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Left click + drag to spin
Right click + drag to rotate
Altis uses publicly available orbital data from CelesTrak to show real-time tracking of satellites in orbit around Earth. Over 10,000 objects are propagated live using Keplerian orbital elements and rendered on a 3D globe.
The globe is rendered using Mapbox GL JS with custom WebGL shaders layered on top. Satellite positions are computed from Keplerian elements entirely on the GPU — vertex shaders propagate each orbit in real time, while fragment shaders handle the point rendering and trail fade. A two-pass bloom gives each satellite head a soft glow. The label overlay runs on a separate canvas using 2D projection from the same camera matrix, and geocoding updates the location panel as the globe spins.
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