The Outer Experience

Click  “The Outer Experience Here” to experience in fullscreen.

The central concept of this project was derived from galaxy features(rotation about a center point, rotation about an object’s axis, etc.).

The main goal is to achieve an experience for anyone to experience how space feels like. The project includes certain extraterrestrial bodies such as the sun, Jupiter and its moons, and other creative gas liked spherical structures.

How it Works

The project works by moving around using the mouse together with W,S,A,D  keys on the user front. Technically, this is achieved by implementing the cam feature in p5.js with sophisticated math only @ “morejpeg” on youtube could help me with.

The project also features Jupiter and its moons, the sun, and other spherical galaxy planet-liked structures. These implementations were made possible using “sphere,” “rotate,” “texture,” and “translate” keywords in p5.js. The technical achievement I am most proud of is randomly distributing star-liked structures in space.

Also, I think the decision to create a big sphere to house all the stars and other planetary bodies was a smart decision. The choice of music also makes the experience a calming one I believe.

Problems

Generally, working in 3D involves so much math and analysis, and that took an enormous amount of my time. Thus, the main problem I encountered was using math to implement the camera in 3D.

That aside, randomly distributing stars in the void was a challenging task because they constantly kept randomly rotating in the void. Finding the exact position to place a text for User control proved difficult because I simply couldn’t locate the default camera location in the void.

 

References

morejpeg, (2023, Jan)”Coding First Person Camera Controls in 10 Minutes.” Youtube:https://youtu.be/0b9WPrc0H2w