10 ms·

Show HN: I rebuilt the Flash app “Scale of the Universe” in WebGL

276 points by mattmar96 5y ago

amazd 5y ago
Incredible... an amazing visualization. I like how you have the mine craft world in there :D
- mattmar96 5y ago
  Thank you! Gotta have minecraft
dr_dshiv 5y ago
Not for phones, I guess.
- mattmar96 5y ago
  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.
  - dr_dshiv 5y ago
    In web assembly, do you have to build for each machine? Or each browser? Or each OS?
mattmar96 5y ago
You can check out the source code here: https://github.com/matttt/scale_of_the_universe https://github.com/matttt/scale_of_the_universe
- xodltus 5y ago
  Thank you for your sharing!
- est 5y ago
  I wonder how much time did the original version took, and how much time did you spend? I assume Flash version is easier to implement and requires less technical knowledge.
  - mattmar96 5y ago
    Not sure on the original, but I spent about a year working on it on weekends here and there. Hard to find time with full time work and other projects mixed in. I would say it was around 100 hours of work in total. The majority of the was done within a couple weeks but there were a lot of performance tweaks and bugs to fix.
jancsika 5y ago
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 5y ago
  I had that thought, but the original assets were provided to me in bitmap form. Maybe we can try that in the future though
  - jancsika 5y ago
    Ah, ok. Given the style some of the graphics would be fairly easy to convert by hand in Inkscape. But maybe some like the Sloan Great Wall would be more difficult.
ab_testing 5y ago
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 5y ago
  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 5y ago
    "COVID-19" should be fairly universal, probably?
    - DoingIsLearning 5y ago
      Technically 'COVID-19' is the disease experienced by humans. The virus is 'SARS-CoV2'.
ziggus 5y ago
Wow, that is very cool! Well done!
- mattmar96 5y ago
  Appreciate it
chrisweekly 5y ago
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 5y ago
  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 5y ago
    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.
    - sprkwd 5y ago
      Yeah. I’m totally not interested now I have to experience it via an app on my phone.
- jlokier 5y ago
  I get "Please find the app on the iOS app store" and "Download the Scale of the Universe iOS app!" on my Android Samsung Galaxy S8+. I assume there is no app that will run on my phone, and that the web version might work ok if it was allowed, as some other WebGL apps do. (I don't wish to downplay the problems with WebGL or web apps generally across a variety of mobile device though. Maybe there are good reasons for blocking it.)
pawelwentpawel 5y ago
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 5y ago
  Thank you for the kind words and feedback! I'll look into these.
- zagrebian 5y ago
  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 5y ago
    I'm very glad to hear it. I spent a lot of time optimizing.
- miles 5y ago
  > even the music is quite nice Thanks for mentioning that; the music does not play in Safari, so I opened Firefox in the background for the music while zooming in Safari via trackpad scrolling (which doesn't appear to work in Firefox). The wonderful "Powers of Ten" video has been mentioned elsewhere in the comments; see also "The Simpsons" take: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ycvlJ9XMd94 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ycvlJ9XMd94 . Lots of fun - thank you, mattmar96!
bestouff 5y ago
On an android phone this thing wants me to download the iOS app...
- mattmar96 5y ago
  Oh good point. I'll update the message for android.
  - sweetsocks21 5y ago
    I would also note it seems to work very well on Android Firefox in desktop mode.
    - pmontra 5y ago
      Indeed, the message for Android Firefox should be to switch to desktop mode.
dang 5y ago
Past threads about the original (and maybe a few variations): (Edit: this is fun too: https://abcnews.go.com/Technology/page/scale-universe-cary-michael-huang-california-high-school-15573968 https://abcnews.go.com/Technology/page/scale-universe-cary-m...) The Scale of the Universe (2012) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9629418 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9629418 - May 2015 (8 comments) Scale of the Universe - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7298423 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 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4816166 - Nov 2012 (1 comment) The Scale of the Universe 2 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4691798 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4691798 - Oct 2012 (1 comment) The Scale of the Universe - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3589030 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3589030 - Feb 2012 (8 comments) The Scale of the Universe - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3585187 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 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2398150 - April 2011 (17 comments) Scale of the Universe - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1953919 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1953919 - Nov 2010 (39 comments) Scale of the Universe - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1835460 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1835460 - Oct 2010 (46 comments) Scale of the universe (flash) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1261816 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1261816 - April 2010 (15 comments)
- mattmar96 5y ago
  Thank you for this. It has been nice to read the old threads. btw, I appreciate you fixing my grammar in the title.
- omoikane 5y ago
