For those that can't get it to load (it takes a minute, and I noticed my desktop's fan kick it up a notch while things were getting initialized, so... YMMV): this is a portfolio site done via a cozy-gaming-style AWSD game where you drive around in a jeep-like thingamabob. There are some cute easter eggs, including a sort of... shrine to each of the socials, which you can run into with your car and knock over (though the links remain clickable, of course!). It also looks like there's some degree of global state; for example, you can "sacrifice yourself to the gods of chaos" (ie drive into a portal) and a counter on the side of the portal goes up, presumably for everyone (since I certainly didn't drive into it 1700 times myself!). There's a strongly consistent art style, and just generally... seems pretty polished. Or at least, that's what it felt like after 5 minutes of driving around.
All in all I'd say, I'm impressed, and enjoyed it. Though I think the HN title ("handsdown one of the coolest 3D websites") is maybe a bit much. It's an extremely-well-executed portfolio site; no more, no less.
I am irked that on desktop it does not work in Firefox, but only in Chrome (and presumably other Chromium based browsers).
I'm not a big fan of Chrome, for a variety of reasons, but principally because I don't trust it and can no longer use a good ad blocker, so I never really enjoy having to fire it up.
This got me thinking: Rewind 25 years, I can easily imagine 15 year-old me sinking DOZENS of hours into playing this "game". I remember I put much more time than that into a free game that came in a box of cereal[0].
Today, I loaded the site up and spend about 30 seconds on it before deciding "this is cool!" and moving on, probably never to return.
What changed? I guess it's a mix of: (A) How I value my time. (B) The bar for "what pulls me in" in terms of gaming. (C) Some other factor around me just having already burned enough hours on games.
I'm not really sure how much each factor contributes.
Opportunity cost and perspective. We've probably played enough games to know how the cycle goes; there's a little voice in our heads now telling us that it's all just a big pixel hunt and the next few hours will be more of the same (my interest in a game fades once I learn the meta). And then there's so many games these days... so the other question is why not play something more interesting or exciting?
I think it's in large part just having to do with us developing our frontal cortex and like impulse control. I would have probably gotten dopamine addicted to it 15 years ago, as well as wouldn't have some nagging back-of-mind thoughts about having to use my time to be converted into money to survive at that age.
I miss the days when I'd click every link and follow every rabbit hole. 100% completionism of collection games. It's shaped how my life has turned out, for better and worse.
Bruno’s Threejs course is great. I’m about 2/3 the way through it, taking my time. Well organized and extremely well documented. Highly recommend, if a recommendation from a threejs novice is worth much.
Very neat! I and completely respect the skill. I respect the effort even more!
That said, it's not 'hands down, one of the coolest 3D websites', at least that I've seen. It's all "technical", very little "design". For example, why is it 'isometric overhead'? There's no particular benefit in the view, and it's specifically harder to control than it would be with a 'chase'/'third-person' camera. It's not like this is an RTS or a city-builder-ish thing, where having an overhead layout works to your benefit. Rather, it's just easier to program a camera that never changes angles and input controls that never have to re-interpret camera position/rotation (lookat vector) to function correctly. And there's a kind of symmetry between a flat page and the "ground" that the truck drives on, so some parts of the web forms have been ported over to that.
Again, none of that is bad and especially none of it is wrong. It's very cool that it works and works so well (technical)! It's just that the design feels more "portfolio" than it does "best ux for interacting with the environment I've created and the paradigms I've invoked (vehicle control)".
That's design exactly. There's no technical obstacle to making it over-the-shoulder instead, but it changes the aesthetic. The animations focus on what the jeep does to things, so a racing view that helps you avoid running into things wouldn't be appropriate. It also changes how you see the assets. And you'd lose that 'RC Pro-Am' feel.
> Rather, it's just easier to program a camera that never changes angles and input controls that never have to re-interpret camera position/rotation (lookat vector) to function correctly.
Not really, you just put the camera on a spring arm attached to the vehicle. Vehicle movement isn't harder either. You get this stuff practically for free with any game engine.
I can't see Bruno's site and I assume it's because of the HN hug of death, but an impressive 3D website that always comes to mind is acko.net, with its 3D rendered tubular logo. He even describes how it was done in a blog post.
I agree with you, it's not that it isn't impressive, but it functions poorly as a website. Innovation in design I'd expect from the HN title is something where the 3D enhances the user experience of the website itself, navigation interfaces feel natural, and so on.
This is a very well made little game that also showcases some of their work. I was hoping for something like, now I wish all websites were like this.
I wish more of the web was like this. I miss the wild creativity of websites way back in the day. The web has mostly homogenized around what web UI should be. I love seeing weird experimental stuff made just for fun.
This is amazing; now when is building this kind of thing going to become more accessible so we can start seeing a lot more of it? Webassembly has been around for years now but we still don't really see many companies compiling games or game-lite experiences to WASM. The tooling doesn't seem to be there which is the necessary prerequisite that could make building experiences like this actually feasible for most devs. Is that coming, ever?
I love all the work that Bruno puts out there. His design and engineering skills are next level.
There are so many talented creatives using WebGL/WebGPU that I've recently launched WebGL.com / WebGPU.com, where I'm dedicated to bring together the community of creatives (designers, coders, AI/ML, etc.) pushing the boundaries of the web.
Would love to see what you would like to see (e.g. tutorials, demos, etc.)
It's cool, but I actually find it pretty bad as a website. The UX for navigating and all that, it's bad. I was hoping for some innovation in UX which justifies the use of 3D in the website.
The unique UX of the site, driving around in a 3D car, is what makes this site go viral on occasion. If it were "good" UX, e.g. a standard portfolio site, no one would care and this guy wouldn't be as well known as he is. Therefore the UX is good.
This is very impressive as an art project, but terrible as an actual home page. It’s slow as molasses and difficult to navigate. Microsoft Bob failed for a reason.
Bruno Simon sells courses on how to make things with three.js. As a homepage it is an exceptionally good example of what you can do with 3D in a browser, and what buying his course will enable you to build. It's a great home page with that context. It would not work for many other people.
Okay, bruno-simon.com is probably the coolest portfolio I've ever seen. You get to DRIVE A LITTLE TRUCK around a 3D world to see his projects! It's fun, intuitive, and technically impressive. The attention to detail is insane. Don't visit if you have a deadline—you'll get stuck there! #webdev #threejs #creativecoding
I'm old enough to remember the SGI tractor-trailer demo wagon where they were demonstrating their latest, $20K+, wares that could do immersive 3D graphics that were... crude compared to this. This was sometime in the 1990s.
And by now my kids play fluidly immersive 3D games, on the web, on the kind of computers you can get for $10 off Facebook Marketplace.
I have a 4 yo, and I'm very reluctant to let him into the games world. But I've been thinking of buying a small Super Mario USB steering wheel and let him roam a very simple world like this. Anyone aware of something like this, maybe open source so that i can simplify to the simplest dynamics?
Amazing as always, Bruno is a wizard with ThreeJS.
There’s a surprising amount of stutter and lag on iOS, evident after the loading bar completes and the app freezes for 30 sec. Also during gameplay, quite a bit of stuttering. My guess is GPU texture uploads or shader compilations. Otherwise it was buttery smooth.
This is unbelievable. So whimsical and fun and different...I really appreciated the attention to detail and joy that clearly went into it. Got to spend some time playing the racing game with my son and we can't figure out how people got 20 seconds...is there a speed boost?
It looks really nice, but CPU usage is almost 100% all the time. I have a MacBook Pro M3. When I open some fancy Three.js scenes that I found on the net, I instantly profile them. Most of them are really bad in terms of performance. I don't know why.
This is usually because they are rendered in an animation loop (most three.js examples are set up like this). An example of rendering on demand only (this is even using fancy bloom post-processing): https://cybernetic.dev/helix/about
Takes a min to load even when it shows the circle complete. But a 1-2xrefreshes load it and yes, it is pretty sick. Wish you could zoom out more though. Nice work to Bruno!
HN hug of death? I couldn't get it to load (beyond the grid/circle background) on Safari/Mac, but eventually it loaded in Chrome. Seems to just be a game - use AWSD keys. Not sure why this is "coolest 3D website" in this day and age.
It loads, I can navigate (drag), and click the white diamonds.
There are things like the RC truck and bowling ball that are not interactive and look like they should be, so I suspect it's a bug?
EDIT: OK it's a learning curve. With mouse/keyboard, you can click the hamburger icon in the top right, and get to an explanation of controls. I am able to use WADS to drive the truck and push the bowling ball (with the truck.)
The course is great. I am a fan. This, not so much.
One of the unsung problems of any technology is understanding what you can do with it that you could not do before. Lets say you are a prehistoric person and somehow you find a modern steel axe. What do you do with it? Ultimately, it is not the axe that is important, it is the metallurgy.
Lets say you are a modern person and you found bitcoin. What do you do with it? Again, my thought is not the bitcoin, it is the cryptographic technology.
Lets say you are a modern person and you find threejs. What do you do with it? My personal reaction is that there is so much more that can be done with threejs, react-three-fiber, react-three drei, shaders, shadertoys, than this.
For me the definition of "cool" is things that change how you see the world. Where you never look at things the same way. A little example for me was this:
How he created a world around his CV may not be groundbreaking, but very creative and done exceptionally well. I caught myself driving around for a couple minutes. Accepting cookies bakes a cookie, you get hidden easter eggs when you complete certain actions (like lift driving in water). Just like with any creative endeavor (movies, music, dance) doing something no one has ever seen isn't always the goal (striving for that can often feel forced/cringe); creating an emotion in someone is art - and this did that for me.
Holy shit, this is really cool. i felt like i was in a movie. the car blows up and is ready to go right away; the car drives in the water (faster if you hold down the space bar). music is nice; and the 3d rendering is also pretty smooth. love it.
This is a cool website but it's hardly groundbreaking. There have been hundreds (thousands?) of three.js/babylon.js in-browser demos over the past decade and this would qualify as top 10% area, but there's nothing here that hasn't been done before. It's fun, it's high quality, but it's not new, and as far as conveying useful information, it's actually quite cumbersome with high effort for low signal. And while it's polished, it doesn't come close to even the most basic indie 3d game.
nbadg|2 months ago
All in all I'd say, I'm impressed, and enjoyed it. Though I think the HN title ("handsdown one of the coolest 3D websites") is maybe a bit much. It's an extremely-well-executed portfolio site; no more, no less.
ragazzina|2 months ago
How many cooler 3D websites do you know? I personally know less than 10, and only https://messenger.abeto.co/ off the top of my head.
PaulHoule|2 months ago
bartread|2 months ago
I am irked that on desktop it does not work in Firefox, but only in Chrome (and presumably other Chromium based browsers).
I'm not a big fan of Chrome, for a variety of reasons, but principally because I don't trust it and can no longer use a good ad blocker, so I never really enjoy having to fire it up.
teekert|2 months ago
BugsJustFindMe|2 months ago
01HNNWZ0MV43FF|2 months ago
miohtama|2 months ago
andrenotgiant|2 months ago
Today, I loaded the site up and spend about 30 seconds on it before deciding "this is cool!" and moving on, probably never to return.
What changed? I guess it's a mix of: (A) How I value my time. (B) The bar for "what pulls me in" in terms of gaming. (C) Some other factor around me just having already burned enough hours on games.
I'm not really sure how much each factor contributes.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chex_Quest
zdc1|2 months ago
CamperBob2|2 months ago
If this is the sort of thing you like (or in your case, used to like), you will like The Messenger too, probably more.
Twisol|2 months ago
Personally, I feel too guilty about everything else I'm not doing. (This results in me feeling maximal guilt and doing minimal anything at all.)
tobinfekkes|2 months ago
I was roaming around RE-PC in Seattle eons ago, and found an old CD of the game for $1. Snatched that sucker right up.
komali2|2 months ago
If I wanted to play a game like this I'd play Lonely Mountain: Downhill, which has waaay more content.
