100k Stars Chrome visualization experiment

If you have ever played Elite Dangerous, you will be unimpressed by this.<p>The stellar forge (which is a system used to generate the roughly 400 billion star systems which are present in the 1:1 scale Milky Way galaxy in Elite Dangerous) is actually something incredible: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;elite-dangerous.fandom.com&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Stellar_Forge" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;elite-dangerous.fandom.com&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Stellar_Forge</a><p>If you ever played the game and opened the map and zoomed out you know what I mean (<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=qpZZnrwRyME" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=qpZZnrwRyME</a>).

My first thought was that some VM virtualization repo got 100k stars on GitHub :))

How does it make you feel? The insignificance of our existence, everything that we ever did, or will ever do.<p>There&#x27;s a nice write up on building a model for the scale of universe: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;ciju.in&#x2F;posts&#x2F;a-play-with-universe" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;ciju.in&#x2F;posts&#x2F;a-play-with-universe</a><p>And another one on visualizing time and big numbers (not as nice:) ): <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;rohitshinde.in&#x2F;blog&#x2F;visualizing-universe-time-relativeness" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;rohitshinde.in&#x2F;blog&#x2F;visualizing-universe-time-relati...</a>

This is 10 years old. Here&#x27;s the making-of post from 2012: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.html5rocks.com&#x2F;en&#x2F;tutorials&#x2F;casestudies&#x2F;100000stars&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.html5rocks.com&#x2F;en&#x2F;tutorials&#x2F;casestudies&#x2F;100000st...</a>

Every couple of years I&#x27;m reminded of the scale of the universe and I&#x27;m just as shocked every time.

Neat! I see it&#x27;s done using three.js for 3d graphics and tween.js for animation.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;mrdoob&#x2F;three.js&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;mrdoob&#x2F;three.js&#x2F;</a><p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;tweenjs&#x2F;tween.js&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;tweenjs&#x2F;tween.js&#x2F;</a>

Works just as well in Firefox. Nice.

Wow, I forgot that chromeexperiments site was a thing. I remember spending hours and hours on that back in the day, amazed at what Google and other very smart people had managed to do with a web browser (when things like HTML5, Canvas, WebGL, etc were all very new).

Very cool! Reminds me of Powers of Ten: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;youtu.be&#x2F;0fKBhvDjuy0" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;youtu.be&#x2F;0fKBhvDjuy0</a>

It also works in FF, so I assume it&#x27;s a browser visualization experiment?

Seems to work fine in Firefox

This looks pretty nice! Funny enough it seems to work better on Firefox than Chrome on my computer. I am not sure if that means Firefox is getting nicer or if Chrome is getting worse. I wonder if this is also happening to other users, specially on other OSes (I am using a mac).

Wot no Pluto? Damn you Mike Brown :) And no Eris either. This makes me sad.<p>And works fine in Firefox :D

Previously: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=24702874" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=24702874</a>

I made a less fancy version of that with Mozilla&#x27;s A-frame VR in 2017 to check how many items a browser could render on a phone twice every frame ;)<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;naugtur&#x2F;aframe-point-component" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;naugtur&#x2F;aframe-point-component</a><p>Didn&#x27;t do the fancy glows and backgrounds though. This is much better looking.

It&#x27;s a very neat visualisation. This is only 100,000 stars out of 200-400 billion in our galaxy. And the next level up- a flythrough 400,000 galaxies. <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=08LBltePDZw" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=08LBltePDZw</a><p>Now that really makes me feel insignificant.

I you want to game around in a similar setting, I can recommend Elite Dangerous. It never really shows the scale in this way due to FTL though it has a galaxy map, but it is a game where you can travel for hours (wall-clock time) in a direction and not exhaust the &quot;map&quot;.

I guess this is the modern equivalent of the c10k problem <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.kegel.com&#x2F;c10k.html" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.kegel.com&#x2F;c10k.html</a>

I wasn&#x27;t expecting this to freak me out as much as it did.

Good but however I move I end up in the solar system. I would like to visit other systems in the Milky Way. Thanks!

This doesn’t seem to actually display 100k stars though?

Distinctively reminds me of playing Elite as a kid.

Oh wow this is pretty amazing.

Neat! Next stop: One Million!

Meh, the Sun&#x27;s texture has kinks at the poles.

Typo in the title: This is a _visualization_ experiment, not a _virtualization_ experiment. I spent way too long trying to find what was being virtualized.