Celestial Navigation Simulator
Intro
This is a webgl2 based celestial navigation simulator. It simulates an observer with a nautical sextant somewhere on the ocean. The goal is to use the sextant to take readings of the celestial bodies and figure out your location.
Current state
This web page is currently in progess. So far this is what is available:
- A horizon with dip applied to it
- 1600+ of the brightest stars
- Mouse controls to move your view up, down, left and right
- A sextant view that splits the screen in two sights
- Mouse + keyboard control to play with the sextant angle
- The position of stars being affected by standard atmospheric refracion
- A randomization of your location and time that always end up in evening twilight
- Stars size dynamically change to keep them always looking close to a point
- Colored celestial bodies
- An interface for the user to check his coordinates
- Stars positions up-to-date
- Coordinates and starting time in the URL parameter
- Milky way in the background
Next steps
- Add planets
- Improve stars/planets catalogue accuracy
- Prevent sextant from picking negative angles
- Add dynamic colors to the sky to match the twilight
- Add the Moon
- Add the Sun
- Improve controls
- Add some obscuration to the sky above the horizon
- Use "global uniforms" for webgl2 simplicity
- Radial gradiant around sextant scope
- Button to get link with coordinates instead of being always in the URL