13 ms·
Show HN: Browse Reddit in 3D
- masterspy7 7y agoHow to use it Desktop: Click to start, WASD and mouse to move Mobile: Dragging on left half of screen is move, right have is look Append any subreddit to the url to switch subreddits Tech stack - Babylon.js for the 3d rendering engine - Google Cloud Function which queries Reddit Api and then transforms the data depending on the data type - For images: Transform and serve through https://images.weserv.nl https://images.weserv.nl - For videos (try /r/gifs, experimental) gets a url which can be played through a <video> tag, which is later copied frame by frame to a texture - For websites, use puppeteer to take a screenshot - For multiplayer (you can see other people in the same subreddit as you) https://colyseus.io/ https://colyseus.io/ and App Engine Flexible - For chat, Firestore Also, apologies for only having one avatar option! I wanted to add different genders, characters etc but didn't have time for the MVP! Discord for more discussion: https://discord.gg/nrxQnT https://discord.gg/nrxQnT
- subir 7y agoI love it! Thanks for sharing under-the-hood stuff!
- 0xDEFC0DE 7y agoDo you filter NSFW stuff by default?
- masterspy7 7y agoRight now it just loads whatever the subreddit returns. I'm working on adding an option for that. If you want to browse a SFW one you can just pick a subreddit you know is SFW: https://3dforreddit.com/r/aww https://3dforreddit.com/r/aww
- mruts 7y agoWhy would you want that?
- ghostbrainalpha 7y agoI clicked on the link at work and had an embarrassing moment as sexy Game of Thrones cosplay popped up for my boss.
- noknownsender 7y agoI dig the museum layout style. It really popped on r/gonewild
- bartread 7y agoUh, yeah, so, for anyone who didn't realise: r/gonewild is very much NSFW. I have just been educated on this point myself.
- danielbln 7y agoDo you support VR in any way? Can I use this in my Oculus Quest browser?
- alltalk10000 7y agoSecond that!
- TuringTest 7y agoFirefox Reality works on Oculus Quest, it's worth a try. https://www.oculus.com/experiences/quest/2180252408763702/?local=en_US https://www.oculus.com/experiences/quest/2180252408763702/?l...
- masterspy7 7y agoI just added WebVR support! You can enable it by clicking on the headset icon in the bottom right
- diimdeep 7y agoPlease share your thought process, how you get idea to build something like this?
- ljf 7y agoSame question here - a long time ago when I first became a PO it was because I told my boss about an idea I'd had where our users could walk around our site - a little like this (this was a site aimed at kids). But this was 15 years ago and likely wouldn't have been half as cool! They asked me to rebuild the site anyway - though I was far far more traditional in my delivery in the end.
- 481092 7y agoHis implementation may be new but the idea of interfacing with content in a 3D manner isn't. I remember trying out a 3D desktop program around 2003 and if I recall correctly, it came with a game demo disc.
- orangse 7y agoNot trying to flame the guy since he obviously put in a lot of work on his own, but the original idea is from a lainchan thread [1] for the 3d anonymous imageboard 3dchan [2]. I'm only assuming they're not the same person since this project is not on the 3dchan owner's github [3]. Again, the two are quite clearly different, and parallel creativity does exist in the realm of possibility, but my personal guess is he used the same concept to build something similar. [1] https://lainchan.org/%CE%A9/res/17698.html https://lainchan.org/%CE%A9/res/17698.html [2] https://3dchan.net/dungeon/ https://3dchan.net/dungeon/ [3] https://github.com/AlexKrunch/AnonIB-3D https://github.com/AlexKrunch/AnonIB-3D
- georgewsinger 7y agoSee also JanusVR for an even older incarnation of this idea (https://janusvr.com/ https://janusvr.com/).
- taneq 7y ago
- deskamess 7y agoHow do you make it stop so you can move your mouse to other tabs/parts of the browser?
- omgmog 7y agoPress the Escape key on your keyboard to regain mouse control
- rgoulter 7y agoOn Desktop, Ctrl-l works for focussing on the "location" input, too.
- drusepth 7y agoI spent like a full minute trying to figure this out before remembering I could just physically touch those other parts/tabs of the browser.
- thefifthsetpin 7y agoIs there a way to invert (or even just disable) the y-axis?
- asciimo 7y agoI would love to invert the y-axis, too.
- pixelpoet 7y agoSame. I guess we're in some kind of weird minority...
- airstrike 7y agoPlayed more flying games than FPS ones growing up? ;-)
- tempestn 7y agoI played a fair bit of both, but inverted always just felt more natural to me. I swear early FPS games had it that way by default, but maybe I'm mis-remembering! Definitely hard for me to grok how people prefer the 'normal' way though.
