Lunar Atlas is an interactive 3D atlas of the moon developed with Three.js and WebGL.
The scene renders a textured, displacement-mapped sphere representing the Moon, surrounded by a starfield, an orbiting Earth and the Sun. Over a hundred real lunar features are plotted onto the sphere and rendered as floating on-screen labels that stay locked to the lunar surface as the camera moves, fading out when they rotate onto the far side.
Clicking any label opens a details panel that gives the user real information about the feature they selected.
A Satellite camera instead tracks a real spacecraft model orbiting the Moon; the player can cycle through a small catalogue of spacecraft (Lunar Gateway, Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, Apollo Lunar Module) and, for the Gateway, manually operate a five-joint robotic arm with the keyboard.
The user can explore the moon surface, identify craters, maria, mountain ranges and Apollo landing sites, and interact with the orbiting spacecrafts.
https://sapienzainteractivegraphicscourse.github.io/final-project-LunarAtlas/
- Interactive 3D model of the Moon with real elevation and color mapping
- Two switchable cameras: a free-orbiting "Navigator" camera and a "Spacecraft" camera that tracks an orbiting space station
- Real-time latitude/longitude readout and nearest-feature detection
- Database of real lunar features: craters, maria, mountain ranges, valleys and Apollo landing sites
- Clickable on-screen labels for every visible feature
- Feature info panel with live Wikipedia summaries and Wikimedia Commons imagery
- Choose between 3 different spacecrafts when you switch to satellite view
- Read the description of the spacecrafts and inspect them by rotating the view
- Controllable robotic arms and sun-oriented solar panels on the Lunar Gateway spacecraft
- Physically based lighting with sunlight, earthshine and shadows
- Starfield, Earth and Sun rendered in the background
- JavaScript
- Three.js
- WebGL
- Vite
- HTML
- CSS
The user can:
- drag to rotate the camera around the Moon;
- scroll to zoom in and out;
- press C to switch between the Navigator camera and the Spacecraft camera;
- click any feature label to view its name, description and real photos;
- read the live latitude/longitude and nearest-feature name from the HUD;
- control the Lunar Gateway robotic arms using Q/A, W/S, E/D, R/F and T/G;
- inspect the spacecrafts and their animations