March 2026: Camera Presets, Novel Orbit Paths, and Galaxy View Particles

Six New Camera Presets

The camera system already had basic orbit controls. This update added six distinct presets that each give the viewer a fundamentally different feel:

| Preset | Motion | Character | |--------|--------|-----------| | Cinema | Lemniscate (figure-eight) path, 60° elevation | Sweeping cinematic orbit | | Satellite | Top-down drift, low altitude | Engineering overview | | Breathing Vortex | Spiral in/out with pulsing FOV | Hypnotic, meditative | | Immersive Chase | Close behind planet, FOV 85° | Action-camera energy | | Surfboard | Flat lateral slide across the ecliptic | Unique side-on perspective | | Helix | Helical path along the orbital axis | DNA-like motion |

Each preset defines its own update(t) function called each animation frame, modifying camera position, look-at target, and field-of-view. Transitions between presets use a 2-second lerp to avoid jarring cuts.

Aladin Lite WebAssembly CSP Fix

The sky-map view embeds Aladin Lite for interactive HiPS sky surveys. Aladin compiles critical path-finding code to WebAssembly at runtime. The Content Security Policy was blocking this with:

Refused to compile or instantiate WebAssembly module because 'wasm-unsafe-eval' is not allowed

Fix: add wasm-unsafe-eval to the script-src CSP directive specifically for the sky-map route. Elsewhere the directive remains strict.

Galaxy View Particle System

The galaxy view existed as a flat disk with a JPEG texture. Three canvas-drawn procedural meshes were added on top:

• Stellar halo — a 512×512 radial gradient plane (5.5× galaxy diameter) giving the soft violet glow of the old stellar population
• Core bloom — a 256×256 concentrated warm gradient centred on Sagittarius A*, simulating the dense bulge luminosity
• Edge glow — a narrow tilted plane perpendicular to the disk, giving the galaxy apparent thickness when viewed at low elevation angles