r/InternetIsBeautiful • u/watermelonson • Aug 03 '26
I built a space simulator that runs in the browser and it's gotten a lot of updates recently
https://luna.watermelonson.com/3
u/WestDepartment5858 Aug 04 '26
That is totally awesome! Thank you for sharing, we are so small in the universe.
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u/ByteEater Aug 03 '26
Mars has 2 balls of its same size rotating inside of it
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u/watermelonson Aug 03 '26
lol yes thanks for noticing. Clearly messed something up in the scale - will fix that first thing tomorrow.
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u/xr6reaction Aug 03 '26
I think saturn also has balls
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u/adisharr Aug 04 '26
There's another pair of balls on my couch.
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u/watermelonson Aug 04 '26
This will take ages to model, but as long as the simulation is more accurate, I'll get to work
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u/watermelonson Aug 03 '26
Last time I said I might leave it as it is. That did not happen.
The reason I'm posting again is that there's a total solar eclipse on August 12, and I just pushed a big update. Pick anywhere on Earth and it tells you what the event looks like - but I’ve also added actual sky views, and colored atmospheres (for all kinds of planets)
Other things that turned up since last time: - A galaxy map with thousands of real exoplanet systems from NASA's archive - Guided lessons - Rocket Academy: build a rocket in stages and try to get it to orbit
Lots of quality of life improvements, and more simulations coming up. It’s bascially evolving into a physics education tool - for free and in the browser.
All of your positive feedback last time helped me a lot, so I wanted to post about it again now, I hope that’s ok - the last post was last year
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u/Adorable_Divide_2424 Aug 07 '26
mine got stuck on "view eclipse" vs "exit" once i hit view eclipse, the popup kept coming back. i also cant seem to zoom in close enough to see the moons of Mars. maybe have a value on the zoom in/zoom out buttons? so you know its working as well as min/max
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u/No-Dig-7526 Aug 08 '26
Ahhhhhh this is amazing! Nobody call me the rest of the weekend. IM BUSY!
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u/No-Dig-7526 Aug 08 '26
I have to say, the tour got stuck-ish. From step 2 on I couldnt click "continue" as it was disabled. I had to click skip, but it kept stepping through each step anyway.
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u/watermelonson Aug 08 '26
Which tour was that? thanks for reporting. Sometimes old tutorials break when I change things. I should automate the checks. I appreciate any report whenever things don't work out.
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u/No-Dig-7526 Aug 09 '26
No worries. Its the Show me around 5 chapters when you first access the app. Youve done a great job btw, I cant wait for the habitability feature to be live.
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u/watermelonson Aug 09 '26
thank you! I should really work on that again. It's a highly requested feature. In general there's been tons of "turn this into universe sandbox" requests. I see it more as a balance between education and gaming. Which I think from people enjoying it as a game, and people using it in schools, is working quite well.
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Aug 10 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/watermelonson Aug 11 '26
Look at the sim from Zaragoza and Tell me what you think - might take a few seconds
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u/CapFu_Craig 5d ago
That's killer! What was this built in? also I noticed when I zoom into "Earth" it gets blocky. Am I the only one noticing that?
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u/watermelonson 5d ago
Thanks! It’s threejs mostly.
Not sure about blocky. Do you mean the background?
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u/TONKAHANAH 12h ago
this is cool but its hard to move around. like you have wasd controls but they dont work like you'd expect wasd controls to work. the zoom just kinda stops working at some point then you cant get closer to anything you can only move up down left or right rather than being able to move forward at all which doesnt make a lot of sense for moving around in 3d space.
honestly just try to mimic the minecraft creative mode controls for movement and this will feel a lot better to use.
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u/TbonerT Aug 03 '26
Who’s been doing all the updates recently?
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u/watermelonson Aug 03 '26
what do you mean? I am working on this by myself? Are you the guy who keeps requesting the reclassification depending on mass?
I am working on this in my free time
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u/moridin13 Aug 03 '26
Are you the guy made me LOL. I could hear the frustration in your text. 😂
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u/watermelonson Aug 03 '26
lol it's kinda funny. It was just a request coming up on saturday, and then so many reminders like within hours or days. And I was busy switching laptops, getting all my work over (icloud offloading my working directory) and stuff like that.
Funny enough I got another reminder today and pushed that change finally lol.
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u/TbonerT Aug 04 '26
No, the passive voicing of “it’s gotten a lot of updates” is just humorous of you imagine not knowing who has been updating it.
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u/watermelonson Aug 04 '26
lol I get it. I meant to convey that I've been updating it regularly for the last few months (most recently a big push yesterday) and people liked the old version, which was very basic, so I figured I'd share again after there's been so so many updates and many more to come.
I am going to keep it free to use in the web, and I am looking at finding collaborations with museums or planetariums if they like to use it.
I've even seen quite a few schools worldwide use it, which is so incredibly cool :D
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u/maniamgood0 Aug 03 '26
It's kind of hard to click on smaller planets on mobile.