A solar system simulation in the browser
Details
- External ID
- 46423042
- Source
- HN
- Company
- —
- Product
- A solar system simulation in the browser
- Website domain
- watermelonson.com
- Launched
- Dec. 29, 2025
- Cohort
- —
- Upvotes
- 13
- Upvotes percentile
- 0.5725190839694656
- Tags
- —
- Fetched at
- Sept. 7, 2026, 9:25 p.m.
- Updated at
- Sept. 7, 2026, 9:25 p.m.
Description
I didn't realize Universe Sandbox ran on MacOS, and I was in the mood to play around a bit.Some functions it's got: - Random system generation - Sonification is super fun too - Habitability Simulation (Just for fun, don't cite this please) - Replacing, spawning, deleting objectsI've had tons of fun building this, so I hope someone else can share the joy. It's free and runs in the browser.I'd love to hear any feedback. I think this is at a state where I might leave it as it is, but if people are interested in other features, maybe I'll keep working on it. I've kept saying I'll stop working on this for a while now though.
Enrichment
- Theme
- interactive simulations and creative experiments
- Vertical
- Education
- Function
- Content generation
- Audience
- B2C
- AI stance
- Not AI
- Project type
- Hobby / open-source project
- Normalized one-liner
- solar system simulation
- Manually corrected
- False
Could you build this?
Partial While basic 3D canvas visuals are vibe-codeable, building a physically accurate N-body gravity simulator with real-time orbital mechanics, relativistic effects, and atmospheric Rayleigh scattering requires specialized physics and computer graphics math.
What it would actually take: The architecture requires WebGL/WebGPU or Three.js paired with numerical integrators (like Runge-Kutta or Verlet) optimized in WebAssembly or compute shaders to handle N-body gravitational calculations without frame drops. Custom GLSL shaders are needed for accurate atmospheric Rayleigh and Mie light scattering. Building this demands deep knowledge of orbital mechanics, numerical astrophysics, and shader math.
Discussion
4 comments analyzed.
Concerns raised: Life probability calculations appear inaccurate (Venus showing higher probability than Mars), Simulations are rudimentary and need more rigorous astrobiology backing, Planet rotations are incorrect (Jupiter rotating on its side)
Feature requests: Custom artwork for planets instead of generic textures, More conservative phrasing for default solar system numbers
Competitors
Other products that read as similar to this one — 290 launches clear the similarity bar, closest 8 shown.
Attention rank: #148 of 291 (itself plus its competitors, highest first — normalized so YC and Product Hunt are compared fairly).
Launched 61 days after the earliest competitor.
- farseer.space · hn · 2026-09-15 · 11 upvotes · similarity 0.63
- My Degenerate Craps Simulator · hn · 2026-02-21 · 6 upvotes · similarity 0.59
- A self-running space economy SIM in Rust and Bevy · hn · 2026-07-21 · 110 upvotes · similarity 0.57
- Gravity · hn · 2026-06-09 · 217 upvotes · similarity 0.57
- Replicant Space · hn · 2026-07-29 · 11 upvotes · similarity 0.53
- Alien Abducto-rama: a FUN browser game I made with my kids · hn · 2026-01-24 · 6 upvotes · similarity 0.53
- VibeWorld · hn · 2026-09-13 · 7 upvotes · similarity 0.53
- Cellarium: A Playground for Cellular Automata · hn · 2026-02-21 · 41 upvotes · similarity 0.52
Other launches for this product
- No other launches for this product.
Same idea, different domain
Nobody's really built a content generation tool for Government yet.