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kosmotale

A small hobby web app for flying through the universe, from Earth to the edge of what we can see. No accounts, no database, no API keys.

kosmotale demo

Problem

You want to fly from Earth to the edge of what we can see, in the browser, without an account or a backend. And when a distance or orbit is only a model, that should be visible — not presented as a precise measurement.

What AI does

Nothing — on purpose. kosmotale has no AI backend, no accounts, no database and no API keys. The physics is built in: Keplerian orbits, IAU rotation and scale compression, checked by tests. Where something is a model, the UI says so, with the Waargenomen/Model label.

Demo

Drag to look around, WASD to fly, Q and E to go up and down. Flight and clock have two separate speed controls: 1× flight is 1 km/s, 1× on the clock is real time. Click an object, or pick it from the list, to fly there. The Sources button in the header lists the catalogues and maps. The star field is 401 Hipparcos stars; the background sky is a stylistic pattern of our own, not an astronomically accurate star map. A live demo at /kosmotale/ is coming soon.

Result

A public hobby showcase: a static Next.js/WebGL export, no server, no npm package. The code is Apache-2.0. The Hipparcos star data in data/stars.json is CC BY-NC 3.0 IGO (ESA); the distribution as a whole is therefore not Apache-2.0, and is not fully open source. NASA and USGS textures are attributed in NOTICE, without endorsement or logos.