Show HN: Hypercamera – a browser-based 4D camera simulator

https://dugas.ch/4d_creatures/4d_camera.html

by chronolitus • 8 months ago

19 4 8 months ago

I am confuded what is 4d about this 3d visualization? What is the camera capturing?

nerdsniper• 8 months ago

The camera is capturing a 3D projection of a 4D universe. Just as our own cameras capture a 2D projection of a 3D universe.

It's confusing not just because hyperdimensions are inherently confusing to humans, but also because the resulting 3D projection is then reduced to a 2D projection by our computer screens. Just know that the representation is of a 3D projection that you can explore in the same way as any other 3D world inside of a computer game - until you rotate in the ana/kata axes, which will change the 3D universe.

It gets a bit easier to play the game if you hit "v" to enable additional orthogonal projections.

gpm• 8 months ago

Hmm, I wonder if also having a normal 3d camera that projects to 1d view (i.e. a line) would be a useful teaching aid for this... or if it would just be equally confusing in different ways.

beaumayns• 8 months ago

Very cool! I made a similar thing[1], but I didn't put as much attention on the controls or the camera concept. I had hoped to gain some intuitive understanding of 4D space, but in the end I did not succeed.

How did you do collision detection and physics here?

1. https://beaumayns.github.io/box4d/

Show HN: Hypercamera – a browser-based 4D camera simulator

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