Evolution simulates a planet's tectonic history: a supercontinent breaks up, oceans open and close, and the continents collide and gather again.
A history is already building behind this card — you can watch it while you read.
Evolution is in beta and works best on a desktop computer for now. It runs on a phone with lighter settings: coarser plates, and Add detail up to 640K cells.
Every moment on the timeline is a Preview: a quick look at the planet at that time. Drag the timeline to any moment, or press play. The shaded part of the rail is the history computed so far, and you can scrub through all of it while the rest fills in.
Drag the globe to turn it, scroll to zoom, and hover the planet for its height, crust and climate.
Found a moment you like? Press Add detail. It sculpts that moment again, much more finely: rivers and lakes, glaciers and fjords, sand seas, its own climate, and the Satellite view. It takes from a few seconds to about a minute.
One moment is kept in detail at a time. Adding detail to another replaces it once the new one is done, and the card tells you when it will.
Switch between Terrain, Satellite, Climate, Heightmap and Plates with the tabs over the planet. Climate shows Köppen zones, temperature, rain, wind and currents, with more layers (pressure, upwelling, ice, aridity, growing season and others) under More… or in the layer list. Climate also works on a paused preview.
Export saves the detailed moment as map files: a colour map, the Satellite view (the year, January or July), its climate zones, heightmaps with and without the sea floor, a land mask, and its rivers and lakes on their own. Export All saves one of each in a ZIP, at any width up to 16384 px.
New World starts a fresh history from a random seed. Open World to set the seed, the starting continent size, how long the history runs, how it should end, the planet's Temperature and Precipitation, and the Quality.
At the end of a history, Extend history runs it on for as long as you like. The link in your address bar rebuilds the same history, so you can share it.