Our brand
Nothing here sits still.
Two things make Void Projects: the inspiration that drives our projects, and our ever-changing approach to all things tech.
The logo that never sits still
Like our projects and technical pursuits, our logo is ever-changing. Each time you visit, our logo will be different, and hopefully our projects will stay constantly evolving.
Each mark starts from a real spacecraft. We took the paths of 12 probes from NASA/JPL HORIZONS, one position a month, measured from the Sun and flattened onto the plane the planets orbit in, as if you were looking down on the solar system from above.
To make a mark, the generator picks one probe, crops its path at a chosen distance from the Sun, stretches the distance scale so the loops near the planets stay readable, then repeats that arm around the centre three, four, five, six or eight times, sometimes mirrored. Rolls that come out too small or too dense to read at icon size are thrown back.
The 12 probes
- Pioneer 10 1972
- Pioneer 11 1973
- Voyager 2 1977
- Voyager 1 1977
- New Horizons 2006
- Cassini 1997
- Galileo 1989
- Ulysses 1990
- Juno 2011
- Parker Solar Probe 2018
- MESSENGER 2004
- Dawn 2007
Why things float
Honestly, because we think it is cool. Yes, it hurts our SEO, and yes, it doesn't load well on older devices, but one of our devs got really interested in physics sims and here we are. Another project :)
On the homepage the title letters and the project cards are real physical bodies, simulated with the open-source Matter.js engine with gravity switched off. Scroll and the letters break apart and drift; the cards are tossed in from below and bump them aside. Grab a letter and you can throw it.
Grab a letter and throw it.
It isn’t only the homepage. The menu at the top of this page floats too: each link drifts a few pixels, tugs on its neighbours and steps aside for your cursor, and Causes hangs off Websites on a string. Try it.
If your device asks for reduced motion, all of it stays still.
The sky behind every page
The stars behind this page are the real night sky, as it looks right now. Because why not?
1. The stars
They come from the HYG database (v41), which combines the Hipparcos, Yale Bright Star and Gliese catalogues. We keep the stars brighter than magnitude 6.5, roughly what the naked eye can see on a dark night. Each star keeps its position, brightness and colour, packed into a tiny file your browser downloads after the page loads.
2. From your place and time
Your device's clock and your longitude give the local sidereal time, which says which part of the sky is overhead. Your latitude then turns each star's catalogue position into a height and compass direction above your horizon. Stars below the horizon are left out. While the page is visible the sky is recomputed up to 10 times a second, so it drifts in real time (or holds still if your system asks for reduced motion).
3. Onto your screen
The page is a window from a virtual camera facing due south, tilted 52° above the horizon, with a 96° field of view. Each star is projected through it like a pinhole camera. The slight shift when you move the pointer is just for depth.
4. Your location
Nothing happens until you click the sky label. Your browser then asks for permission. If you say yes, it gives the page a low-accuracy position, which is used right here in your browser to redraw the sky. The coordinates are also sent to BigDataCloud's reverse-geocoding service (api.bigdatacloud.net) to get the city name for the label.
We do not store your location: no cookies, no local storage, and nothing goes to our servers. Reload the page and the sky is back over Memphis, TN. If you say no, nothing changes.
Read more
How we made the site float
The full story of the physics engine, on our blog.
Write-up coming soon
The code
This site is open source, logo generator and physics engine included.
voidprojects-site on GitHub