Skymap
a 3D galaxy catalog explorer in the browser via WebGPU
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HN · launched May 6, 2026 · 5 upvotes (top 89%) · 0 views
Niche: data and scientific visualization tools · 146 launches, 3 in the last 7 days ▼ -50% · Explore this niche →
Category and tags
- Horizontal
- Analytics & BI
- B2C
- Not AI
- Hobby / open-source project
Visit website ↗ Source listing ↗
More like this: all 146 launches in data and scientific visualization tools →
Could you build this?
Partial The web UI is simple, but writing efficient WebGPU compute and render pipelines to stream and display millions of astronomical catalog data points with spatial indexing requires specialized 3D graphics expertise.
What it would actually take: Building Skymap requires WebGPU (WGSL) shaders for instanced billboard rendering, frustum culling, and point rendering at 60 FPS across millions of nodes. Data ingestion involves preprocessing multi-gigabyte astronomical catalogs (SDSS, GLADE) into spatial hierarchies (Octrees or BVH) and streaming LOD chunks over HTTP using binary buffers. Expertise in graphics engineering, WGSL, and high-performance data structures is essential.
Discussion
9 comments analyzed.
Competitors mentioned: Anton Petrov's galaxy catalog videos (YouTube), Repper (designer's day job, pattern-design tool)
Concerns raised: Dataset only spans ~2% of observable universe, UX has rough edges, Code quality concerns with agentic development speed, Potential cosmology math errors (non-astronomer built)
Feature requests: Mobile gestures support, Production-grade robustness improvements
Competitors
Other products that read as similar to this one : 1564 launches clear the similarity bar, closest 8 shown.
Attention rank: #1407 of 1565 (itself plus its competitors, highest first, normalized so YC and Product Hunt are compared fairly).
Launched 187 days after the earliest competitor.
- EarthCraft · github · 2026-10-12 · 10 upvotes · similarity 0.59
- StarScope · hn · 2026-06-15 · 22 upvotes · similarity 0.56
- Cartopolis, interactive globe-sized 3D world · hn · 2026-09-27 · 19 upvotes · similarity 0.55
- globes · github · 2026-10-20 · 56 upvotes · similarity 0.55
- Nasscad · hn · 2026-10-28 · 26 upvotes · similarity 0.55
- halcyon · github · 2026-10-22 · 17 upvotes · similarity 0.54
- Asciimap · hn · 2026-03-31 · 10 upvotes · similarity 0.53
- multicursor-mappings.nvim · github · 2026-09-26 · 10 upvotes · similarity 0.53
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