{
  "id": 12182399,
  "title": "Open Worlds Atlas: A Stateless Three.js Galaxy Built on Kepler's Third Law",
  "url": "https://urgent.news/2026/10/05/open-worlds-atlas-a-stateless-three-js-galaxy-built-on-keplers-third",
  "topic": "tech",
  "section": "Tech",
  "published": "2026-10-05T14:42:08.000Z",
  "source": {
    "name": "HackerNoon",
    "slug": "hackernoon",
    "url": "https://hackernoon.com/open-worlds-atlas-a-stateless-threejs-galaxy-built-on-keplers-third-law?source=rss"
  },
  "original_language": "en",
  "account": "I run a Persian-language gaming site and wanted a unique way to display open-world game history. Instead of a traditional wiki table or listicle, I created Open Worlds Atlas, a Three.js galaxy. Each of the 19 open-world game franchises orbits like a planet, with Assassin's Creed as the 20th planet in the system. By clicking a franchise's mascot, you can fly through the galaxy in first-person view. Landing on a planet reveals a timeline of all its remasters, spin-offs, and sequels.\n\nMy initial plan was to create a simple page listing some games. However, I quickly realized that planets should not just sit there. I decided to implement actual orbital mechanics instead of a looping CSS animation. This required solving three main challenges: creating orbits that behave naturally, building a template that could accommodate 20 different franchises, and ensuring the entire system works in two languages without duplicating code.\n\nThe orbits are calculated using Kepler's third law, which states that outer orbits take longer than inner ones, and the relationship is not linear. I used a formula that closely approximates T² ∝ r³ to make the orbits feel physically accurate. To make the galaxy visible during a typical visit, I fast-forwarded the elapsed time by a factor of 100. This allowed the outermost lane to complete a lap in about 3.7 days of wall-clock time and the innermost lane in roughly a single day.\n\nEach franchise's landing page displays a running age counter that ticks at real speed, using the true period of the planet's orbit. The size of each planet is determined by its real map area in square kilometers, while its mass influences which orbital lane it occupies and how fast it spins on its own axis. The mass score is a weighted blend of criteria such as the critic score of the franchise's best-reviewed entry, lifetime sales, and the number of released mainline entries.\n\nDespite the complexity, Open Worlds Atlas maintains a single template for all 19 franchises, resulting in 40 pages. While an editorial tweak to a rating can change a planet's orbit, the codebase remains efficient and consistent across languages.",
  "summary": "I turned 19 game franchises into an orbiting Three.js galaxy, then solved animation drift, shared-template bugs, scaling, and bilingual routing.",
  "key_points": [],
  "editors_take": null,
  "illustration": null,
  "coverage": {
    "outlets": 1,
    "also_reported_by": []
  },
  "ai_generated": true,
  "disclaimer": "Summaries, key points and the editor’s take are written by software from other outlets’ reporting and may contain errors — always check the linked original."
}