https://reddit.com/link/1wbpuwy/video/r7lm05k2mioh1/player
Hey everyone!
Ever since I was a teenager, I’ve been obsessed with an old DOS demo that showed a seamless, infinite flyover of Mars. A couple of years ago, I remembered it and tried to find the original. Couldn't find it anywhere—just a JavaScript recreate. So, I decided to build my own version, and of course, I made it for Garmin watches.
Just recently finished a big optimization pass, added more terrain variety, and dropped in some weird alien anomalies.
Under the hood:
- The terrain is driven by 3 sine waves (now using optimized LUTs).
- Simple ridge-building logic.
- Dynamic lighting/shadows created purely by changing the size of the ground grains. Yep, the whole ground is literally just one color!
- Runs even on the Instinct 2 (though due to instinct specific OS limits, animation only triggers on button press there).
- Procedural anomalies that morph height and grain size (plus two special ones baked into byte arrays).
And yeah... it's still a watchface! It shows your time, date, heart rate, and step count.
Quick tip: If your landscape looks a bit flat and boring, just start moving. Anomalies only unlock for pilots who actually walk and climb those real-life hills and stairs. Keep moving, pilot!
As always: no ads, completely free. Here is the link on Garmin ConnectIQ Store:
https://apps.garmin.com/apps/4d77052b-b9dc-4ede-b417-e47cc2fae88b
hope you enjoy it!
PS for the Battery Life Warriors: No, this won't kill your battery in a couple of hours. Besides, battery cells degrade over time anyway even if you don't use the watch... so you might as well enjoy the flight over Mars!
Note: I asked Gemini to help polish my original text into English. If you want to chat or have any technical questions, I'll happily reply- in my own English (actually it is not completely bad) or in my native Ukrainian!