[HN Gopher] 100k Stars
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       100k Stars
        
       Author : sans_souse
       Score  : 118 points
       Date   : 2024-05-10 07:45 UTC (1 days ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (stars.chromeexperiments.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (stars.chromeexperiments.com)
        
       | koromak wrote:
       | I miss playing Elite Dangerous
        
         | geuis wrote:
         | I love the concept of ED and spent many an hour exploring. But
         | when you have a full size galaxy, everything gets fairly
         | repetitive after a while.
         | 
         | I had a lot of hope for KSP2 and everything that was on the
         | roadmap. Nowhere near a galaxy scale, but much more realistic
         | combined with having to build all of the infrastructure to
         | reach the nearest star. Maybe one day we'll get a game that
         | delivers without being shut down.
        
           | KolmogorovComp wrote:
           | For those like me who were wondering, it seems that the game
           | studio in charge of Kerbal Space Program 2 (KSP2 above) has
           | announced it will be shuttered down [0]. This is a few days
           | old.
           | 
           | [0] https://www.ign.com/articles/take-two-shutters-kerbal-
           | space-...
        
         | ganzuul wrote:
         | It worked beautifully on Linux and then an update broke it!
        
       | tomtom1337 wrote:
       | This is great! One request would be for the smoothing when zoomed
       | out to not generate square pixels.
       | 
       | Example: https://imgur.com/a/lRrHHTJ
        
       | andersa wrote:
       | Why does it zoom the wrong way around? Scrolling up means "zoom
       | in" not "zoom out".
        
         | baw-bag wrote:
         | That makes sense to me I think! In things going back as far as
         | command and conquer, mousewheel up zooms in, and mousewheel
         | down zooms out.
        
           | eviks wrote:
           | But here wheel up zooms out!
        
             | Retr0id wrote:
             | Wheel does nothing at all for me in Firefox, I have to drag
             | the bar.
        
         | derefr wrote:
         | I dunno, it works just fine with my intuition -- which is that
         | you're not zooming as such; rather, by swiping up / scrolling
         | the page down, you're moving a camera "forward" / "deeper in",
         | toward the stars at the centermost part of the cube. The UI
         | then reacts by re-framing (zooming) to capture and center in
         | the view frustum, the volume of space that's between you and
         | that centermost point.
         | 
         | I think early versions of Google Earth (predating pinch-to-
         | zoom) worked this way, too? In that scrolling "down" meant
         | descending from space "down" to Earth -- and thus zooming in.
        
         | dimgl wrote:
         | Yeah I had this same problem. Could be because of my experience
         | playing space sims.
        
       | srameshc wrote:
       | What tools or techniques do you think the developers used to
       | build this ?
        
         | beezlewax wrote:
         | Probably something like threejs. Some custom shaders maybe.
        
           | Retr0id wrote:
           | Threejs indeed https://web.dev/case-studies/100000stars
        
       | Thaxll wrote:
       | This is pretty old, I think those are the webgl demos for Chrome
       | back then.
        
       | helsinkiandrew wrote:
       | Last year: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30850625 (81
       | comments)
        
       | rikafurude21 wrote:
       | I like this visualization, but it got me thinking about how we
       | often portray the universe in media. It seems like we always end
       | up with the same message: 'Look how small and insignificant we
       | are.' It's like we're drawn to the idea that our existence is
       | just a tiny blip on the universe's radar.I think this perspective
       | is a bit one-dimensional. It seems almost nihilistic.
        
         | GJim wrote:
         | > Look how small and insignificant we are ..... It seems almost
         | nihilistic.
         | 
         | It isn't nihilistic. It is a simple fact.
         | 
         | As an aside, if you have not yet listened to the Hitch Hikers
         | Guide to the Galaxy radio plays (and you should!) you will know
         | this is a major plot device.
        
         | mattmaroon wrote:
         | It's actually comforting to non-believers in a way that
         | religion is to believers. Except it has the benefit of being
         | obviously true.
         | 
         | https://www.oliverburkeman.com/nobigdeal
        
       | nxicvyvy wrote:
       | Isn't the sun's name sol?
        
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