- siddboots 7y agoJust spin your mouse around 180 degrees
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- deadbunny 7y agoCan't get it to work on Firefox on Android.
- godelski 7y agoWorks for me on FF 68.1 on Android. /r/gifs doesn't though
- drawkbox 7y agoWell done, adding in some nice lighting from three.js or glslsandbox.com style would awesome. Art Gallery: https://3dforreddit.com/r/art https://3dforreddit.com/r/art Earth Natural Art Gallery https://3dforreddit.com/r/EarthPorn https://3dforreddit.com/r/EarthPorn
- srcmap 7y agoThis is very nice? Can it be arrange as artworks on the wall in a long hallway? Or in a maze?
- samvher 7y agoPretty cool! My vision keeps shifting to the left though if I don't actively counter-rotate to the right. It makes it a bit hard to keep looking at the same object.
- masterspy7 7y agoUpdated discord link, first one expired: https://discord.gg/sZrw5hT https://discord.gg/sZrw5hT
- spatulagames 7y agoNice. D (right) doesn't seem to work for me though. Also - are the black plaques meant to show anything?
- masterspy7 7y agoSorry about that! I haven't tested across all browsers yet. It should look like this though: https://imgur.com/a/Lm1ipGm https://imgur.com/a/Lm1ipGm
- swtrs 7y agoPretty cool!
- mappum 7y agoAmazing, this is clearly a glimpse into a future of internet content being less like a document and more like a virtual world. Suggestion: the enter key should focus the chat box (like a FPS game) so you don't have to hit escape then click on it.
- DC-3 7y agoIf this is what internet content is going to be like in the future I'm not looking forward to the future.
- JustSomeNobody 7y agoYeah, looks like project looking glass for the desktop ca. forever ago. The future is here?
- 52-6F-62 7y agoThe dream of the [late] 90's is alive?
- Narishma 7y agoYou mean the future as imagined by someone from 1995?
- seiferteric 7y agoMaybe we can get a modern updated VRML spec going.
- ben_w 7y agoWe definitely should, although probably from a completely different perspective than ‘94: High end phones can capture in 3D, so we should be able to store and view 3D images properly. I’m starting with the idea of PNGs where the channels represent RGBZ instead of RGBA, but obviously we need more than 8 bits of depth information, and we are starting to get and care about high dynamic range for RGB data as well… would 16R:16G:16B:16Z work? There’s also the point that depth information will have sharp boundaries, and it will probably be much worse for RGB information to blur over such a boundary as compared with the equivalent parts of a flat JPEG.
- mrspeaker 7y agoI made a similar (single-player) version a bunch of years ago when Mozilla first released WebVR or whatever they called it back then! https://github.com/mrspeaker/InternetExplorer https://github.com/mrspeaker/InternetExplorer - The controls were weird (they were ok in VR): wsad + arrows, and "enter" loaded any linked subreddits. Surprisingly it seems like it still works (http://mrspeaker.github.io/InternetExplorer/ http://mrspeaker.github.io/InternetExplorer/ - though it seems that only certain image formats are loading now)
- kthejoker2 7y agoThanks, I hate it? Seriously, great job, supremely disorienting - it almost felt like the Internet again.
- kthejoker2 7y agoAlso, I could walk through the walls of the "museum", are there no clipping options?
- masterspy7 7y agoIt's definitely possible, I just didn't have time to implement clipping properly haha.
- King-Aaron 7y agoClipping first, then it just needs NPC trolls that follow you everywhere spewing the actual comments from each thing you're in close proximity too - then you'll have a pretty neat game
- SketchySeaBeast 7y agoI actually followed the "rules" of the walls myself, until my forward key got stuck and I started phasing through things. I never even thought to check the clipping.
- jzig 7y agoYep, still better than the New Reddit. Great job!
- debaserab2 7y agoIf I had to choose between using this or the new reddit UI I'd choose this
- pixelbath 7y agoStill links to the new Reddit design when visiting links from Reddit 3D, unfortunately.
- tbassetto 7y agoI was surprised how usable it was on my iPhone, great job!
- fredley 7y agoThis is glorious. It's a less good 'user experience' than browsing reddit itself, but it's also better in every way.
- krm01 7y agoThis is surprisingly fun.
- givinguflac 7y agoThis doesn't work at all for me in Safari tech preview on Mac, just has weird blue background and some white lines. Normal safari seems to load a visual, but I can't seem to do anything with it. TL;DR- I don't get it, but thanks for sharing.