  For people who like scale comparisons of absurdly large things, there is also: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7XbeVosPszo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7XbeVosPszo Original: https://www.nicovideo.jp/watch/sm20365493 https://www.nicovideo.jp/watch/sm20365493
  - alexvoda 5y ago
quda 5y ago
Love it! Cheers!
IceWreck 5y ago
I like that it mentions minecraft world > earth.
epicwhaleburger 5y ago
Love it! Thanks for sharing, you're doing the science god's work, kid. You'll go far, I'm sure of it.
thrdbndndn 5y ago
It should be "中文 (繁體)" or "中文 (正體)" for the traditional Chinese, not just "中文". I'm confused a little bit since it has "中文 (简体)" (Chinese (simplified)).
- mattmar96 5y ago
  Thank you, I'll be sure to fix that.
ChickeNES 5y ago
Using the scroll wheel to zoom doesn't work in Firefox
- mattmar96 5y ago
  Appreciate the bug report. I’ll take a look.
ge96 5y ago
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 5y ago
  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.
- JoeOfTexas 5y ago
  Take solace in the fact this is a fairly peaceful era. Space while fun to fantasize about, would probably not be as "fun" in reality. Weeks or months of travel between star systems with no internet, not fun. Oh, and we'd definitely make enemies of any alien civilizations.
  - ge96 5y ago
    I was thinking about it, I'd probably bring the entirety of YT to keep me entertained and every media ever produced eg. movies.
  - selfhoster11 5y ago
    How many terabytes of content do you need not to get bored? My guess is that with some adjustments, it's gonna be just fine. We somehow dealt without and endless box of content at our disposal for centuries, and some of us were even happy.
krylon 5y ago
I love it! Thank you very much!!!
trilinearnz 5y ago
Very cool. I had no idea that the diameter of Jupiter was a mere fraction of the distance of the moon from earth!
- notRobot 5y ago
  All planets in the solar system could fit side-by-side between the earth and the moon. Astronomical distances be wild, yo.
  - kzrdude 5y ago
    The other factoid though, VY Canis Majoris fits inside the orbit of Saturn... that's huge in the other direction. Especially compared with what you said.
  - trilinearnz 5y ago
    Wow! I guess you get a little biased when looking at those artistic representations of the solar system from a young age that aren't to scale.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
danaugrs 5y ago
Nice! Where is the music from? It feels very familiar... isn't it from Kerbal Space Program?
- mattmar96 5y ago
  Yeah it is from KSP, good ear! https://incompetech.com/music/royalty-free/most/kerbalspaceprogram.php https://incompetech.com/music/royalty-free/most/kerbalspacep... Oops I should really add a credit for it.
aarchi 5y ago
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 5y ago
  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 5y ago
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.
grishka 5y ago
It's strange that there's Ukrainian but no Russian.
- mattmar96 5y ago
  Its just a matter of who volunteers to translate.
  - grishka 5y ago
    I can try... :P edit: I see a github link, will send a pull request someday (there's quite a lot of text to translate)
    - mattmar96 5y ago
      I appreciate that! No pressure, but you will be credited
andosteinmetz 5y ago
For any who haven't seen it, I also recommend Charles & Ray Eaemes' "Powers of Ten" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0fKBhvDjuy0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0fKBhvDjuy0
lucaaa 5y ago
Very nice! You should consider hosting it on it's own domain, something like scaleoftheuniverse.art, .co, .app
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
malkia 5y ago
Cool - just noticed some shimmering when zooming in - is mip-mapping enabled? (This might be a source of slowdown too).
- mattmar96 5y ago
  Interesting, I’ll take a look at the docs. Appreciate you pointing that out!
maxtardiveau2 5y ago
The giant green button at the bottom is just slimy -- I fell for it. No, I don't want to install your Protecto extension, whatever the frack it is. Geez.
- mattmar96 5y ago
  Sorry about that, that is a google adsense ad which I don’t have control over. Need to pay for the hosting somehow.
  - onion2k 5y ago
    Stick it on Netlify for free, then you don't.
faldore 5y ago
Where did that background song come from? It sounds so familiar it just be from a game.
guerrilla 5y ago
What does "Total Human Height" being about the diameter of Pollux mean?? Is that a bug?
- zx321 5y ago
  The average human height is about 1.5 meters. There are about 7.5 * 10^9 people alive, so the total height of humanity is ~1.1 * 10^10 meters. Wikipedia says that Pollux's radius is about 9 times that of the Sun, which is about 7 * 10^8 meters. So Pollux's diameter is ~2 * 9 * 7 * 10^8 = 1.3 * 10^10 meters. Verdict: not a bug.
kreelman 5y ago
This is fairly spectacular and a great deal of fun. Puts your daily problems in perspective..... :-)
superasn 5y ago
Pretty amazing. I couldn't help but remember this yt video(1) by Carl Sagan while zooming out. (1) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wupToqz1e2g https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wupToqz1e2g
kzrdude 5y ago
Nice. Is it possible to contribute to the localizations?
- mattmar96 5y ago
  Absolutely. You can email us at scaleoftheuniversedev [at] gmail.com - thanks!
pmayrgundter 5y ago
My own webgl port of Celestia, which allows zoom-out from Earth to the scale of nearest 10k stars: https://celestiary.github.io/ https://celestiary.github.io/
- mattmar96 5y ago
  This is incredible! Bravo.
  - mattmar96 5y ago
    I had checked it out on my phone but I just spent 20 minutes playing with it on my computer. I absolutely love it! The performance is really impressive.

