The compute shader that generates galaxies gets more and more features. We can now design pretty cool shapes interactively.

I've been playing around with compute shaders to generate procedural galaxies in #GaiaSky on the fly. Still needs work, but it looks promising for populating distant galaxies. In the video, I spawned a galaxy next to the milky way, trying to mimic its structure with a few simple parameters. (1/3)

We've been working on a new galaxy model for Gaia Sky. It is a compromise between 'looking good' and 'rendering fast'.

I've been working with @plateauastro.bsky.social on a new virtual texture for #GaiaSky which features many urban areas down to a resolution of 10-20 m/px. It is based on Sentinel-2 data and the NASA blue marble imagery. Check out the video 🎞️👇

In the next version, Gaia Sky will pull localized object information from the @wikipedia.org API whenever available. This shortcoming in the internationalization of the app has been mended.

See video below, where the object summary depends on the current locale 👇

📢📢📢 #GaiaSky 3.6.9 is out! This version brings some exciting new features and lots of bug fixes.
More info: gaiasky.space/news/2025/ga...

#GaiaSky will get a star streaks shader in the next release. This effect elongates stars in the direction of motion to create a sort of Star Trek travel effect. Of course, this can be turned off in the settings.

#GaiaSky 3.6.8 is clearly GPU-bound. This means that the graphics card is the limiting factor in performance.

The footage below is captured with the GTX 1070, which is now almost exactly 9 years old. But the software runs well also on integrated GPUs (laptops mostly), and APUs (Steam Deck).

📢📢 Today we make available a new Gaia DR3-based catalog: Gaia DR3 Best!

It is a small and compact catalog with only the very best stars in terms of parallax relative error. It contains 646K stars and weighs ~54 MB.

All the info: gaiasky.space/news/2025/ne...

#GaiaSky #Catalog #GaiaDR3

Today, Gaia has been ejected from its Lissajous orbit around L2 into a heliocentric orbit. The spacecraft has ended its sky-scanning phase after more than 10 years, and has been switched off. We'll see it again close to Earth in 2039. Farewell, #Gaia!

There is a new API call in #GaiaSky, goToObjectSmooth(). It uses the transitions API to create a smooth trajectory to an object. Comparison video:

I have been re-working the way speed scaling works in #GaiaSky. The new method takes into account all objects surrounding the camera, additionally to the focus object, and produces smoother trips. No more sudden jumps out of the starting area!

Check out the comparison video 👇

A smoother video captured in X.

📢📢📢 We just released #GaiaSky 3.6.6. This is a small update focused on fixing some bugs and improving performance. Also, it comes with proper handling of depth for volumes!

Downloads: zah.uni-heidelberg.de/gaia/outreac...
Release notes: codeberg.org/gaiasky/gaia...

Nebulae also kind of work now in #GaiaSky VR, but I need to port every single shader manually (sigh). Current progress is 1/8, but they all follow the same structure, so the others should be straightforward...

The aurora now works on #GaiaSky VR as well. Now on to the volumetric nebulae...