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neilk · 2012-04-16 07:19:22+00:00

The app creator made the right decision when he defaulted to a false scale. Scale is not the only important thing to convey, one also wants to show relationships and have a model of the whole that fits in a monkey brain.

Also, in this interface, the planets serve as big "buttons" to navigate to a celestial body of interest. So they have to be larger.

The thing would be unusable, and boring, if it showed specks of dust orbiting a mustard seed.

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Denvercoder9 | karma 4936 | avg karma 4.5 · | 2023-12-23 07:04:34

Most applications don't need planet scale, though.

jbverschoor | karma 6661 | avg karma 1.64 · | 2024-01-27 06:20:35

The thing is that it doesn't look to scale to me. But that's probably because most other visualizations/models are not right. Especially in the distances. I checked some other images and while the planets seem to scale, my brain multiplies the size of the planets with the distance ratio.

Pxtl | karma 17051 | avg karma 3.07 · | 2013-12-04 17:12:24+00:00

I'd let the "scale planets" go to more than 100x. Even at 100x they're crazy small when looking at a full map.

georgia_peach | karma 423 | avg karma 1.12 · | 2022-08-12 19:51:39

I think part of their ethos is that they don't like scale. They like small. It's a feature, not a bug.

hotpxl | karma 10 | avg karma 1.25 · | 2021-06-20 21:02:15+00:00

The scale is pretty accurate and all, but why is there giant text in space?

siquick | karma 2258 | avg karma 2.47 · | 2021-11-23 16:13:22

Planet Scale is probably the closest to what you're describing here.

https://planetscale.com/

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pvg | karma 14880 | avg karma 1.9 · | 2017-08-25 10:36:02

The visualization is pretty but missing an essential bit of info: scale.

jhuckestein | karma 1524 | avg karma 2.96 · | 2012-10-03 17:11:30+00:00

Without a scale those images are largely useless.

gsatic | karma 903 | avg karma 1.54 · | 2023-07-12 09:03:46

Scale needs to have some purpose. We are not ants or weeds.

alberth | karma 7376 | avg karma 3.95 · | 2023-01-04 16:00:59

What's so great about PlanetScale?

I feel like I live under a rock because I just don't get what's so great.

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suifbwish | karma 962 | avg karma 1.42 · | 2021-07-06 04:55:45

What do you mean by planet scale?

spaceman33 | karma 5 | avg karma 0.71 · | 2022-10-14 22:58:25

Should be scaled accurately in xyz, just the size of the objects is exaggerated.

rezonant | karma 3609 | avg karma 2.98 · | 2023-10-19 20:47:42

because it's web scale

Nohortax | karma 10 | avg karma 0.56 · | 2021-06-20 21:23:10

I'd like to knock up a solar system in a right scale and I wondered how can I do that. Now that I see this article I think I just can't, not in a regular room at least. I guess I will not have my solar system in an accurate scale hung on my ceiling. Too bad

bigiain | karma 20773 | avg karma 3.34 · | 2017-11-16 18:51:26

You doubt a "Banana for scale" app will be useful due to the inaccuracy of ARKit???

I don't think you understand the use case here...

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atakan | karma 0 | avg karma 0.0 · | 2023-05-04 15:53:37

sounds impossible to scale. but nice ui though

gaius | karma 35963 | avg karma 2.51 · | 2011-08-15 11:10:05

Because it's "web scale".

Grue3 | karma 4020 | avg karma 1.9 · | 2016-02-09 20:19:13+00:00

So that it's web-scale, obviously.

guyzero | karma 2860 | avg karma 4.09 · | 2016-08-16 22:55:07

It's all about scale.