GoKawiilI updated my Galactic Compass app for iPhone with augmented reality mode.
Background:
Galactic Compass is a floating green arrow that always points the way to the middle of the Milky Way, 26,000 light years away.
Here’s the announcement blog post from 2024.
It went kinda viral at the time. It was in the “top free apps” charts at the App Store briefly. In the Travel category. (I keep a list of press mentions over on Acts Not Facts.)
Why so popular? Probably because it was early “vibe coding” – I copy-and-pasted between ChatGPT and Xcode to code it, and that was new at the time.
But ALSO because knowing where the galactic centre is surprisingly grounding? I wake up every few months to an email in my inbox from someone who is having a tough time in life, or is losing a loved one, or similar, and somehow they have discovered Galactic Compass and they tell me how they sit outside at night with a cigarette and gaze at the arrow and it gives them a place of comfort and infinity.
I know what they mean. The Earth spins; it turns around the Sun; and so, at first, the supermassive black hole of the galaxy appears to slowly whirl around us, above and under the horizon, round and round. But then your perspective flips, and we are the ones moving, and the centre of the galaxy becomes a fixed point, our rock.
Anyway Galactic Compass 2 has two new features:
Augmented reality mode. You can place the arrow in the world around you and walk around it. Apple Watch app. See the compass arrow on your wrist (tap to use alignment mode which gives you a haptic bump when the arrow is pointing straight ahead).
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