If you’ve checked out our documentation lately, you’ll notice things look a bit different. We’ve just finished a major overhaul of how we build and host our docs. While we’ve had a version switcher for a while, the “engine” under the hood was getting a bit clunky, and some of the Sphinx extensions we used were unmaintained.
We moved away from the Read The Docs theme and sphinx-multiversion in favor of a custom, decoupled build system using the PyData Sphinx theme. Previously, we had to re-generate the documentation for every single version of Gaia Sky every time we made a change to the master branch. As you can imagine, that didn’t scale well.
Running VR on Linux is notoriously “experimental,” especially when mixing NVIDIA hardware with Wayland-native compositors like Hyprland. However, using the Valve Index via the open-source Monado runtime is now fully viable for Gaia Sky.
Based on our recent testing, here is how to achieve a stable, high-performance, and color-accurate VR experience.
For years, Gaia Sky’s UI themes have been completely static: each theme required its own set of pre-rendered source images. Want a different color scheme? You’d need an entirely new theme with separately generated assets.
Not anymore.
For the next release, we’ve implemented a new theming system by creating a single base theme with purple motifs and applying runtime color transformation through shaders. The new system converts purple elements to any accent color you choose, all happening in real-time on the GPU. The old “Theme” property in the preferences window has been replaced with an “Accent color” color picker, as demonstrated in the video below.
After several months of downtime, we are excited and relieved to announce that the Gaia Sky server is officially back online and accessible to the public!
A few months ago, the University computing center, the URZ, decided to implement a series of precautionary security measures aimed at protecting the university IT network from a cyberattack. One of these measures was to put most IT services behind a VPN network, which rendered our server inaccessible for most users.
In light of the current server downtime, we are creating this post describing how to get Gaia Sky up and running with the base data package.
Gaia Sky installer – first, you will need to download the installer for Gaia Sky version 3.7.0. Since our server is currently inaccessible, we have made this version available for download at the following link:
Please choose the appropriate installer for your operating system and follow the installation steps as usual.
Base data package – once Gaia Sky is installed, you need the base data package, which includes the Solar System, the Milky Way, and other essential objects. Download it (either in zip or tar.gz) from the following link:
After downloading, extract the package to any location on your computer.
Move the dataset to Gaia Sky’s data directory – next, go into the extracted directory, and in it you should find the default-data directory. Copy it into the Gaia Sky data directory. Where is the Gaia Sky data directory, you ask? Here’s its location depending on your operating system:
Windows: C:\Users\%username%\.gaiasky\data
Linux: ~/.local/share/gaiasky/data
macOS: ~/.gaiasky/data
Ensure that the default-data directory is placed directly within the data folder. This will allow Gaia Sky to load the necessary resources correctly.
Compatibility with older datasets – for older versions of Gaia Sky, most of the datasets for stars, galaxies, nebulae, clusters, and other celestial objects should still work. While the current server downtime means new datasets cannot be fetched, you can continue using previously downloaded datasets from older versions without issues.
It’s been a month now, and unfortunately, our main download server is still offline. We know this is quite frustrating for users, as it is for us too.
For those just catching up: our server, which holds all the Gaia Sky installers, data packs, and docs, is hosted behind a Heidelberg University domain. About a month ago, the university’s IT center detected a widespread security incident and took major preventative action, which included taking our server (and many others) offline.
We regret to inform our users that our server, hosting Gaia Sky packages, datasets, and documentation, is currently inaccessible from external networks. This is due to precautionary measures taken by the University Computing Center (URZ) at the University of Heidelberg.
For more details on these measures, please refer to the official announcement from the URZ: Precautionary Measures by URZ.
We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause and will keep you updated as the situation evolves.
This post introduces an experimental galaxy generation system currently in development, which generates and visualizes galaxies in real time. By leveraging multiple channels, such as stars, gas, dust, H II regions, and the galactic bulge, the system generates diverse galaxy types, each with distinct structural features.
Below is a preview of this system’s capabilities, showcasing the generated galaxies through a series of images. This is an early look at the technology and a demonstration of how we’re using the power of GPU-based compute shaders to create somewhat realistic galaxies very rapidly. Keep in mind that this is still a work in progress, with many improvements and additional features planned before release.
