[HN Gopher] Show HN: I rebuilt the Flash app "Scale of the Unive...
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Show HN: I rebuilt the Flash app "Scale of the Universe" in WebGL
Author : mattmar96
Score : 114 points
Date : 2021-12-08 18:33 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (htwins.net)
(TXT) w3m dump (htwins.net)
| andosteinmetz wrote:
| For any who haven't seen it, I also recommend Charles & Ray
| Eaemes' "Powers of Ten"
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0fKBhvDjuy0
| dr_dshiv wrote:
| Not for phones, I guess.
| mattmar96 wrote:
| Yeah, just kind of tricky to get everything working on a phone.
| My collaborator Cary's brother Michael had already built an iOS
| app so we didn't bother getting this working on phones.
| mattmar96 wrote:
| You can check out the source code here:
| https://github.com/matttt/scale_of_the_universe
| jancsika wrote:
| Is there a way to convert this to an SVG?
|
| Just curious what performance would be like to drag and zoom
| around an SVG version. I'm guessing bad...
| mattmar96 wrote:
| I had that thought, but the original assets were provided to me
| in bitmap form. Maybe we can try that in the future though
| epicwhaleburger wrote:
| Love it! Thanks for sharing, you're doing the science god's work,
| kid. You'll go far, I'm sure of it.
| ab_testing wrote:
| You have the HIV virus in there. You should add a coronavirus in
| there. I don't know how easy or hard that would be?
| mattmar96 wrote:
| Yeah that's a good idea. The only issue is that its been
| translated into so many different languages that it'd be a pain
| to get that name/description translated to all 17 of them.
| DarkUranium wrote:
| "COVID-19" should be fairly universal, probably?
| DoingIsLearning wrote:
| Technically 'COVID-19' is the disease experienced by
| humans.
|
| The virus is 'SARS-CoV2'.
| pawelwentpawel wrote:
| Loving this, really nice work. Works super smooth and even the
| music is quite nice!
|
| A little bit of unrequested feedback:
|
| - Allow me to drag the viewport somehow. A couple times I wanted
| see elements around to position them on my screen in perspective
| but couldn't do that.
|
| - Allow me to stop the zoom out animation somehow. At the moment
| one move on my trackpad and I teleport from coffee bean to
| Rwanda. I can't stop this zoom animation. It seems that I have to
| go to Rwanda.
|
| - Support retina screens. This might come in really useful. To do
| this (it occurs to me that you're using PIXI.js), when creating
| your app set resolution to window.devicePixelRatio || 1. You
| might be on a devicePixelRatio === 1 screen and can't see the
| difference right but trust me it's there. You can test and see it
| on any modern mac or apple mobile device.
|
| Sending you a digital high five of size of the observable
| universe.
| mattmar96 wrote:
| Thank you for the kind words and feedback! I'll look into
| these.
| zagrebian wrote:
| The performance is really good. Usually when I open a GPU-
| intensive visualization in the browser, my laptop fans start
| making a lot of noise, but not this time.
| mattmar96 wrote:
| I'm very glad to hear it. I spent a lot of time optimizing.
| bestouff wrote:
| On an android phone this thing wants me to download the iOS
| app...
| mattmar96 wrote:
| Oh good point. I'll update the message for android.
| sweetsocks21 wrote:
| I would also note it seems to work very well on Android
| Firefox in desktop mode.
| quda wrote:
| Love it! Cheers!
| thrdbndndn wrote:
| It should be "Zhong Wen (Fan Ti )" or "Zhong Wen (Zheng Ti )"
| for the traditional Chinese, not just "Zhong Wen ". I'm confused
| a little bit since it has "Zhong Wen (Jian Ti )" (Chinese
| (simplified)).
| mattmar96 wrote:
| Thank you, I'll be sure to fix that.
| trilinearnz wrote:
| Very cool. I had no idea that the diameter of Jupiter was a mere
| fraction of the distance of the moon from earth!
| ziggus wrote:
| Wow, that is very cool! Well done!
| mattmar96 wrote:
| Appreciate it
| danaugrs wrote:
| Nice! Where is the music from? It feels very familiar... isn't it
| from Kerbal Space Program?
| mattmar96 wrote:
| Yeah it is from KSP, good ear!
|
| https://incompetech.com/music/royalty-free/most/kerbalspacep...
|
| Oops I should really add a credit for it.
| aarchi wrote:
| Was this a port of the Flash app or reverse engineering it? The
| description on GitHub mentions that the Flash version was made by
| your friend, so I presume you have the original source available.