- saagarjha 7y agoIt's hilariously broken on Safari Technology Preview, but I think that's because it's using WebGL calls that Safari doesn't support correctly yet.
- staticautomatic 7y agoHow about when you visit certain subreddits it turns into a game of Doom?
- p4bl0 7y agoSome subreddits work really well with this ambiance. E.g., https://3dforreddit.com/r/villageporn https://3dforreddit.com/r/villageporn :).
- tiborsaas 7y agoI remember VRML being a thing and me wanting it be something usable :) Thanks for making this. Feature request: I'd like to run holding shift
- opencl 7y agoaframe.io is sort of a modern and more usable take on the VRML idea. Somebody even added a VRML loader as a functioning April Fool's joke. https://github.com/ngokevin/aframe-vrml-component https://github.com/ngokevin/aframe-vrml-component
- masterspy7 7y agoShift to sprint is done!
- andrey-g 7y agoSo many possibilities!
- hombre_fatal 7y agoLove this. Was much better than I expected since you also showed other users, what they were looking at, and let us have personalities like looking at each other and nodding yes/no which kept cracking me up. A few people were at the Game of Thrones Cosplay submission (an image of two cute women in costumes) looking at each other and nodding. Some people formed a conga line. It's easy to imagine stopping this project when you have the basic rendering + WASD working, but the multiplayer aspect was simple and fun.
- desi_ninja 7y agothe multiplayer aspect was pretty neat. another way of engaging with people
- madc 7y agoIt should be called 3ddit.com
- SketchySeaBeast 7y agor3Ddit.com
- jgtrosh 7y agoI was thinking of r3ddit but 3ddit is good too.
- madc 7y agor3ddit is a nice one too, good catch!
- ozzmotik 7y agothis is an absolute gem to experience. my question: do you shard it off to different servers or some such thing? i only ask because trying to connect on both my mobile and my laptop, i can't seem to ever end up in the same apparent room as myself. but that's no but deal, just a minor curiosity.
- masterspy7 7y agoYes, I have multiple servers running and each room is limited to 12 players, so it's likely that each device is connecting to a different room.
- qqii 7y agoPretty neet! I recall an imageboard with a similar design.
- hans1729 7y agoThis is glorious, I just found a friend and we nodded at each other for a good while. Then I walked through the next best wall and lured others out, since they can still see the beam indicating the direction of my view. Thanks for this!
- surfsvammel 7y agoI want music similar to Doom to go with this!
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- not_a_cop75 7y agoDisappointed. This would work better as a first person shooter.
- yowlingcat 7y agoFantastic! Simple concept, but the effect is amazing. I felt like I was in a museum, except I was browsing reddit. This gives me a lot of really fun ideas regarding the future of the internet! I keep wondering where VR is going to go!
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- austinhutch 7y agoThis is insane! You could kind of see Epic ripping this off and browsing a Reddit museum with your Fortnite character. It reminds me of Playstation Home too.. but the fact it's so easy to jump in really alters how this could work.
- dpcan 7y agoI think I read a John Grisham book that had something like this in it.... they had to find and destroy a file or something, but this is exactly how I pictured it.
- DanBC 7y agoThere used to be 3d filebrowsers which were fun to use for about half an hour. http://nooface.net/3dui.shtml http://nooface.net/3dui.shtml https://web.archive.org/web/20111102002100/http://nooface.net/3dui.shtml https://web.archive.org/web/20111102002100/http://nooface.ne...
- grumpy8 7y agoreal nice; I love how we see other people.
- bovermyer 7y agoThis is amazing! It makes Reddit much more fun, especially with the other random people floating around.
- mrweasel 7y agoImpressive and terrible at the same time.
- enriquto 7y agogreat, but what the site needs is mostly a HN-esque text interface
- larrik 7y agoNeat, although Youtube thumbs are showing the prestitial ads instead, which is a little weird.
- twox2 7y agoIt's the UI from the film Hackers that we've all been waiting for.
- avaku 7y agoAs soon as I move the mouse, it makes me "look at the ceiling" and I can't get out of there :(
- eternalny1 7y agoThis is brilliant! Really make yourself feel at home: https://3dforreddit.com/r/art https://3dforreddit.com/r/art
- flas9sd 7y agor/Art and related subreddits really lend themselves to this. As the documenting of "related subreddits" is not standardized, reddit.com/dev/api has no way of listing them. Some write a /wiki/related page, most have it in the sidebar. Would make for an opportunity to add a webring-like "next" button.
- siddboots 7y agohttps://3dforreddit.com/r/museum https://3dforreddit.com/r/museum A favorite of mine that seems very well suited.
