Show HN: Orbits.js – WebGL simulation of the solar system using Three.js

github.com

8 points·IneffablePigeon··3 comments

This is a lot of fun, I enjoy seeing the relative distances/rotation of the planets from eachother. It's a little disappointing that the planet/sun scales seem to be very off, it takes away from the overall simulation.

But that's a small nitpick, great project.

Do you mean the scale of the sun compared to the planets? The problem is that because of the huge in size difference between, say, the Sun and Mercury, if the scale was correct then mercury wouldn't be visible at all. I tried to keep them as vaguely accurate as possible while still having the actual planet spheres still visible.

If you've got ideas for how to improve that I'm all ears.

I think the design logic you have now takes care of this. When I zoom out all the way, I can only see the label of Pluto, not the actual sphere - and that works fine.

Personally, it was appealing for me to be forced to scroll and zoom around to locate the larger orbits, precisely because it reinforced the actual scale of our solar system versus the inaccurate, compressed idea we get from school.

Because, there's always a universal appeal to images like this: http://homepages.wmich.edu/~korista/phys104.html. Seeing it in 3D, transposed to their orbits would be awesome.

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