-v0.39.0-linux-x86_64.run	3.9 MB	c5cc6c17c30c2d6a…

What changed

pilot-controlled landing gear; settings panel that fits on screen
The gear was recomputed every frame from "docked or near a station", so it deployed and retracted on its own and there was no way to overrule it. Action.Gear (default L) now toggles it directly, and the automatic behaviour is edge-triggered — it deploys as you arrive and retracts as you leave, then leaves the state alone, which also stops the flicker when hovering at the threshold distance. AUTO LANDING GEAR in settings switches the automation off completely.
The settings screen had outgrown the display: the panel ran past the top and bottom of the screen and the bindings list was cut off mid-list, so later actions could not be rebound at all. The panel is now capped to the viewport minus a 50 px margin top and bottom, and the bindings run in two columns — all 28 fit without scrolling, which matters because our Clay pass has no clipping, so a layout has to fit by construction rather than by scrolling.
Buttons were also inconsistent: compact only shrank padding, so a row with a single toggle stretched it across the whole panel while the four-button joystick row stayed small. ui_button takes an optional fixed width now and every settings control uses the same one.

v0.38.0 2026-08-23 Linux (.run) cap commanded sway and heave at 99 m/s

Platform	File	Size	SHA-256
Linux (.run)	pax-helios-v0.38.0-linux-x86_64.run	3.9 MB	4e00192f43a07e44…

What changed

cap commanded sway and heave at 99 m/s
Sizing the maneuver thrusters to kill drift also let them push the hull sideways as fast as the mains push it forward, which made strafing a second way to travel. Commanded sway and heave now top out at 99 m/s (Flight_Config.lateral_speed) while forward keeps the full 450.
The cap clamps pilot demand only. Damping always targets zero velocity, so shedding an existing drift — including the sideways momentum a hard turn leaves behind, which can far exceed the cap — still runs at full thruster authority. A gate covers exactly that: sway and heave settle at the cap, forward does not, and a 400 m/s drift still dies in under ten seconds. FA-off flight is unaffected, since raw mode has no speed targets at all.

v0.37.0 2026-08-23 Linux (.run) maneuver thrusters kill drift on every axis, not just the nose

Platform	File	Size	SHA-256
Linux (.run)	pax-helios-v0.37.0-linux-x86_64.run	3.9 MB	663356451a97abdf…

What changed

maneuver thrusters kill drift on every axis, not just the nose
Fixing surge braking exposed the real problem: sway damped at 11.2 m/s² and heave at 22.5, against 87.5 m/s² of braking. That asymmetry bites hardest when turning, because yawing ninety degrees at speed turns your surge into sway in the body frame — so closing the throttle after a turn left the ship sliding sideways for the better part of a minute.
The maneuver thrusters are now sized for the job they are named for: both sway and heave damp at 70 m/s², the same family as the retros, so drift on any axis is shed in about seven seconds instead of twenty (heave) or forty (sway). Side nozzles carry more force each because there are four of them rather than eight.
One deliberate knock-on: the RCS can now trim out the couple from a single live main, so losing a main no longer yaws the ship — it costs acceleration instead, because side thrust is being spent holding the line. That is what a real airframe does with authority to spare, and it still degrades handling emergently through the allocator rather than by script, so the damage gate now asserts the thrust loss (< 75% of healthy) plus stable heading. New gates cover per-axis drift, cross-axis balance, and the turn-then-coast case that started this.

v0.36.0 2026-08-23 Linux (.run) cockpit is the default view; name the modes MANEUVER and CRUISE

Platform	File	Size	SHA-256
Linux (.run)	pax-helios-v0.36.0-linux-x86_64.run	3.9 MB	367aead870a0a8de…

What changed

cockpit is the default view; name the modes MANEUVER and CRUISE
The client opened in the chase camera, so the cockpit we have been building — panels, holo tank, canopy — was something you had to go looking for. It is the default seat now; V still steps outside, and coming back from a dive or out to the login screen returns you to the seat rather than the chase cam.
The two ways to move also had no name on screen. Thruster flight is MANEUVER, the managed drive is CRUISE: the HUD carries a permanent FLIGHT row (replacing a row that only appeared while cruising) and the dash NAV panel echoes the same word beside the velocity, so it is always clear which physics you are flying under.

v0.35.0 2026-08-23 Linux (.run) make the Sparrow actually stop when you cut the throttle

Platform	File	Size	SHA-256
Linux (.run)	pax-helios-v0.35.0-linux-x86_64.run	3.9 MB	9bf513903b03dd3d…

What changed

make the Sparrow actually stop when you cut the throttle
Dropping throttle to zero at the 450 m/s ceiling coasted for about twenty seconds. The cause was thrust, not control: the retros were 2x90 kN, giving 22.5 m/s² of braking against mains that accelerate the same 8 t hull at 65 m/s² — three times longer to stop than to get going, which reads as a broken ship rather than as inertia.
Retros are now sized as the braking system they claim to be (2x350 kN, 87.5 m/s²), and lin_authority rises to 100 m/s² so flight assist can command that instead of quietly clamping to 60. Because strong retros would otherwise make the ship as quick backwards as forwards, a new Flight_Config.reverse_frac (0.35) caps the reverse target speed — backwards is for nudging, not travelling.
Stops now: 450 -> 0 in 6.1 s (was 20), 337 in 4.8 s, 225 in 3.6 s (was 10). Braking marginally outpaces the 7.2 s run up to top speed, which is the asymmetry a pilot expects. Gates pin the stop time from both ends and check the reverse cap, so neither the feel nor the cap can drift back silently.

v0.34.0 2026-08-22 Linux (.run) give the holo minimap a body — tank, horizon, stalks

Platform	File	Size	SHA-256
Linux (.run)	pax-helios-v0.34.0-linux-x86_64.run	3.9 MB	21cd1b030941e502…

What changed

give the holo minimap a body — tank, horizon, stalks
Reported from the cockpit: three coloured dots floating in the canopy that "move around when I move or rotate". They were the holo minimap's contacts, and the movement was correct — blips are ship-relative, so they sweep as you turn, like any radar. What was broken was everything around them: no container was ever drawn (the code even promised "the nav target ringed" and drew nothing), the volume floated at eye level 75 cm ahead in the middle of the windscreen, and its 20 cm radius threw the blips across a 30-degree arc. With no frame of reference they read as loose dots in space.
The tank now has a body: a dim wireframe shell, a bright horizon ring on your flight plane, a half-range ring, and a pedestal down to the dash so it reads as mounted hardware. Every contact drops a stalk to the horizon plane, which is what makes height above or below the plane legible at a glance, and the nav target and your locked target each get a ring. It sits on the dash above the NAV panel at a 7 cm radius instead of hanging in the view, and the NAV panel carries a HOLO 200km label so the rim means something.
Also aligned the nav distances: the dash NAV panel measured to a body's centre while the HUD row measured to its surface, so a station 419 m away read as both "419 m" and "19 m". Both are surface distance now.

v0.32.2 2026-08-22 Linux (.run) raise the dash panels 50 px (200 -> 150 below the old line)

Platform	File	Size	SHA-256
Linux (.run)	pax-helios-v0.32.2-linux-x86_64.run	3.9 MB	116dd9b08b1c33a9…

What changed

raise the dash panels 50 px (200 -> 150 below the old line)
200 put the bottom rows on the screen edge; 150 keeps HULL and the POS line clear of the hotkey strip while the sightline stays open.

v0.32.1 2026-08-22 Linux (.run) drop the dash panels 200 px so they clear the sightline

Platform	File	Size	SHA-256
Linux (.run)	pax-helios-v0.32.1-linux-x86_64.run	3.9 MB	e29ce98f699b1b6d…

What changed

drop the dash panels 200 px so they clear the sightline
The SHIP/NAV/TARGET trio sat high enough to crowd the forward view. They now hang 200 screen pixels lower. The offset is calibrated in screen pixels rather than panel pixels because the dash is close to the eye — a panel pixel covers roughly 1.6 screen pixels at that depth, so a literal 200 panel-px drop pushed the panels off the bottom edge entirely. Both the requested amount and the conversion sit in named constants, so tuning it is one number.
Side consoles (COMMS, SHIP STATUS) and the holo minimap are unchanged.

v0.32.0 2026-08-22 Linux (.run)

Platform	File	Size	SHA-256
Linux (.run)	pax-helios-v0.32.0-linux-x86_64.run	3.9 MB	8f8c474428e08a5a…

No notes recorded for this build.

v0.31.0 2026-08-22 Linux (.run) the installer asks where to install (default ./helios)

Platform	File	Size	SHA-256
Linux (.run)	pax-helios-v0.31.0-linux-x86_64.run	3.8 MB	ed4fe3ce10edffe7…

What changed

the installer asks where to install (default ./helios)
Testers were being installed into ~/.local/opt whether they liked it or not. The stub now prompts — "Install to [<installer dir>/helios]:" — taking the default on Enter, any typed path (~ and relative paths resolve), or a path given as an argument. Piped/non-interactive runs take the default instead of hanging, and -y skips the prompt.
The payload's versioned top directory is now stripped on extract, so the chosen folder holds the game itself rather than a nested pax-helios-vX.Y.Z/. That makes an install self-contained and relocatable ($ORIGIN rpath already allowed it): move it, copy it, delete it, or re-run a newer installer against the same folder to upgrade in place — which clears the asset tree we own first so removed files don't linger, and never deletes a directory it didn't create.
~/.local/bin/pax-helios is no longer created behind your back: it is refreshed when it already points at one of our installs (so the command can't launch a stale build) and created only with --link. --no-link opts out entirely, --help documents it all.

v0.30.1 2026-08-22 Linux (.run) CI artifact uploads are non-fatal (storage quota hiccups)

Platform	File	Size	SHA-256
Linux (.run)	pax-helios-v0.30.1-linux-x86_64.run	3.8 MB	95eab4244f3b2a4d…

What changed

CI artifact uploads are non-fatal (storage quota hiccups)
All three M28 jobs built and passed; only the artifact uploads failed on GitHub's storage quota (usage recalculates every 6-12h, so even after purging artifacts the block lingers). Uploads are conveniences — builds ship via the local installer — so continue-on-error keeps quota noise from failing CI. All stored artifacts purged again.

A persistent universe,flown one hull at a time.

Install & fly

Controls, in brief

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A persistent universe,
flown one hull at a time.