I’m building a python/flask web application to serve space situational awareness information generated within Orekit/python. I was curious if any of you have suggestions on what the best library would be to use for 3d orbit visualization? I have looked at CesiumJS and also WebGL Earth (based on cesium) so far, but CesiumJS is very much pushing the (not free) use of their Cesium Ion service now which is unattractive.
I realize this question isn’t exactly about Orekit, but was hoping someone else on the forum may have tried to share Orekit data in a web browser before and might have some insight.
I may have found enough information to answer my own question, but in case this is useful to others I wanted to share. Stuff-in-Space is an amazing visualization of all known objects currently on orbit, and was developed using the WebGL Earth library. So it looks like that’s the way to go.
Yes this is an interesting area, I have used CesiumJS for some things, and there nowadays an updated notebook widget as part of the CZML3 package (https://github.com/poliastro/czml3)
Another library that may be worth looking at is the Web World Wind library, largely by NASA with contributions from ESA.
Hi snr, since I posted this 4 years ago much has happened … I did end up using CesiumJS in combination with the python czml3 library. That combination works well together and both packages have come a long way in terms of feature support and online resources (links below).
I’ve looked at using Cesium for some of my own visualization work - would you be willing to share some very simple code that demonstrates how you’re tying the Cesium into Orekit?