Intergalactic jump inspired by science-fiction movies | Hacker News Reader

Intergalactic jump inspired by science-fiction movies

starrior.com

77 pointsohjeez32 comments

I believe it has been more specifically inspired by this tutorial on this website https://tympanus.net/codrops/2017/05/09/infinite-tubes-with-...

haha true! There's even a demo in the tutorial with the exact same effect, as well as others: https://tympanus.net/Development/InfiniteTubes/index3.html

This is my attempt at a straight-up Star Wars one: http://lmnopc.com/mf/

I made this dumb thing like seven years ago based on a CSS starfield codepen that was floating around: https://codepen.io/noahblon/pen/GKflw

As soon as I said "Punch it!" Android 10 (Firefox 91.4) crashed. Haven't seen that happen before :)

same for me, this website crashed my phone. Android/Firefox

Bromite runs it, but my Firefox Focus also rebooted the phone.

Somebody should debug this.

The site is super slow on desktop Firefox on macOS (and fine in Chrome and Safari). I don't have Firefox for Android, but there's probably a connection. I filed a Firefox bug for the performance problem and mentioned the Android crash:

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1732608

That's neat, I always wonder how accurate are the sci fi depictions of galaxies and what not becoming lines.

I'm not sure what you mean by "accurate", since all of the interstellar drives that appear in sci-fi depictions are inconsistent with our best current understanding of the laws of physics.

So that's a no (not accurate). Looks like you just see a faint glow/ball of light.

I saw something about when you travel near speed of light, lengths appear to contract. Maybe the lights becoming lines is just based on long exposure in photography of moving lights.

> I saw something about when you travel near speed of light, lengths appear to contract

"Appear" in this context, though, doesn't mean "what you actually see". What you actually see is an apparent rotation of an object moving by you at relativistic speed. This is called Penrose-Terrell rotation:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terrell_rotation

Note also that the effect is only along the direction of relative motion; appearances transverse to the relative motion are unchanged.

> Maybe the lights becoming lines is just based on long exposure in photography of moving lights.

I think the "lights becoming lines" in sci-fi depictions is based on a Newtonian picture of what things would look like if you were moving through a space filled with stars at a speed much faster than light. Which of course has nothing to do with actual physics as we understand it today.

Here's a demo of that effect, again via WebGL https://harrygifford.github.io/special-relativity/

Nice!

Did anyone do a Star Trek one for TNG/DS9/VOY/ENT? Most of the ones I saw in the past were only half-correct - they did the "stars moving in streaks parallel to your direction of motion", but did not replicate the "individual streaks show Doppler-shift-like colors".

(See e.g.: https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/memoryalpha/images/d/d8/US..., notice the color bands on the "stars".)

Isn't that an SG1 ship

Adult Swim did something like this ex. (plays music) https://www.adultswim.com/music/singles-2018/41

Looks like the Daedalus.

Google helpfully thinks it's medieval architecture

https://imgur.com/a/26aYlbh

After the invention of the flying buttress, late-medieval architects moved on to the warp buttress.

Google clearly plays Battlefleet Gothic:

https://www.artstation.com/artwork/GKDkd

It's Daedalus[0], so more of an SGA ship. This is the one thing OP got right, the demo looks like the VFX seen in Stargate.

The original demo that OP copied labeled the effect "Star Wars" although it looks nothing like Star Wars. [1]

[0] - https://stargate.fandom.com/wiki/Daedalus

[1] - https://tympanus.net/Development/InfiniteTubes/index3.html

semi-related, I was recently trying out the screensavers on an old Apple IIgs and was dazzled by the warp drive effect - you have stars passing by until you shake the mouse, which prompts the “jump” to hyperspace, an animation that lands you on your desktop. I just love the implication that the system GUI is hyperspace!

[4 sec video] https://photos.app.goo.gl/XwnCEgyud7ruBUn77

That's nice, and I don't mean to disparage the work that went into it, but at the end of the day it's just a 2D texture mapped on to a bent pipe.

What's I'd love to see is a 3D star projection undergoing this sort of distortion effect. Something more like the classic Star Trek 3D star field but with vaguely realistic geometric distortions you'd see around a wormhole.

Reminds me a little bit of the effect used on the sales page for some macOS Code editor.

Ah, here it is: https://nova.app/

(Hover the download button)

It looks quite cool, but it took me by surprise. It's just that it automatically move, which surprised me when I landed on the page.

https://wormhole.app/ Uses this effect also.

I think my favorite part is that the ship backs up a little bit before the jump as if to get a running start.

Cool, yet motion like that gives me a headache in very short order.

That's trippy af and so beautiful

damn. it's truly amazing what you can do in a web browser in 2021. ELI5?

I think probably a looped gif or maybe 3.js?

You can click it to move the tunnel, so probably not a gif. :-)

I'll guess that this simulates moving quickly through the inside of a donut with a bend in it that follows the mouse. That would explain why the pattern repeats and why the far end always curves down.

They're using a three.js's tube:

https://threejs.org/docs/#api/en/geometries/TubeGeometry

The texture moves, simulating movement, if I understand things correctly, with a forced bend at the end to ensure the tube is never straight. And moving the points of the tube a bit to do the mousemove fly thing.

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