276 points by mattmar96 5y ago

amazd 5y ago

Incredible... an amazing visualization. I like how you have the mine craft world in there :D

mattmar96 5y ago
Thank you! Gotta have minecraft

dr_dshiv 5y ago

Not for phones, I guess.

mattmar96 5y ago
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.
- dr_dshiv 5y ago
  In web assembly, do you have to build for each machine? Or each browser? Or each OS?

mattmar96 5y ago

You can check out the source code here: https://github.com/matttt/scale_of_the_universe https://github.com/matttt/scale_of_the_universe

xodltus 5y ago
Thank you for your sharing!
est 5y ago
I wonder how much time did the original version took, and how much time did you spend? I assume Flash version is easier to implement and requires less technical knowledge.
- mattmar96 5y ago
  Not sure on the original, but I spent about a year working on it on weekends here and there. Hard to find time with full time work and other projects mixed in. I would say it was around 100 hours of work in total. The majority of the was done within a couple weeks but there were a lot of performance tweaks and bugs to fix.

jancsika 5y ago

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 5y ago
I had that thought, but the original assets were provided to me in bitmap form. Maybe we can try that in the future though
- jancsika 5y ago
  Ah, ok. Given the style some of the graphics would be fairly easy to convert by hand in Inkscape. But maybe some like the Sloan Great Wall would be more difficult.

ab_testing 5y ago

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 5y ago
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 5y ago
  "COVID-19" should be fairly universal, probably?
  - DoingIsLearning 5y ago
    Technically 'COVID-19' is the disease experienced by humans. The virus is 'SARS-CoV2'.

ziggus 5y ago

Wow, that is very cool! Well done!