|
| I've wanted to port an old Flash game for a long time, but I only
| have the .swf file, not .fla, because I'm not the original
| developer. I've tried several decompilers to examine the code and
| resources, but it would take a lot of work to make sense of the
| obfuscated code. Unfortunately, it can't be played in the Ruffle
| emulator since it is written in ActionScript 3, which is not
| currently supported.
| mattmar96 wrote:
| It was closer to a port than reverse engineering. I spoke with
| Cary (the original creator) to get explanations from him on how
| the features and math behind it worked. He then sent over the
| metadata and images for all the objects. I think he sent the
| original flash project as well but I don't remember reading
| that code too much because his explanations of the
| functionality were sufficient.
| modeless wrote:
| I didn't realize that the Planck length was so much smaller than
| the elementary particles. "There's plenty of room at the bottom"
| indeed.
| dang wrote:
| Past threads about the original (and maybe a few variations):
|
| (Edit: this is fun too:
| https://abcnews.go.com/Technology/page/scale-universe-cary-m...)
|
| _The Scale of the Universe (2012)_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9629418 - May 2015 (8
| comments)
|
| _Scale of the Universe_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7298423 - Feb 2014 (80
| comments)
|
| _The Scale of The Universe- Made by 14 year old twins_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4816166 - Nov 2012 (1
| comment)
|
| _The Scale of the Universe 2_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4691798 - Oct 2012 (1
| comment)
|
| _The Scale of the Universe_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3589030 - Feb 2012 (8
| comments)
|
| _The Scale of the Universe_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3585187 - Feb 2012 (2
| comments)
|
| _The scale of the universe, and everything_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2398150 - April 2011 (17
| comments)
|
| _Scale of the Universe_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1953919 - Nov 2010 (39
| comments)
|
| _Scale of the Universe_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1835460 - Oct 2010 (46
| comments)
|
| _Scale of the universe (flash)_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1261816 - April 2010 (15
| comments)
| mattmar96 wrote:
| Thank you for this. It has been nice to read the old threads.
|
| btw, I appreciate you fixing my grammar in the title.
| omoikane wrote:
| For people who like scale comparisons of absurdly large things,
| there is also: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7XbeVosPszo
|
| Original: https://www.nicovideo.jp/watch/sm20365493
| alexvoda wrote:
| I like this (1) one even better because it highlights the
| mind bogling vast distances in space instead of just the size
| of objects.
|
| (1) https://joshworth.com/dev/pixelspace/pixelspace_solarsyst
| em....
| ChickeNES wrote:
| Using the scroll wheel to zoom doesn't work in Firefox
| ge96 wrote:
| These things are always depressing to me regarding meaning. I
| know the now point is to avoid pain/exist. But the scale and
| scifi, traveling, will it happen, even then what's the point but
| yeah. At least I'm busy being poor/trying to escape that at the
| moment.
|
| I do pursue things, have goals, enjoy solving problems/making
| things but yeah... good reminder. Same for remembering that you
| are a bag of meat.
| ASalazarMX wrote:
| It's worse falling into the state of mind that no matter what
| you do, you're insignificant and will be forgotten, and your
| existence in the cosmic scale means nothing.
|
| OTOH, it's liberating, because you know your life is yours to
| live, it doesn't belong to history, or some nebulous legacy.
| Enjoy your life, good and bad, because it's the only one you'll
| ever have.
|
| The odds lucking out as a human were slim, as most lives here
| are microscopic and are not conscious enough to understand
| living.
| krylon wrote:
| I love it! Thank you very much!!!
| amazd wrote:
| Incredible... an amazing visualization. I like how you have the
| mine craft world in there :D
| mattmar96 wrote:
| Thank you! Gotta have minecraft
| IceWreck wrote:
| I like that it mentions minecraft world > earth.
| grishka wrote:
| It's strange that there's Ukrainian but no Russian.
| chrisweekly wrote:
| On an iPhone 13 Pro / iOS 15.1.1, I get
|
| > This version of Scale of the Universe 2 is not designed for
| phones. Please find the app on the iOS app store.
|
| ... but can't find your app on the app store. Any chance you
| could provide a link?
| mattmar96 wrote:
| Oh hmm. Yeah it looks like the app isn't on the store for me
| either. I'm not involved in the app but I'll let my
| collaborator know.
| acdha wrote:
| I'd generally recommend not blocking mobile users. I'm not
| installing an app just to see if I like the idea. An "it's
| even better..." pitch after using it would let me know if
| it's worth the trouble.
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(page generated 2021-12-08 23:00 UTC)