- airstrike 7y agoAmazing! I might just use this as my go-to reddit app moving forward... A couple suggestions: any chance movement could be a bit faster? I'd rather run through the museum if given the chance, just as I can scroll quickly through reddit. Maybe I'm just too used to playing CSGO and expect my character to move a bit faster I kinda wish it included some slight head bobbing to, but I guess that's a matter of preference.
- amazinzay 7y agoI like the casual nature of walking through a museum, but I agree with having a faster option. Possibly allow sprinting with shift key or as an alternative allowing double tapping of the wasd keys to run.
- tatami 7y agoI tried to jump... I can't be the only one who unnecesarily jumps around in every game unless it's penalized by some sort of stamina system.
- y4mi 7y agoAs if penalties would stop me. Stamina recovers, but a missed jump is a missed jump!
- masterspy7 7y agoJust added Shift to sprint, enjoy!
- Tiktaalik 7y agolmao this is pretty funny. It would be cool if it was a sort of infinite hallway that kept loading...
- gpickett00 7y agoGood work man. What technology stack did you build this with?
- stelonix 7y agoIt looks neat, but I can't use it because it keeps looking up as if I were moving my mouse (I'm not). Running it on Firefox 69 on Linux.
- NilsIRL 7y agoI seem to have the same problem. (Firefox 69 w/ sway)
- gao8a 7y agoGreat job! Thank you for creating this and sharing this. I can see people creating their own subreddit just for their own mini virtual exhibits.
- malpighien 7y agoWhere are the couches, what about more rooms?
- txsoftwaredev 7y agoNeeds to add the option to grab a gun and start shooting down ads.
- morty_s 7y agoThis is pretty cool/fun! Thanks!
- ksangeelee 7y agoThat is good fun. What's interesting is the amount of thought I'm willing to give something that's virtually hanging on a wall over an onscreen sentence in a list. On a different note, one of the images from a Bloomberg post was simply showing "We've detected unusual activity from your computer network" and the usual reCaptcha "I'm not a robot" box. Please join me in condemning such hostile behaviour of web sites. Of course it's 'unusual activity', it's unusually creative, and it's what the Internet used to be about.
- cproctor 7y agoHow do you jump?
- drusepth 7y agoWould you jump in a real museum?
- shafyy 7y agoNow do VR!
- enjoyyourlife 7y agoBrowsing https://3dforreddit.com/r/earthporn https://3dforreddit.com/r/earthporn in this really feels like going to an art gallery
- FoxPaw 7y agoClicked. Dumped into a 3d world where my avatar is staring close-up at a woman's crotch and underwear. Ping me when the internet is a less horrible place for women plz, thx.
- mabbo 7y agoI've been on the internet since 1994. I hate to tell you this but in 25 years it hasn't gotten any better- just louder. If you ask me, the root cause is simple: the internet is merely a reflection of our society. And we are awful, generally speaking.
- flagfeedingusa2 7y ago>And we are awful, generally speaking. Typical liberal nonsense. We are generally not awful, please speak for yourself. You may be a terrible person, and judging by the post I can safely see that is indeed true, but please don't project your shittyness onto everyone else around you.
- regnerba 7y agohttps://3dforreddit.com/r/aww https://3dforreddit.com/r/aww should be safe
- SketchySeaBeast 7y agoDamn, it doesn't seem to support gifs. Edit: No, it does, just not links to other areas of the site which contain gifs.
- flagfeedingusa2 7y agoWeird because I see women choosing to wear skimpy clothes literally everywhere I go. Yoga pants, short shorts, high skirts, etc. What evil man is forcing all these women to wear these skimpy clothes? Last I checked that woman you are whining about chose to wear those clothes, chose to be modeled in them, and allowed her likeness to be uploaded to the internet for other people to view her. Just because you immediately sexualize it doesn't mean others see the same thing. You are everything what's wrong in this world.
- dvno42 7y agoThis is rad! Is there an existing way to show adult content? Looks like the backend needs to click "I'm over 18" button.
- flyGuyOnTheSly 7y agoI am not seeing any pictures, using Firefox 60
- yagodragon 7y agoDespite being a 3d app, it doesn't make my laptop fans spinning fast like the current js-heavy Reddit web app. Kudos :)
- elipsey 7y agoLove it. I propose a 'fire' keybinding to downvote, like Doom process management.
