Scenes · Study 092
Warp Stars
Fly through a field of five hundred stars. Near the centre you cruise. Push your pointer toward the edge and the stars stretch into streaks.
What you're looking at
Each star has a position in three dimensions. Every frame it moves toward you, and its place on screen is found by dividing its sideways position by its distance, which is all perspective is. A line is drawn from where it was to where it is, so slow stars are dots and fast ones become streaks. Stars that pass you are recycled to the far distance.
The idea behind it
The starfield is one of the oldest effects in computer graphics, running on home machines since the late 1970s, because it needs only a division per star. Real interstellar travel would look different: at speeds near that of light, the stars would crowd toward a point straight ahead and shift in colour.
Try this
Move the pointer away from the centre to accelerate, back to the middle to slow down.
