The Star Map, 2023-12-27
Advertised, now delivered. An interactive Elite style star map with octodecillion stars.So actually quite a bit bigger than was promised. Bonus thoughs included.
In this lightly technical paper, an algorithm is introduced to create procedurally generated Elite syle star maps with quadrillions of stars or more. As a bonus, a mega-maze is also presented.
No Mans Sky was a flop, but maybe not for the reason you think. The core reasons is that procedural generation does not create content for you. You have to.
Critics called it an okay game that deviated from the genre. It is not okay. This in depth analysis shows it is broken on every conceivable level.

Celestia picture of the hour

This picture was created with Celestia virtual planetarium. Click to see in full. A new image is generated every hour, the object, the time and the direction is randomly chosen. It is not that simple, but that's the gist of it.