solar-ascii

A 3D ASCII solar system rendered live in your terminal. The Sun and all eight planets orbit on the ecliptic with real relative orbital periods, projected through a configurable camera and drawn with ANSI truecolor.

Features

• Sun and all eight planets with real relative orbital periods (Earth completes an orbit every 60 sim-seconds)
• Depth-sorted rendering so nearer bodies draw on top
• Radial sun gradient with a soft outer glow
• Dim orbit rings for each planet
• Configurable camera: pitch, yaw, zoom, and a top-down map view
• Adjustable simulation speed and frame rate
• Optional monochrome (no-ANSI) mode

Requirements

• Rust edition 2021 (Rust 1.62+)
• A terminal that supports ANSI truecolor (24-bit color) and alternate-screen buffers

Build

cargo build --release

The binary is produced at target/release/solar-ascii.

Usage

solar-ascii [OPTIONS]

Just run it to watch the system from a default angled view.

Options

Option	Description	Default
-s, --speed <SPEED>	Simulation speed multiplier (0 pauses)	1.0
--top-down	View from directly above the ecliptic	off
-p, --pitch <PITCH>	Camera elevation above the ecliptic, in degrees	30.0
--yaw <YAW>	Camera rotation around the system, in degrees	0.0
--zoom <ZOOM>	Zoom factor (larger = closer/bigger)	1.0
-f, --fps <FPS>	Target frames per second	30
--size <WxH>	Override render size as WxH (e.g. 120x40); defaults to terminal size	terminal size
--no-color	Disable ANSI color (monochrome output)	off

Controls

• q or Esc — quit
• Ctrl-C — quit

Examples

# Top-down map of the whole system
solar-ascii --top-down

# A faster, tighter view of the inner planets
solar-ascii --speed 5 --zoom 1.5 --size 100x30

# Monochrome output
solar-ascii --no-color

License

MIT