SOLAR
Fly the solar system on real JPL orbits, in your browser
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SOLAR - Fly the solar system on real JPL orbits, in your browser

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SOLAR — an interactive 3D solar system you fly through in the browser. Real JPL orbital elements (1800–2050), Kepler's equation solved live, cinematic time-warp travel between planets, a top-down ecliptic map, in-flight music. A non-commercial pet project built with React + Three.js, largely vibe-coded with Claude Code. Mobile-first — works as well on a phone as a desktop.

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Maker
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SOLAR is a browser-based 3D solar system, built as a non-commercial side project. Planet positions come from JPL's orbital elements (1800–2050), with Kepler's equation solved on the client in real time — not pre-baked animation. You can fly between planets with a cinematic time-warp, plus a top-down ecliptic map with both compressed and true distance scales. Stack: React + Three.js, TypeScript, tested against JPL reference positions. Built mobile-first. Largely vibe-coded with Claude Code — a personal project, not a product. Caveats: UTC used as TDB approximation, no N-body integration, no moons modeled. Happy to answer questions about the orbital math or the rendering.
Vercel
Vercel Day
Which Vercel product did you use? What new capability did it give your team, and how did that shape the product you launched?
Maker
We didn't use Vercel for this one — SOLAR is self-hosted (Docker + Caddy on our own server), mainly because of the Node presence/feedback service and Postgres-backed accounts running alongside the static frontend. That said, we'd genuinely love to move onto Vercel — the frontend itself (React + Three.js) is a natural fit, we're just weighing how to carry over the backend pieces (feedback API, accounts) without losing them.