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Dev tools · June 13, 2011

WP

Weekend project - a WebGL Orrery

This was my recent weekend project, aimed at teaching me JavaScript, a bit of HTML5, and (mostly) WebGL. The orbital data are from NASA JPL. I was inspired in part by this Flash app: http://www.dynamicdiagrams.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/orrery_2011_bce.swf, but wanted to do something in 3D. Coming from the games-dev world, this is my first introduction to web coding. The UI is jquery. I mostly used http://learningwebgl.com/blog for the 3D stuff. Being WebGL, it will work mostly on Chrome, Firefox 4 Beta. Forget about IE. I needed to figure out how to render text to the WebGL canvas - I…

Weekend project - a WebGL Orrery launched on June 13, 2011 with 17 votes, #30 of 181 launches that month and more than 75% of that year's launches.

Visit solar-system-explorer.com ↗Alternativestop 17% of June 2011

In plain words

Weekend project is an interactive 3D visualization of the solar system built with WebGL, using orbital data from NASA JPL. Designed for developers and space enthusiasts, it runs in Chrome and Firefox and allows users to explore planetary orbits and positions. The project serves as an educational tool for learning JavaScript, HTML5, and WebGL programming, featuring a jQuery-based interface and custom text-rendering solutions adapted from HTML5 canvas techniques.

written from the facts on this page · September 2026

From the sources

In the maker’s words, at launch

This was my recent weekend project, aimed at teaching me JavaScript, a bit of HTML5, and (mostly) WebGL. The orbital data are from NASA JPL. I was inspired in part by this Flash app: http://www.dynamicdiagrams.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/orrery_2011_bce.swf, but wanted to do something in 3D. Coming from the…

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Source: Show HN post ↗ · launch text quoted in part

Launched alongside, June 2011

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