OrbitLens Devlog #5: Camera panning improvements and performance updates

After the changes from Devlog #4, all the math and the 3d models were all working but i faced some problems in other aspects of the website. Here are soe of the changes i made:

Change 1: Correct orientation

This was a small change, but i noticed that some satellites were a bit too big (like Aqua) and were positioned wrongly, so i just chaged teh scale and the rotation to make it a bit more realistic

Changes 2, 3, and 4: The camera improvements

I faced a lots of problems with the camera and how it worked. Before, i couldn’t rotated in all directions around the earth or the satellites because they were using OrbitControls so i swapped that out with TrackballControls, which allows for 360deg panninh

There was also like a rubber band effect where the camera, when the camera lock was selected as satellite, zoomed in towards a satellite, i couldn’t interact with the satellite at all. THis was because as the satellite’s moving, the camera is also actuvely trying to catch up so it never actually ‘ended’ its animation so i was blocked from interacting with the satellite. To fix this i implemented delta tracking. The engine now calculates the exact mathematical vector the satellite moves every frame and shifts the camera’s physical position by that exact same amount, which worked.

Previously, switching targets caused the camera to travel in a straight line, clipping through the Earth, which looked kinda unprofessional so I engineered a custom transition that separates the camera’s direction from its altitude. Now, when you select a new satellite, the camera zooms out, tracels in a an arc over the globe, and zooms in to the destination satellite.

The animation still needs a lot of improvement cus some parts are still a bit glitchy, but i’m happy for now.

Change 5:

I implemented it that the TLEs are now stored in the actual localStorage for like 6 hours and then fetch new TLEs. So the user will always have the latest TLEs cus they update evey 12hrs.