I’ve posted a web demo.
http://hexara.com/Starfield/
Links is also at the top of this thread, and runnable jar with source code link, too.
Thanks for sharing, looks awesome! 
Would you mind making the main post a little bit nicer? just for future reference and quick find for download link and the web demo
Are the ‘nebula’ generated too?
Endolf
It’s ‘nebulae’ (plural)
Whatever, the question still stands
[quote]Are the ‘nebulae’ generated too?
[/quote]
Yes. The object is called GalacticCloud. At this point, the api is just a rectangular size, and the object returns a BufferedImage generated with a bit of Simplex noise and a utility I wrote to blend the edges to alpha = 0 (fully transparent). I then use another utility I just wrote to rotate the image slightly. All this code is in the jar, and folks are free to use it.
If anyone does, I’d be pleased to get a link to post so as to brag on my blog (in the works still) about writing code that is actually useful.
I probably won’t use the src, but I will use the inspiration! Looks amazing, and I am definitely going to put something like that in my game.
[quote=""]
NASA? Not familiar with that algorithm, although it does spark my Curiosity…
Lame joke aside, when playing Freelancer, I always noticed how the skyboxes (starboxes) were carefully designed to reflect your position in the game’s starmap (So if you took the jumpgate towards a distant green nebula, you’d end up finding said nebula). So when thinking about making a similar space exploration game, actually having a procedurally generated background based on the player’s position is something I find very attractive and have mused about quite a bit.
So yeah, can’t get enough of procedural sky generation ;D
@Oskuro – For 3D, I’d give each star a Z coordinate to go with the X & Y, and instead of having two shapes for the twinkling, there would be a larger series of shapes for a given star, one of which would be selected based on distance.
I haven’t taken the time to play around with 3D very much yet. But it seems quite doable, albeit with a lot of trig calculations. (I’m assuming there are known 3D techniques for optimizing that sort of thing which I have yet to learn.)
@OpenGLShaders – Thank you. I look forward to seeing your game!