mattmar96 5y ago
Appreciate it

chrisweekly 5y ago

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 5y ago
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 5y ago
  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.
  - sprkwd 5y ago
    Yeah. I’m totally not interested now I have to experience it via an app on my phone.
jlokier 5y ago
I get "Please find the app on the iOS app store" and "Download the Scale of the Universe iOS app!" on my Android Samsung Galaxy S8+. I assume there is no app that will run on my phone, and that the web version might work ok if it was allowed, as some other WebGL apps do. (I don't wish to downplay the problems with WebGL or web apps generally across a variety of mobile device though. Maybe there are good reasons for blocking it.)

pawelwentpawel 5y ago

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 5y ago
Thank you for the kind words and feedback! I'll look into these.
zagrebian 5y ago
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 5y ago
  I'm very glad to hear it. I spent a lot of time optimizing.
miles 5y ago
> even the music is quite nice Thanks for mentioning that; the music does not play in Safari, so I opened Firefox in the background for the music while zooming in Safari via trackpad scrolling (which doesn't appear to work in Firefox). The wonderful "Powers of Ten" video has been mentioned elsewhere in the comments; see also "The Simpsons" take: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ycvlJ9XMd94 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ycvlJ9XMd94 . Lots of fun - thank you, mattmar96!

bestouff 5y ago

On an android phone this thing wants me to download the iOS app...

mattmar96 5y ago
Oh good point. I'll update the message for android.
- sweetsocks21 5y ago
  I would also note it seems to work very well on Android Firefox in desktop mode.
  - pmontra 5y ago
    Indeed, the message for Android Firefox should be to switch to desktop mode.

dang 5y ago

Past threads about the original (and maybe a few variations): (Edit: this is fun too: https://abcnews.go.com/Technology/page/scale-universe-cary-michael-huang-california-high-school-15573968 https://abcnews.go.com/Technology/page/scale-universe-cary-m...) The Scale of the Universe (2012) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9629418 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9629418 - May 2015 (8 comments) Scale of the Universe - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7298423 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 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4816166 - Nov 2012 (1 comment) The Scale of the Universe 2 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4691798 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4691798 - Oct 2012 (1 comment) The Scale of the Universe - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3589030 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3589030 - Feb 2012 (8 comments) The Scale of the Universe - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3585187 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 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2398150 - April 2011 (17 comments) Scale of the Universe - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1953919 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1953919 - Nov 2010 (39 comments) Scale of the Universe - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1835460 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1835460 - Oct 2010 (46 comments) Scale of the universe (flash) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1261816 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1261816 - April 2010 (15 comments)

mattmar96 5y ago
Thank you for this. It has been nice to read the old threads. btw, I appreciate you fixing my grammar in the title.
omoikane 5y ago
For people who like scale comparisons of absurdly large things, there is also: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7XbeVosPszo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7XbeVosPszo Original: https://www.nicovideo.jp/watch/sm20365493 https://www.nicovideo.jp/watch/sm20365493
- alexvoda 5y ago

quda 5y ago

Love it! Cheers!

IceWreck 5y ago

I like that it mentions minecraft world > earth.

epicwhaleburger 5y ago

Love it! Thanks for sharing, you're doing the science god's work, kid. You'll go far, I'm sure of it.

thrdbndndn 5y ago

It should be "中文 (繁體)" or "中文 (正體)" for the traditional Chinese, not just "中文". I'm confused a little bit since it has "中文 (简体)" (Chinese (simplified)).

mattmar96 5y ago
Thank you, I'll be sure to fix that.

ChickeNES 5y ago

Using the scroll wheel to zoom doesn't work in Firefox

mattmar96 5y ago
Appreciate the bug report. I’ll take a look.

ge96 5y ago

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 5y ago
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.
JoeOfTexas 5y ago
Take solace in the fact this is a fairly peaceful era. Space while fun to fantasize about, would probably not be as "fun" in reality. Weeks or months of travel between star systems with no internet, not fun. Oh, and we'd definitely make enemies of any alien civilizations.
- ge96 5y ago
  I was thinking about it, I'd probably bring the entirety of YT to keep me entertained and every media ever produced eg. movies.
- selfhoster11 5y ago
  How many terabytes of content do you need not to get bored? My guess is that with some adjustments, it's gonna be just fine. We somehow dealt without and endless box of content at our disposal for centuries, and some of us were even happy.

