Galaxium - Experimental WebGPU space explorer
Show HN: Galaxium, an experimental WebGPU space explorer
Galaxium is an experimental space exploration app that leverages WebGPU, a cutting-edge browser technology, to render immersive celestial scenes directly in your browser. It offers a unique, hardware-accelerated experience for stargazing and navigating the cosmos, pushing the boundaries of what's possible on the web. Currently optimized for up-to-date Chrome, Edge, Safari (macOS 26+), and Firefox on computers with dedicated graphics, Galaxium showcases the future of interactive astronomy. While it requires a modern browser, it provides a glimpse into high-performance 3D rendering without plugins or downloads. For those on unsupported browsers, it recommends stellarium-web.org as an alternative.
Galaxium uses WebGPU, a recent browser technology that isn't available or enabled here.
- guillaumec
Hello, I am the creator and maintainer of Stellarium Mobile. I have been working in my free time for about a year on this new project Galaxium, that is more about traveling in the universe rather than looking at the sky from Earth. It is still experimental, and at the moment I am not sure what it will become. Feedback is welcome.
- andrewchilds
Amazing work! I've been actually working on a solar system / gravity sim for my son who has been getting a lot of enjoyment out of the PhET gravity/orbit sims, that has some overlap with your project. It's up at https://newtonsorchard.app
I haven't put nearly as much time into my project as you've put into yours - Galaxium is really polished and impressive. Well done!
- bitterblotter
I had to login just to upvote
I thought it was limited to the solar system until I accidentally kept zooming out, and got my mind blown a couple of times. And again when I saw the black hole.
This is ridiculously well made
- smusamashah
Hi, This is awesome to show to kids too as well. I was showing this to my 5 year old that this is earth, sun and moon this is where we are now.
The earth rotation is probably not correct, I am in UK and sun has not set yet, but in Galaxium it is showing night in UK.
- spdustin
This is a lovely way to explore the sights!
My feedback:
1. I wish the time scaling was persistent; I wanted to jump between solar system objects while keeping the accelerated time. A way to persist the scale would be lovely (maybe a slider in the header).
2. Pinning the object selector would be nice, too. It took me a minute to realize I could focus the text input to show the object selector again.