61j3t|2 months ago
qoez|2 months ago
nurettin|2 months ago
BeFlatXIII|2 months ago
cr125rider|2 months ago
bobsmooth|2 months ago
allannienhuis|2 months ago
beezlewax|2 months ago
His website had the same car based premise back then but with less frills.
catapart|2 months ago
That said, it's not 'hands down, one of the coolest 3D websites', at least that I've seen. It's all "technical", very little "design". For example, why is it 'isometric overhead'? There's no particular benefit in the view, and it's specifically harder to control than it would be with a 'chase'/'third-person' camera. It's not like this is an RTS or a city-builder-ish thing, where having an overhead layout works to your benefit. Rather, it's just easier to program a camera that never changes angles and input controls that never have to re-interpret camera position/rotation (lookat vector) to function correctly. And there's a kind of symmetry between a flat page and the "ground" that the truck drives on, so some parts of the web forms have been ported over to that.
Again, none of that is bad and especially none of it is wrong. It's very cool that it works and works so well (technical)! It's just that the design feels more "portfolio" than it does "best ux for interacting with the environment I've created and the paradigms I've invoked (vehicle control)".
Cpoll|2 months ago
That's design exactly. There's no technical obstacle to making it over-the-shoulder instead, but it changes the aesthetic. The animations focus on what the jeep does to things, so a racing view that helps you avoid running into things wouldn't be appropriate. It also changes how you see the assets. And you'd lose that 'RC Pro-Am' feel.
> Rather, it's just easier to program a camera that never changes angles and input controls that never have to re-interpret camera position/rotation (lookat vector) to function correctly.
Not really, you just put the camera on a spring arm attached to the vehicle. Vehicle movement isn't harder either. You get this stuff practically for free with any game engine.
robofanatic|2 months ago
Would love to see those websites.
Cadwhisker|2 months ago
https://acko.net/blog/zero-to-sixty-in-one-second/
didibus|2 months ago
This is a very well made little game that also showcases some of their work. I was hoping for something like, now I wish all websites were like this.
ChrisArchitect|2 months ago
Some behind the scenes from the Bruno himself:
https://medium.com/@bruno_simon/bruno-simon-portfolio-case-s...
non-|2 months ago
mrinterweb|2 months ago
tgdn|2 months ago
dmd|2 months ago
Shaanveer|2 months ago
jofla_net|2 months ago
Karawebnetwork|2 months ago
stronglikedan|2 months ago
tempestn|2 months ago
werdnapk|2 months ago
Wistar|2 months ago
RyanOD|2 months ago
flanbiscuit|2 months ago
samtp|2 months ago
esseph|2 months ago
nikkwong|2 months ago
beezlewax|2 months ago
FarhadG|2 months ago
I love all the work that Bruno puts out there. His design and engineering skills are next level.
There are so many talented creatives using WebGL/WebGPU that I've recently launched WebGL.com / WebGPU.com, where I'm dedicated to bring together the community of creatives (designers, coders, AI/ML, etc.) pushing the boundaries of the web.
Would love to see what you would like to see (e.g. tutorials, demos, etc.)
moribvndvs|2 months ago
kdmoyers|2 months ago
GreeningRun|2 months ago
jauntywundrkind|2 months ago
Alas, the state of WebComponents for 3d / spatial is so so. A-frame is still CJS only & won't work with my unbundled setup because of that, but that's sort of on me. Lume.io wraps three.js too and looks tempting, has a neat signals & cool behavioral classes. https://aframe.io/examples/ https://github.com/aframevr/aframe/issues/4242 https://lume.io/
tomhow|2 months ago
Bruno Simon – 3D Curriculum - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21362200 - Oct 2019 (42 comments)
didibus|2 months ago
65|2 months ago
nomoreipg|2 months ago
dtf|2 months ago
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uc3Ujdh8Ba4
gldrk|2 months ago
onion2k|2 months ago
chenglemon|2 months ago
MarkusWandel|2 months ago
And by now my kids play fluidly immersive 3D games, on the web, on the kind of computers you can get for $10 off Facebook Marketplace.
