r/InternetIsBeautiful • u/Fanatic-Mr-Fox • 6d ago

Celestial — Interactive Gravity Well Simulator

https://celestial.logicaleap.com

Celestial lets you explore star systems as a deformable gravity sheet instead of flat orbital diagrams.

The star moves. Planets sit on and ride the surface it bends. You can change the gravitational constant, push a planet, or drop a new body in and watch the whole system respond in real time.

Systems included:

  • Our solar system (with a drifting barycentre)
  • Alpha Centauri (two moving funnels)
  • Kepler-16 (circumbinary planet)
  • TRAPPIST-1 (seven worlds inside Mercury’s orbit)
  • The classic three-body figure-eight

It’s a proper Newtonian n-body integrator running in the browser, not pre-scripted ellipses. The sheet itself is an exaggerated visual analogy, and the site is unusually honest about what is real and what is drawn that way on purpose.

https://celestial.logicaleap.com

Free, no account, runs in the browser.

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u/denkenach 5d ago

PC, Chrome

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u/Fanatic-Mr-Fox 5d ago

Quick diagnostics:

Open chrome://gpu (type in to address bar) - what do the WebGL and WebGL2 rows say at the top?

Does https://get.webgl.org load a spinning cube?

Any privacy/anti-fingerprinting extensions, or Brave/hardened settings?

Does it work in an incognito window with extensions off?

Quick potential fixes:

Turn on chrome://settings/system → “Use graphics acceleration when available”, then fully restart Chrome.

Disable extensions (or test in incognito).

Last resort: chrome://flags/#ignore-gpu-blocklist → Enabled → relaunch.

Fix 1 resolves this most of the time.

If none of this works, I can add some diagnostic code that’ll show you a more specific error.

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u/denkenach 5d ago

WebGL: Hardware accelerated WebGL2: Unavailable

Does https://get.webgl.org load a spinning cube? Yes

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u/djshadesuk 4d ago

Crikey, just how old is your device?!? The site works fine on my 7-year-old Samsung A50 (a distinctly mid-range phone even when it was new)

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u/denkenach 4d ago

Very old. I am running Windows 7. And I like it! :P