An X3DOM application to provide an immersive yet lightweight native browser experience of viewing a star cluster from a different galaxy as a part of our own solar system. The application provides for associated functionality to help visualize the cluster along with the earth visible stars and includes toggle features to generate a better understanding of the scenario. The star positions as provided by Enrico Vesperini & Jeremy Webb from the Astronomy school at IU are in the unit of parsecs and have been accurately mapped onto the coordinate system. WebVR provides for a native browser immersion and lightweight javascript code which can be used to view the application in a chrome browser on any device platform.
Steps to run -
- git clone https://github.iu.edu/singhgag/VR-Webb-Cluster . (which will clone the repository to the local file system)
- npm install (which will install any missing or all dependencies need for the application as specified in the node configuration, including grunt)
- grunt serve (which will launch an instance of the grunt dev server on port 7000 and open the same for viewing in a new browser window - use Google Chrome preferably for a better experience ) 4)(optional - if the command specified in step 3 doesn't work) npm install grunt --save-dev(which will install the grunt cli for the application and save it in the application folder heirarchy)