Moonpixel3d

I wrote about abandoning projects two weeks ago. This time I didn't abandon it.

I built MoonPixel3D. It's a 3D visualization of the solar system where 1 pixel = Moon's diameter (3,474.8 km). I saw Josh Worth's "If the Moon Were Only 1 Pixel" and thought what if I can move around in 3D and actually navigate through space. So I made it.

At this scale Earth is 43,051 pixels from the Sun. Neptune is 1,293,488 pixels away. Even at light speed it takes 8 minutes to reach Earth and over 4 hours to reach Neptune. Space is really big and empty.

Built with C++20 and OpenGL 3.3+. Made procedural starfield in GLSL shaders so I don't have to load textures. You can travel at different speeds including light speed (86.26 pixels/s). Runs at 60+ FPS. Used ImGui for the UI and planet information.

Version 1.0 is done. It works. It has bugs and things I would change but it's finished.

Try it live → Download / Play on itch.io →

GitHub: github.com/valhizen/ifthemoonwereonlyonepixel

Some technical things

Light speed calculation: 299,792.458 km/s ÷ 3,474.8 km/pixel = 86.26 pixels/second. This makes traveling feel real because even at light speed everything is slow.

Stars are generated in fragment shader using hash functions. No texture loading. Just math.

First project I actually finished. Maybe I can finish more things now.