Orbit swarm
Millions of ships on exact Kepler orbits, solved every frame in compute shaders, among 16,500+ real satellites.
Open the globe (Orbit swarm)
In active developmentUpdated
Planet DOTS V2
From deep space to underwater reefs, in a browser tab.
Millions of starships and 16,500+ real satellites around an Earth built from open data. It runs on a custom renderer written directly on WebGPU, with a WebGL2 fallback, rather than on Unity or any other game engine. Nothing to install.
Runs in a browser with WebGPU or WebGL2. Phones get touch controls and a lighter, adaptive render tier; a desktop GPU still shows the most detail.
At a glance
8M
starships on exact orbits, held above 24 fps
16,500+
real satellites, placed where they are now
80×
more ships on the GPU than on one CPU core
33
landmarks built from published dimensions
100%
open data, from NASA and NOAA to OpenStreetMap
0
game engines or rendering libraries
Ship counts from the built-in CPU vs GPU showdown, measured on an Apple M1 Max in Chrome.
The one-minute tour
With sound and on-screen captions. Every shot is the app running, captured frame by frame.
Planet DOTS trailer: Earth in its swarm of satellites, a dive through the clouds into the Alps and the Matterhorn, Europe from day to night, a montage of landmarks from Paris, San Francisco and New York to Rio, Sydney, Rome, Giza, Dubai and Machu Picchu, Central Park through the seasons, a dive into a coral reef in the Maldives, and a pull back into deep space to the black hole M87*.
Pick a place to start
Each card opens the app right there.
Open a place on your phone or desktop. The next view starts loading while you fly there.
Real weather
Volumetric clouds from the NOAA GFS forecast and satellite cloud maps.
Open this view (Real weather)
Cities in 3D
Streamed terrain and aerial imagery, with 3D buildings from OpenStreetMap.
Open this view (Cities in 3D)
Landmarks
33 of them, from the Golden Gate Bridge to the pyramids of Giza, rebuilt from published measurements.
Open this view (Landmarks)
Seasons
Snow, autumn colour and bare trees follow the date. Change it in the time bar to watch the park turn.
Open Central Park in autumn (Seasons)
Night side
NASA Black Marble city lights, lit by the real Moon's position and phase.
Open this view (Night side)
Underwater reefs
Dive to real sea-floor depth: 3D coral where the data says reef, with fish at their real sizes.
Open this view (Underwater reefs)
Deep space
Black holes and galaxies at their real positions, with light bent by gravity.
Fly to M87* (Deep space)- JavaScript, one core100KRust → WASM SIMD, 5 workers4MWebGPU compute8M
Most ships above 24 fps · Apple M1 Max, Chrome
CPU vs GPU
The same orbit math on one CPU core, on every core in Rust SIMD, then on the GPU.
Launch, then press ⚡ CPU vs GPU (CPU vs GPU)
Under the hood
Every feature, the architecture, the stack and measured performance
Under the hood
Every feature, the architecture, the stack and measured performance
Everything it does
Orbits and satellites
- Millions of starships on exact Kepler orbits, solved every frame in WebGPU compute
- Orbit families to explore one at a time: LEO, polar, sun-synchronous, MEO, GEO, Molniya, GTO
- 16,500+ real satellites from the CelesTrak catalogue, placed where they are now
- Follow any ship or satellite with its orbit drawn
- CPU vs GPU showdown: JavaScript on one core, Rust WebAssembly SIMD on every core, then the GPU
The Earth
- Streamed terrain and aerial imagery, national orthophotos where they exist
- Physically based atmosphere, sunsets and twilight
- Volumetric clouds from the NOAA GFS forecast and satellite cloud maps
- Cloud bases at the condensation level over the ground, fog where the forecast has it, hill fog on the peaks
- Seasons that follow the date: snow cover, autumn colour, bare winter trees, snow on roofs
- Real sea state and surf from GFS-Wave, tides, sea ice
- Rock and snow on steep mountain faces
- Aurora from NOAA's OVATION forecast
- Night side: NASA Black Marble city lights, street lamps, lit windows by local time, moonlight and moon shadows
Cities and landmarks
- 3D buildings from OpenStreetMap, styled by region: roofs, eaves, gables and dormers from Kyoto to London
- Physically based materials: glass glints, stone and brick stay matte
- 33 landmarks rebuilt from published dimensions and photographs, from Christ the Redeemer to the Forbidden City
- Bridge decks worldwide, plus the Golden Gate and Sydney Harbour Bridge
- Trees and plants by climate zone, with seasons, orchards, vineyards and hedgerows
Beneath the surface
- Dive to real sea-floor depth
- 3D coral reefs where the data says reef
- Reef fish at their real sizes, rays, sharks, turtles and whales
- Water optics, caustics and light shafts
Traffic
- Real airliner traffic replayed from an open ADSB.lol snapshot
- Simulated shipping, road and rail traffic
Sun, planets and sky
- A 3D Sun from NOAA and NASA data: loops, flares and eruptions in motion
- Watch the Sun in white light, H-alpha or extreme ultraviolet
- Planets and moons with surfaces from spacecraft maps, real shapes, rings and atmospheres
- The Moon at its real position and phase
- 9,096 stars at their real positions, and the Milky Way
Deep space
- Ray-traced black holes: Sagittarius A*, M87*, Gaia BH1 and BH3
- Galaxies as 3D volumes at their real positions: Andromeda, M33, M51, M81, M87, the Sombrero, the Magellanic Clouds
- About 100 Local Group dwarf galaxies, and the Milky Way seen from outside
Getting around
- Explore: 58 places framed against real photographs
- A guided tour, search, time warp, and share links to any view
- WebGPU with a WebGL2 fallback; a touch interface and lighter render tier on phones
How a frame comes together
01
Open data
Orbits, weather, waves and tides ship with the build; terrain, imagery and buildings stream as tiles.
