Hacker News new | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submit login

Well, to play student's advocate here for a second: wouldn't that make it harder to see the immediate difference, given the more complex presentation? IMO this visualization makes it pretty immediately obvious that galaxies aren't random in a way that a massive volumetric map might not.

Would definitely be cooler in 3D, of course, I agree with that. Out of curiousity, do you know of any systems that do that? All I can find is multipurpose industry tools like https://www.openspaceproject.com/images and broken tools like https://spacein3d.com/universe-sandbox/.




Hi there, Lead Dev for OpenSpace here. We do have the ability to render galaxy (or any point cloud dataset really) in 3D space as well as stereoscopically. For an example see a video we made for Matt from SpaceTime a while back: https://youtu.be/E8rel2-kLJA?si=yqQZr7Nk9dyMDqZa&t=373 Thst video uses the Tully, and Sloan Digital Sky Surveys and then a catalogue of Quasars.

It would be fairly straightforward to add your random galaxy dataset as an asset as it would only require some light Lua coding and a CSV file with positions + any additional variables




Consider applying for YC's Fall 2025 batch! Applications are open till Aug 4

Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: