Show HN: I rebuilt my old canvas 3D library as a small WebGL 2 library – phoria2

91 points by kevs3d 2 days ago on hackernews | 17 comments

Really, very nice, some good aesthetic taste here, woooowy!

Ok, the bricks demo is laugh out loud fun, thanks!

This is super cool, and I loved seeing the FPS stay locked at 120 on my phone. I didn't see this on the website, but do you have any docs that detail how your library compares to other popular options such as Three, Babylon, etc? Definitely giving this a try today.

One thing I noticed is that the "hover" functionality in most of the demos doesn't behave well on mobile. Taps don't stay active for long after interacting with something. Not sure if this is intentional or just a browser compatibility quirk (Fennec on Android 17). Happy to make a contribution if it should be a little more persistent!

Arkada | 17 hours ago

Wasn't expecting `chart({ mark: ... })` primitives in a 3D WebGL 2 library that cover timeseries, heat-colored hour/day surface charts, and tiled dashboards off the bat—that’s quite a pleasant surprise!

There were two things in particular about the landing page that caught my eye: 1. Views that only render when there’s something to update (this is especially important for financial/trading dashboards when there are 8+ chart views open all day long and no way to afford 60fps render loop chewing up the GPU without any data). 2. Errors in option validation designed specifically to inform coding bots what to do.

Now, as far as `TIMESERIES` and `SURFACE` chart types go, how effective is `tween` when it comes to updating geometry buffer in live stream mode (e.g. adding new candle/bucket in real time)?

jdw64 | 17 hours ago

Wow, the demo is really great. It’s impressive that even these demos run fast enough on my phone.

thrance | 15 hours ago

That's very nice, but... why WebGL2 instead of WebGPU?

Lerc | 14 hours ago

Having tried WebGPU recently, it still isn't at a point where it can be relied upon on all platforms.

Notably I have to use Chrome on Linux because Firefox doesn't provide it out of the box. It still crashes a fair bit on Chrome.

vconnor | 3 hours ago

WebGPU still isn’t supported on Linux (Brave or Firefox, in my tests)

WebGL2 runs on toasters.

Why do you need WebGPU when WebGL2 is enough?

: fullstackwife | 2 hours ago
There is probably no *need*. WebGPU gives in a nut shell a few additional ways to shave off CPU time.

pmkary | 15 hours ago

This is insanely performant, wow!

mg794613 | 12 hours ago

Wow, that is amazing, these demo's are exactly the same demo's Claude keeps buildings for me for any 3d engine I try with it.

Even most comments in the code look exactly like my Claude output!

I guess they've must have trained on your codebase or something!

socalgal2 | 10 hours ago

I haven’t used a 3d library this year. Claude will write exactly what the project needs. No need for a library, less bloat, more opportunities to optimize

: socalgal2 | 5 hours ago
Funny to see this downvoted with zero counter evidence
Shopify recently posted how they are getting rid of libraries if you need a name associated with the fact that they are no longer needed. Ask an Ai to make a nanite type engine and 1-2 hours later you’ll have it. Ask for some some other tech and it will do that instead. Ask it to optimize and it will test and find solutions

realitylabs | 12 hours ago

Yup, this is rad.

vivzkestrel | 7 hours ago

- so that is what 3d is eh?

- we got our coordinates x and y increasing towards the right on the screen and bottom respectively

- but we imagine 3d items as having a 0,0,0 at the center of the screen where x increases towards right, y increases towards top and z increases if you smashed your head inside the screen

- z is 0 at your eyes? and negative behind your head?

- then you apply a transform for this stated effect

- and you wanna calculate the projection of this fictional 3d object on 2d in your screen?

rishulmatta | 4 hours ago

It is cool! I have often thought how such visuals can be used in language learning. But nothing clicks. For sure there are immersive ways to teach language with such rich visuals?

truekonrads | 3 hours ago

Slick