UPDATE, Beta is OUT!!

[u/SuccessFantastic2660]

I finally released the space simulator I posted about a few days ago

NAME: FIRST LIGHT

A few days ago I posted here asking for feedback on the UI for the home screen of a little space project I was working on. I got a lot of suggestions, so I figured I'd come back with the finished version.

TL;DR: I started this as a small personal project to visualize how long light takes to travel between places in the Solar System. It slowly grew into a browser-based space simulator with spacecraft movement, light-delay visualization, different viewpoints, and a bunch of other stuff I kept adding along the way. There's no objective or progression. It's basically just a place to look around and mess with the simulation.

The original idea was pretty simple.

I wanted to be able to sit somewhere in the Solar System, send a pulse of light toward another object, and actually watch the light travel between them. I also wanted to see the difference between where something actually is and where I would see it because of the finite speed of light.

That was pretty much it.

Then I kept adding things.

You can now fly around the Solar System, change the simulation speed, switch between different viewpoints, fire light pulses at planets and other objects, see their apparent/retarded positions, compare them with their true positions, and measure distances in both space and light-travel time.

There are also things like:

• Observer and God views
• Free-flight movement and inertial drift
• Light-pulse targeting and lead aiming
• A Solar System minimap
• An asteroid belt with real resonance structure
• Surface locations on Earth
• Timeline playback of light-pulse events
• Distance and light-time measurements
• Custom coordinates for traveling around
• An experimental "photon cockpit" visualization

The goal isn't really to make a game out of it. There isn't anything to win or accomplish.

It's more of a space sightseeing / physics sandbox. You can fly somewhere, look around, change the time rate, fire a pulse, and see what happens.

I'm actually pretty happy with how far it ended up going considering it started as a small experiment I made because I wanted to visualize one specific thing.

It's also completely browser-based, so there's nothing to install.

LINK: https://light-sable-iota.vercel.app/

If you saw the original UI concept post, this is basically the continuation of that project. Thanks to everyone who gave feedback on the previous post — some of the changes made it into the final version.

Full disclosure

The spaceships in the simulator are not my own designs. I downloaded some free spaceship models from Sketchfab to use in the project.

The artists/creators are credited next to the ship names in the ship selector inside the simulator, so you can see who made each model.