02
Web Workers
Decode and mesh off the main thread: vector tiles, 3D Tiles + Draco, Rust → WASM SIMD.
03
GPU compute
WGSL kernels solve every orbit each frame, cull, and write indirect draw lists.
04
Rendering
HDR, a physically based sky, FFT ocean and volumetric clouds. WebGL2 as the fallback.
Built with
- WebGPU
- WGSL compute shaders
- WebGL2 fallback
- TypeScript
- Rust → WASM SIMD
- Web Workers
- SharedArrayBuffer
- OGC 3D Tiles + Draco
- Mapbox Vector Tiles
- GPU culling + indirect draws
CPU vs GPU, measured
| Path | Ships |
|---|---|
| JavaScript, one core | 100,000 |
| Rust → WASM SIMD, 5 workers | 4,000,000 (its cap) |
| WebGPU compute | 8,000,000 |
Most ships held above 24 fps, Apple M1 Max in Chrome. The app runs the same race on your machine.
Worth knowing
- Orbit trails keep no history: each trail vertex re-solves Kepler's equation a step back along the orbit.
- The Rust kernel propagates four ships per 128-bit SIMD lane, spread across worker threads.
- Weather, waves, tides and orbits ship as snapshots with the build. The only live requests are map tiles, fetched as you fly close.
- No Unity or other engine: the renderer is written directly on WebGPU, with a WebGL2 fallback. The only runtime libraries are draco3d (mesh decompression) and earcut (polygon triangulation).
- On phones, measured frame times adjust resolution and effects; the next Explore destination begins loading during the flight.
In active development
Latest update:
What's new
Smoother flights
Flights between Explore places ease in and out, and the light shifts gradually on the way instead of jumping at take-off.
Flights on phones
Flights play by default on every device. If a phone measurably struggles, a one-time prompt offers a fade to black instead.
A better phone view
Sharper presentation and adaptive detail keep the scene readable as the camera moves and settles.
Places load on the way
Explore starts fetching the next destination during the flight, then brings in imagery and buildings as they arrive.
Reefs on slower links
Nearby reef tiles get priority during a phone arrival; temporary tile failures are retried.
Phone controls
One menu, larger touch targets and a clear way back make it easier to explore in an in-app browser.
Follow a satellite
The camera stays aligned with the satellite's rendered orbit, and real satellites draw their detailed 3D models in every browser, phones included.
From first paint
A loading state appears before the globe's first frame and clears when the scene is ready.
Coming next
A living world
More wildlife and weather that changes over time. In development.
Further out: More of the Solar System, up close · Phones to high-end desktops, tuned for each.
Plans, not promises: the order may change.
See it run on your own machine
Frame rate, ship counts and GPU timings in the app are measured live, on your hardware.
Launch Planet DOTSWho built it
I'm Scott Robertson. Planet DOTS is my own project, a web-native remake of my original Unity DOTS Planet demo. I've spent 18+ years in real-time 3D, XR and autonomy, including five at Lockheed Martin Skunk Works.
Built on open data
NASA · NOAA · CelesTrak · ADSB.lol · Copernicus · EOX · GEBCO · Open Waters · DGFI-TUM · ESO · Event Horizon Telescope · Pan-STARRS · Solar System Scope · OpenStreetMap · Mapterhorn · OpenFreeMap · swisstopo · IGN · PNOA · PDOK · GSI Japan · NSW Spatial Services · USGS
Full attributions and licences are in the app's About panel. The privacy page lists the services its map layers contact.