mrlinx|2 months ago
brentm|2 months ago
mattdesl|2 months ago
There’s a surprising amount of stutter and lag on iOS, evident after the loading bar completes and the app freezes for 30 sec. Also during gameplay, quite a bit of stuttering. My guess is GPU texture uploads or shader compilations. Otherwise it was buttery smooth.
iambateman|2 months ago
Anyway, super fun.
devin|2 months ago
ertucetin|2 months ago
division_by_0|2 months ago
freehorse|2 months ago
Really cool website, no doubt about it. But it consumes as many or more resources than games like cyberpunk or baldur's gate 3 on my macbook.
nkrisc|2 months ago
j16sdiz|2 months ago
javawizard|2 months ago
Now who was there with me running it up at the same time :)
sshadmand|2 months ago
wbobeirne|2 months ago
meep888|2 months ago
brentm|2 months ago
sillyboi|2 months ago
nokun7|2 months ago
esseph|2 months ago
The Unbeatable Car in the first game was kinda frustrating!
shmerl|2 months ago
hexo|2 months ago
indigoabstract|2 months ago
sech8420|2 months ago
11/10 creativity.
retube|2 months ago
ProllyInfamous|2 months ago
8GB M3 MacBookAir runs it smoothly, with only a few seconds of loading.
bdcravens|2 months ago
gerdesj|2 months ago
ge96|2 months ago
ing-norante|2 months ago
cantalopes|2 months ago
jzer0cool|2 months ago
wbobeirne|2 months ago
shnjd|2 months ago
ge96|2 months ago
let's see ATS parse this
the collision physics on individual items like chairs is pretty cool
damn map has no boundary ha, weather system? damn
yesitcan|2 months ago
s1mon|2 months ago
Elizer0x0309|2 months ago
FpUser|2 months ago
yakkomajuri|2 months ago
binary132|2 months ago
runsonrum|2 months ago
nness|2 months ago
amelius|2 months ago
neogodless|2 months ago
It loads, I can navigate (drag), and click the white diamonds.
There are things like the RC truck and bowling ball that are not interactive and look like they should be, so I suspect it's a bug?
EDIT: OK it's a learning curve. With mouse/keyboard, you can click the hamburger icon in the top right, and get to an explanation of controls. I am able to use WADS to drive the truck and push the bowling ball (with the truck.)
werdnapk|2 months ago
SilentM68|2 months ago
unknown|2 months ago
[deleted]
talkingtab|2 months ago
One of the unsung problems of any technology is understanding what you can do with it that you could not do before. Lets say you are a prehistoric person and somehow you find a modern steel axe. What do you do with it? Ultimately, it is not the axe that is important, it is the metallurgy.
Lets say you are a modern person and you found bitcoin. What do you do with it? Again, my thought is not the bitcoin, it is the cryptographic technology.
Lets say you are a modern person and you find threejs. What do you do with it? My personal reaction is that there is so much more that can be done with threejs, react-three-fiber, react-three drei, shaders, shadertoys, than this.
For me the definition of "cool" is things that change how you see the world. Where you never look at things the same way. A little example for me was this:
https://codepen.io/prisoner849/full/wBGQYvy
sshadmand|2 months ago
noobcoder|2 months ago
include|2 months ago
dwa3592|2 months ago
esseph|2 months ago
B or CTL is brake
H is horn
stefanka|2 months ago
FlamingMoe|2 months ago
tiborsaas|2 months ago
esseph|2 months ago
PaulHoule|2 months ago
unknown|2 months ago
[deleted]
tonetheman|2 months ago
[deleted]
gregoriol|2 months ago
vegabook|2 months ago
gtirloni|2 months ago
Could you share these other in-browser demos that are as amazing as this one?
AstroBen|2 months ago