Introducing the Web Planetarium!

Introducing the Web Planetarium!

Twitter
Visit Us
Follow Me
RSS
Follow by Email

After a month of work and much help from the Godot community, we now have a web-based planetarium! Follow the new PLANETARIUM link in our main menu or click here.

Why a month? To make a long story short, a bit of I, Voyager code that uses your graphics card to calculate asteroid positions (specifically, numerical approximation of the inverse Kepler Equation) was not agreeable with WebGL1, the JavaScript API that renders 3D graphics on your browser. Godot community member capmn was kind enough to point out the flaw (in our code!). Meanwhile, clayjohn used our misguided Godot bug report to identify an actual bug in Godot, the fix for which is already in the upcoming Godot 3.2 release. In any case, it’s remarkable that this is possible at all! I could never have done it without the Godot Engine and its superb community. I’ve posted screen captures below and more on the Planetarium page…

Earth from the Moon.

I, Voyager screen capture of the Moon with Earth.

Uranus tilted at its crazy 98° to the rest of the solar system. Its moons are an interesting cast of characters.

I, Voyager screen capture of Uranus and its interestingly named moons, orbiting at a crazy 98° to the rest of the solar system.

An abstract! It’s a wide-angle view of Jupiter’s moons and Main Belt & Trojan asteroids.

I, Voyager screen capture of asteroids and moons of Jupiter -- a wide-angle abstract.

Please comment at our Forum!