krylon 5y ago

I love it! Thank you very much!!!

trilinearnz 5y ago

Very cool. I had no idea that the diameter of Jupiter was a mere fraction of the distance of the moon from earth!

notRobot 5y ago
All planets in the solar system could fit side-by-side between the earth and the moon. Astronomical distances be wild, yo.
- kzrdude 5y ago
  The other factoid though, VY Canis Majoris fits inside the orbit of Saturn... that's huge in the other direction. Especially compared with what you said.
- trilinearnz 5y ago
  Wow! I guess you get a little biased when looking at those artistic representations of the solar system from a young age that aren't to scale.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

danaugrs 5y ago

Nice! Where is the music from? It feels very familiar... isn't it from Kerbal Space Program?

mattmar96 5y ago
Yeah it is from KSP, good ear! https://incompetech.com/music/royalty-free/most/kerbalspaceprogram.php https://incompetech.com/music/royalty-free/most/kerbalspacep... Oops I should really add a credit for it.

aarchi 5y ago

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 5y ago
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 5y ago

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.

grishka 5y ago

It's strange that there's Ukrainian but no Russian.

mattmar96 5y ago
Its just a matter of who volunteers to translate.
- grishka 5y ago
  I can try... :P edit: I see a github link, will send a pull request someday (there's quite a lot of text to translate)
  - mattmar96 5y ago
    I appreciate that! No pressure, but you will be credited

andosteinmetz 5y ago

For any who haven't seen it, I also recommend Charles & Ray Eaemes' "Powers of Ten" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0fKBhvDjuy0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0fKBhvDjuy0

lucaaa 5y ago

Very nice! You should consider hosting it on it's own domain, something like scaleoftheuniverse.art, .co, .app

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

malkia 5y ago

Cool - just noticed some shimmering when zooming in - is mip-mapping enabled? (This might be a source of slowdown too).

mattmar96 5y ago
Interesting, I’ll take a look at the docs. Appreciate you pointing that out!

maxtardiveau2 5y ago

The giant green button at the bottom is just slimy -- I fell for it. No, I don't want to install your Protecto extension, whatever the frack it is. Geez.

mattmar96 5y ago
Sorry about that, that is a google adsense ad which I don’t have control over. Need to pay for the hosting somehow.
- onion2k 5y ago
  Stick it on Netlify for free, then you don't.

faldore 5y ago

Where did that background song come from? It sounds so familiar it just be from a game.

guerrilla 5y ago

What does "Total Human Height" being about the diameter of Pollux mean?? Is that a bug?

zx321 5y ago
The average human height is about 1.5 meters. There are about 7.5 * 10^9 people alive, so the total height of humanity is ~1.1 * 10^10 meters. Wikipedia says that Pollux's radius is about 9 times that of the Sun, which is about 7 * 10^8 meters. So Pollux's diameter is ~2 * 9 * 7 * 10^8 = 1.3 * 10^10 meters. Verdict: not a bug.

kreelman 5y ago

This is fairly spectacular and a great deal of fun. Puts your daily problems in perspective..... :-)

superasn 5y ago

Pretty amazing. I couldn't help but remember this yt video(1) by Carl Sagan while zooming out. (1) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wupToqz1e2g https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wupToqz1e2g

kzrdude 5y ago

Nice. Is it possible to contribute to the localizations?

mattmar96 5y ago
Absolutely. You can email us at scaleoftheuniversedev [at] gmail.com - thanks!

pmayrgundter 5y ago

My own webgl port of Celestia, which allows zoom-out from Earth to the scale of nearest 10k stars: https://celestiary.github.io/ https://celestiary.github.io/

mattmar96 5y ago
This is incredible! Bravo.
- mattmar96 5y ago
  I had checked it out on my phone but I just spent 20 minutes playing with it on my computer. I absolutely love it! The performance is really impressive.