Making a live sky tracker for Elite: Dangerous ➶

Maybe the most impressive Elite: Dangerous project I’ve found thus far, by Cmdr Lysander666 (Zell Ak’inyi):

This is part of what I call “downscaled play”, whereby the commander exists in the Elite world for depth rather than breadth. I personally live on a single moon - Hypi Bra EV-P d5-78 6 a (Nahla) - and have done for several months. I do this because I fell in love with its look and feel, and I use it as a ‘monastic cell’ to do other work from. It helps me focus, keeps me immersed, and I find it productive.

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OK, so what would happen if we just threw all the EDSM data INTO the tracker’s code and have Keplerian physics work the whole thing out for itself? Well, this would be fine IF Elite manifested perfect Keplerian physics, but I’m pretty sure it doesn’t. It simulates it. In such a case you would just be correcting the physics and the tracker code over and over again, relentlessly debugging and getting nowhere. It would be a black hole of broken JavaScript which you would have to endlessly ‘fix’.

So how do we fix it?

How did the ancient astronomers do it before Kepler? How did anyone? Regular observation. I use what I call the “Sumerian method” which is not specific to Sumer but I like the terminology. It’s record-keeping, observation and prediction refinement.

Always a moment of pure happiness when finding projects like this sky tracker for a remote moon in a simulated version of our galaxy.

Elite is an inspiring game, filling one with the urge to create things.

✶ First published Wednesday, 24 December, 2025

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Possibly Related:

• The Method of Awakening the Mind to a Variety of Inventions
• Newbie rendezvous & first landing in Elite: Dangerous Odyssey
• Soundscape by Horizon’s Glow
• Elite 46: Trouble during Artemis Grade 5 suit testing
• Music video for E44 Stream End Piano Synth Improvisation

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Prior entry:* Music*