In my opinion in the coming years these should be the most important goals of Celestia development:
1.) integrating the ESA Gaia DR2 data into Celestia (600 million stars)
2.) porting Celestia to VR (using for example Oculus Rift with Celestia would be awesome, or maybe using Steam OpenVR).
What do you think?
ESA Gaia data integration and porting Celestia to VR
Going cloud means a singular vision, one view point, even if it is a commonality.
The strength of both celestia and open source itself, is many voices.
Going cloud as a baseline for comparison is one thing, going cloud only would in my own opinion defeat the purpose of open source.
As for going VR, celestia already has the basics in place.
Go split view, 2 wide by 1 high.
Then either make a script or add a function to make the second view offset.
As long as it is offset by some amount, with respect to position and alignment, perhaps make the amount adjustable as well.
Then you have a stereo gram with true depth perception.
This is especially true if you have a very wide screen, you can literally move back and cross your eyes.
Your eyes will find their own focus and it will snap into a floating 3D window, though nausea can result if you move your head to much.
If you are using a single display split view VR gear, you have your VR.
The only thing to add to make it better is depth blur to prevent the tilt pan effect that breaks the experience.
Janus
The strength of both celestia and open source itself, is many voices.
Going cloud as a baseline for comparison is one thing, going cloud only would in my own opinion defeat the purpose of open source.
As for going VR, celestia already has the basics in place.
Go split view, 2 wide by 1 high.
Then either make a script or add a function to make the second view offset.
As long as it is offset by some amount, with respect to position and alignment, perhaps make the amount adjustable as well.
Then you have a stereo gram with true depth perception.
This is especially true if you have a very wide screen, you can literally move back and cross your eyes.
Your eyes will find their own focus and it will snap into a floating 3D window, though nausea can result if you move your head to much.
If you are using a single display split view VR gear, you have your VR.
The only thing to add to make it better is depth blur to prevent the tilt pan effect that breaks the experience.
Janus