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I asked Claude build a physically accurate O'Neill cylinder you can walk around

29 points · 29 comments · bilsbie

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AmazingEveryDay · 1791143487 · focus · HN ↗
> The sunlight here comes from its mirrors, and its "gravity" comes from its spin.
Where do the clouds come from? The AI?
1. ben_w · 1791146082 · focus · HN ↗
  I can't use the site on my phone, can barely even read any of the text, so I don't know the text you're quoting.
  If you are asking if clouds in such a structure are realistic, I'd expect so: clouds do form naturally in even much smaller spaces, e.g. one of the NASA buildings, I forget if it was the Saturn V or Space Shuttle assembly building or both.
  1. nickff · 1791147423 · focus · HN ↗
    The Vertical Assembly Building was used for both the Apollo Program and the Space Shuttle, though it had much more ‘headroom’ for the latter. From what I’ve read the rumors of clouds forming inside of it are actually a myth, though there are condensation and airflow issues. I don’t have citations handy as it’s been a while (decade) since I’ve read this.
2. T-A · 1791147713 · focus · HN ↗
  They were in the original 1970's renderings too:
  <a href="https://nss.org/o-neill-cylinder-space-settlement/" rel="nofollow">https://nss.org/o-neill-cylinder-space-settlement/
  Given Earth-like gravity and Earth-like atmosphere, a sufficiently large structure will also have Earth-like clouds.
Jtarii · 1791147108 · focus · HN ↗
Takes forever to load, runs terribly and looks awful.
1. iagooar · 1791149263 · focus · HN ↗
  Not my experience at all.
  1. Jtarii · 1791149832 · focus · HN ↗
    Motivated by this comment I decided to give it another shot, the tab crashed immediately upon clicking the "fly" button.
2. Retr0id · 1791150956 · focus · HN ↗
  I managed to get a whole 5fps
notfried · 1791147425 · focus · HN ↗
[delayed]
1. Avamander · 1791148393 · focus · HN ↗
  I suspect it needs a few tokens spent on optimization and clean-up.
petronic · 1791148088 · focus · HN ↗
Just a heads up - this site managed to choke WindowServer on MacOS 27/Safari long enough to trigger a watchdog reboot.
I never managed to load it and had to rush to kill its tab after the OS restarted and it began choking the machine again.
1. embedding-shape · 1791150842 · focus · HN ↗
  Indeed, it also froze both Firefox and Chrome running on Arch with a Threadripper 9970X. Not sure what kind of hardware is able to run this webpage.
2. dekhn · 1791151209 · focus · HN ↗
  Wow, I opened it on my workstation (high-end intel w/ 64GB RAM and a 5090 with 32GB VRAM) and it hung my Chrome.
  Oh- I see, the whole browser locks when it's doing the final GPU upload. Now it's running at 60FPS.
  It's not ... terrible, but as somebody raised on Don Davis's art (see all the lovely images here: <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_High_Frontier:_Human_Colonies_in_Space" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_High_Frontier:_Human_Colon... including my personal favorite <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_High_Frontier:_Human_Colonies_in_Space#/media/File:Stanford_torus_under_construction.jpg" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_High_Frontier:_Human_Colon...)
3. Ohentis · 1791160043 · focus · HN ↗
  I feel like "webgpu doesn't work on safari" has been a recurring theme lately. Does anyone know why?
RobotToaster · 1791148401 · focus · HN ↗
Anyone else getting this error on android chrome?
>HipparcosGraphics error on arm valhall: device lost: A valid external Instance reference no longer exists. (tap to close; a screenshot to @gruberbuilds helps fix it)
1. RobotToaster · 1791149102 · focus · HN ↗
  update: I just tried it on firefox on windows and it works fine there.
hoelle · 1791148434 · focus · HN ↗
Neat. I enjoyed the NPCs chatting about life onboard.
Angostura · 1791148676 · focus · HN ↗
On iOS Safari:
Island Three could not start
Range consisting of offset and length are out of bounds
Reloading the page may help. A screenshot of this to @gruberbuilds on X helps fix it.
I’m not on X
1. JumpCrisscross · 1791148743 · focus · HN ↗
  Also on iOS Safari. Seemed to load fine.
aarontian0 · 1791148767 · focus · HN ↗
This is crazy Claude built this.
superkickstart · 1791148850 · focus · HN ↗
Well that was disappointing.
OutOfHere · 1791149255 · focus · HN ↗
Over half the people can't run it right or at all. Why not share some representative walkthrough videos?
1. jakzurr · 1791153788 · focus · HN ↗
  Yes, please!
xg15 · 1791149677 · focus · HN ↗
The weirdest experience in this must be to never know if you're walking uphill or downhill.
1. Sharlin · 1791150560 · focus · HN ↗
  The further uphill you walk the easier it becomes as the apparent gravity decreases.
maxlin · 1791149683 · focus · HN ↗
I've had an idea to build something similar - or more specifically, a game in this form, since I saw Eric Bruneton's Rendezvous With Rama video, now about 15 years ago.
Never did hand code it, even though I gained a lot of the skills and work in gamedev. This makes me feel time is running out to implement it with some of the unique twists I had in mind that become apparent with something like this ...
1. jakzurr · 1791153108 · focus · HN ↗
  Oh, great idea! Maybe consider building it with Orbiter Simulator?
  <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orbiter_(simulator)" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orbiter_(simulator)
  www.orbiter-forum.com/ github.com/orbitersim/orbiter
  I believe it supports C and Lua.
  1. maxlin · 1791156738 · focus · HN ↗
    I played Orbiter near its release - this is quite far from my intention with its focus on spacecraft and generally a low detail level.
    My intention would be a game simulating, at least on a surface level, life inside an O'Neill cylinder, you being an individual doing things there that requires you to move around from the edge of the "world" to another continously, like delivering packages and such.
ForHackernews · 1791149753 · focus · HN ↗
This is a website, not an O'Neill cylinder, and I can't walk around it.
pmontra · 1791151063 · focus · HN ↗
Android, both Chrome and Firefox
> Your browser found no graphics adapter for WebGPU It supports WebGPU but did not offer the graphics chip: hardware acceleration may be off, or this GPU or its driver may be blocked.
> In Chrome or Edge: Settings → System → turn on graphics acceleration, then restart the browser. Updating the browser and the graphics driver often helps too.
ChrisMarshallNY · 1791151281 · focus · HN ↗
I'm sure it's awesome, but my puny Mac Mini M4Pro won't render it...
winston_smith_ · 1791151916 · focus · HN ↗
"This browser doesn't have WebGPU
Island Three draws with WebGPU, which Firefox for Android doesn't have yet. Open this page in Chrome."
lol, no thanks

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