alt Hacker NewsGee... That's fucking insane! I like it!
Btw, how many hours do you have in a day to build a non-commercial beta like this in just a year?! :D
I found several issues: 1. Selecting Voyagers and swam back in time: • The Sun was leaving a strange trace of light while moving backward through space; • When voyagers reached the Earth in 1977, they ricocheted from it and flew back into space; • When I changed the selected target during the time simulation, it stopped and lost its simulation speed 2. I can't move my cursor with arrows or Cmd | Option + <> combinations in the "Ask AI" input field
And a few thoughts from me: • You missed the favicon =) • Behavior, when you first should click on the object and then click "center" to fly to it, is a bit counterintuitive and confusing. I personally expected scroll target changes automatically when I clicked to a different object • What do you think about adding the same scale across the whole Universe (esp. in the local stars group) that the Local Group has with vertical lines from the plane of the ecliptic? • Should you add a few more DSO objects like TON 618 in the "Featured" catalog?
It’d be interesting to hear how you see this evolving and what the original idea was. Are you trying to compete with other universe exploration apps, or build it more like a browser-based atlas of the Universe?
Thanks a lot for the feedbacks! I spent quite a lot of time on this yes, though I was already quite familiar with 3d rendering and astronomical computation so it wasn't that hard. In fact the most difficult part was probably to learn WebGPU that I never used before.
For the issues:
1. Yes there are some bugs currently with the temporal anti aliasing. I was a bit aggressive on the effect because without it the Milky Way doesn't look good. I'll try to fix that (ideally it should adjust to the the velocity field).
2. All the time controls is still pretty much untested, I'll see if I can fix that.
3. I'd like to add more scale hints, but it's hard without cluttering the view. I'll see what I can do.
4. Yes at the moment there is only one black hole (sgr A*), I'll add more as soon as I can.
As for how this will evolve, I am not sure yet. I have a basic mobile version prototype working on iOS, so I thought this could turn into a mobile app at some point. No plan for an actual heavy PC app at the moment.