3D Moon

[mcrossley]

With MS dropping desktop gadgets (and actively advising users to disable them in a knee jerk reaction to security concerns) I though about porting my Moon Phase Gadget to a Metro (sorry I mean "Windows 8 mode" ) app. The first step along the way - 3D Moon in a browser, well it is if you have a decent browser!

[ironeagleuk]

grrr how annoying

Your browser does not seem to support WebGL.
Find out how to get it here.

Oh no! We are sorry, but your browser does not seem to support WebGL.

You can upgrade by clicking this link.

You may want to download one of the following browsers to view WebGL content.

The following browsers support WebGL on Windows:

Google Chrome

Mozilla Firefox

You must enable JavaScript to use WebGL.

[mcrossley]

Yep, and I realised later that IE10 doesn't support webGL either, so for Windows 8 I would have to use HTML5 canvas which is rather slow for 3D work or code in C# which is something I wanted to avoid if possible.

[philcdav]

Hi Mark.

that image is awesome.

[mcrossley]

A very old thread, but the here is the latest iteration. It still uses WebGL so you need a newish browser to view it. The primary changes are that I have switched to using a cube rather than a sphere, this avoids those nasty looking pinch points at the poles. (I know it doesn't look like a cube, but it is, just stretched out into a spherical shape!).

It also shows the current Moon phase and appearance - for my location by default but you can change the 'options'.

Take it for a 'spin', it updates once a minute so if you lose your orientation it should snap back after a while

[mcrossley]

Oh yeah, its quite cool to set the 'view' to 'lunar north up', then change the date to manual and slide the days back and forth. You will see both the Moons libration and change in apparent size over the month.

[tobyspond]

That is really neat!

[PaulMy]

Yes another neat gadget...

Paul

[uncle_bob]

nice!
It appears Pink Floyd was wrong, there is a dark side of the Moon