This is something I've wanted to try in VR one day. Does anyone know if there is an app/game available for one of the popular headsets? Is there a technical limit to how realistic the effect could be?
You won't be able to perceive anything "3D" if you're aiming for accuracy.
Even though we can perceive the "depth" of the stars through motion in this simulation, every star is still going to look equally far away, because their positions won't change between the left and right eyes. The same way we can't perceive the sun as further away than the moon -- depth perception merely tells us they're both "max far away".
You could always introduce depth perception by faking your eyes to be light-years apart, but of course that's not how it would really be in the spaceship...
Yeah I figured that would be the case. I still think it would be really cool effect to see anyway if you could go fast enough and experience the motion parallax of the stars. No offense to this project as it's really impressive.
Not exactly what youre looking for, but this type of game (using relavistic physics) has been attempted. Heres one built in unity that could be easily ported to a Quest line device.
Playing No Man's Sky in VR gives this vibe. Sitting is fine. The first star field motion might induce a bit of vertigo, especially if your machine struggles and you get frame drops and stutters as it is loading.
The rate that time is progressing is also going to change this effect a LOT.
Years are passing in seconds in this websites simulation, if you were experiencing it all in "real time" everything would appear pretty much stationary for quite a while.
Even at like 95% the speed of light, you're talking about years of time required to move between stars - nothing will appear to change much day to day until you actually get close to one of them.
