DECOMPRESSING INTERNAL DATABASE
Internal Celestial Database
Plain reads the catalogue · Dry adds an aside · Duo gives it to three narrators, one voice each
Locked to view is the real thing: nothing steers the field but the camera, so what you hear is where you are pointed and nothing else. Manual steering is there if you want to play with the mix, but it puts a second hand on the wheel. Where things are, and where you're pointed. Turn until the north beacon is dead ahead; the keel goes dark when you're level with the plane; select a star and the sonar ping quickens as you close on it, pitched by its Doppler shift — the same number the colours show. Try it with your eyes closed.
A volumetric map of real stars and galaxies, colored by how they move.
2,681 objects from the HYG & OpenNGC catalogs, with genuine distances and radial velocities. Let's take 20 seconds to show you around.
Drag to orbit, scroll or pinch to zoom, right-drag (or two-finger drag) to pan.
On phone, tap ☰ Controls to open the panel — it slides away when you tap the sky.
Snap between Top-down, Perspective, Front, Side, and Iso — each glides smoothly into place.
Switch to Ortho projection + Top-down for a true flat sky map with no perspective distortion.
Blue = approaching, red = receding, white = at rest — driven by each object's real radial velocity.
Try Doppler gain to exaggerate it, or Observer velocity to fly the whole sky blue or red. Barnard's Star (−111 km/s) is a good one to find.
Open §06 Audio in the Controls panel to switch on a subtle soundtrack — twelve ambient beds tuned to the zodiac constellations that cross-fade as you pan along the ecliptic, plus a small effects rack.
Select a star and its Doppler shift becomes pitch as well as color: receding stars bend low, approaching ones ride high — the same curve that drives the red and blue.
The sound is quadraphonic, and it carries where you are pointed. Four beacons sit on the compass bearings, so turning swings them around your head — line the low warm one up dead ahead and you are facing north.
A low keel brightens as you tilt off the plane, the room grows as you pull back, and a selected object pings from its own bearing — quicker as you close, pitched by its Doppler shift. Solo any layer in §06 Audio to learn what it means. Try it with your eyes shut.
Eight pieces generated from the solar system itself. A planet's orbital period is a frequency — far too low to hear, but transpose it up by octaves and it lands in range. Earth's year arrives at 136.1 Hz. No audio files ship.
Each piece builds and recedes, holding the deep register back until its apex. Load your own audio or video alongside — several at once, with a playlist — or open a microphone or line in, then ask the spheres to tune themselves to whatever you are playing. Share renders a piece to a file you can send.
SkySounds records a MIDI performance, pulls it into tracks and saves a .rsperf. Load one here and every part keeps its own bearing, so you stand inside the arrangement.
Add stops with the ▶ Tour button, then Play for a cinematic flythrough with narration.
Mid-tour, double-tap the sky to hold it — breathing room to sit in the view and the sound — then double-tap again to drift onward.
Share a tour and it arrives at the other end ready to play, with sound and narration already on.
Tours read themselves aloud, and you choose the register. Plain is the catalogue: kind, distance, radial velocity. Dry adds one wry aside per object. Duo hands it to three narrators who do not agree with each other.
The three arrive in order — an enthusiast who gets ahead of himself, someone cold who corrects him, and a third who finds the disappointment in whatever was just said. Every fact stays true; only the tone is taken liberties with.
Give each one a voice of its own in the tour panel. The list is ranked, so the good neural voices sit at the top and your system's novelty voices are pushed to the bottom where they belong. Fewer voices installed than narrators? They still separate by pitch and pace.
Add catalogs by URL or local file in Data sources. Overlay an astrophoto and Build 3D structure to turn its brightness into a point cloud.
Reopen this tour anytime with the ? button, top-right.
Tours can now be read by one narrator or by three who argue. Plain is the catalogue, Dry adds an aside, Duo gives each part its own voice — pick them in the tour panel, where the list is ranked so the good voices come first. Facts stay true throughout; only the tone takes liberties.
Send someone a tour and it opens with sound and narration already on, rather than silent with the voice switched off. A shared view still respects whatever you had set — that is a place, not something to watch.
Eight generated pieces, and no audio files: a planet's orbital period is a frequency, and transposed up by octaves Earth's year lands on 136.1 Hz. Play your own tracks alongside, or open a microphone or line in, and the spheres retune to your key.
The sound is now quadraphonic and carries where you are pointed — compass beacons, tilt, scale and a Doppler ping on whatever you select. Tap ? for the full tour.
Open §06 Audio in the Controls panel to turn on the soundtrack — twelve beds that crossfade by constellation as you pan, plus a selected star’s Doppler shift rendered as pitch. There’s a 3-band EQ and a small effects rack too: reverb, Doppler, underwater, phaser and a dual-filter traveler.
During a flythrough, double-tap the sky to pause on a view — breathing room — then double-tap again to drift onward.