- newsreview1 7y agoNo thanks. I prefer the old Reddit, and by old Reddit, I actually mean the OLD reddit. https://www.reddit.com/r/redesign/ https://www.reddit.com/r/redesign/
- drewg123 7y agoallows Apple Watch Series 5 to offer all-day 18-hour battery life How is 18 hours considered "all day"!?!? I retired my previous fitness watch (Polar M600) when its battery life got that bad, and moved to a Garmin 645M with almost a week of battery life. Being able to to travel on business without worrying about carrying (and loosing) the charger is very nice. The watch is "always on", does notifications, music, etc.
- jefe_ 7y agoWhen I was a kid and my Uncle described Amazon as a 'new virtual bookstore,' this is almost exactly what I pictured. Very cool.
- imgabe 7y agoTip: after a few minutes of wondering why it didn't work, make sure Caps Lock isn't on or it won't register WASD
- kodachi 7y agoCongrats on shipping it! It worked nicely on my first try. I think this might be the feature for visualizing data, when VR/AR become mainstream. Imagine this but with stylized graphics that respond to real-time data: you could see a popular post like some sort of concert with tons of people (the website visitors). Every comment made on the post can be also read from them in real time. It's a way I wanted to browse the web for a long time.
- btreecat 7y agoNeat stuff! Why is it always yawing to the left? Sometimes I can get it to stop but as soon as I move the mouse again it continues to spin.
- buboard 7y agoAwww . I miss VRML
- Jonahgay 7y agoHow about browse 4chan in 3D
- linux2647 7y agoNow do Hacker News ;)
- swiley 7y agoIt reminds me of the Dk “eye whiteness” tapes my parents played for us as kids (except with slightly less insightful content.) The multiplayer thing is awesome!!
- Impossible 7y agoRendering quality would be greatly improved by generating mipmaps for your rendered text [1]. It's unclear how you're rendering text in Babylon, but you might have to use a slightly different approach to improve quality. [1] https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/WebGLRenderingContext/generateMipmap https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/WebGLRender...
- flagfeedingusa4 7y agoSomeone in this thread was complaining this was somehow bad for women because when they spawned in they were looking at the crouch of a woman in cosplay. A simple question was then asked by me, "Clicked, saw someone wearing clothes consenting to a picture taken of them. What exactly makes this a horrible place for women?" This was completely removed. It's amazing the kind of censorship that takes place on this site. How exactly is this violating site guidelines, how is this mysoginstic? But of course the inflammatory parent comment is allowed to stay because it fulfills the narrative that women are victims. Nice censorship here ycombinator, way to show your true colors that you are just a spokesperson for the left.
- WolfPaw 7y agoClicked. Dumped into a 3d world where my avatar is staring close-up at a mans crotch and underwear. Ping me when the internet is a less horrible place for men plz, thx.
- pornel 7y agoDear devs, please `return false` from your keypress handlers (or preventDefault, stopPropagation, any of them!) Otherwise my browser doesn't know you do something important with them, and uses keyboard for its own navigation and shortcuts, which fucks up your page.
- nulldll 7y agoIs it just me or do all other avatars freeze in place after a few minutes? Loving this honestly, although I must say I saw another comment about visiting /r/gonewild. I must have been living under a rock because I did not know it was THAT kind of subreddit. Assumed it was hiking photographs.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- DEADBEEFC0FFEE 7y agoAdding simple emoji signalling for avatars would be hilarious.
- ngold 7y agoWell that is just neat. Took a little time to adjust to movement on mobile but super fun when you get the hang of it. Really smooth. Thank's for sharing.
- sramsay 7y agoMay I suggest . . . https://3dforreddit.com/r/shitHNSays https://3dforreddit.com/r/shitHNSays (I know, I know. But it is kind of funny to jump from HN to a museum of HN comments in 3D)
- airstrike 7y agoOne step closer to the Metaverse, I suppose https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metaverse#Stephenson's_Metaverse_in_Snow_Crash https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metaverse#Stephenson's_Metaver...
- quickthrower2 7y agoI'm not into games at all, but this really captures my imagination. I can imagine enjoying interacting with the web this way. Maybe even coding this way if possible. Thanks!
- jonny383 7y agoDoesn't work in Firefox. Will not open Chromium.
- oops 7y agoWorks for me in Firefox Quantum 69.0 on macOS.
- aloknnikhil 7y agoThe movement on a touch screen is unintuitive. Dragging the screen moves it in the direction opposite to what you expect generally, when you scroll. Great job, nonetheless
- cagrimmett 7y agoThis is like one of those mirror funhouses that you think will be fun, then turns into a nightmare after about 8 minutes.
- wmp56 7y agoGreat idea and the implementation is pretty good for v1. The v2 can index reddit and render that index as a fancy 3d structure that gives a 10,000 feet view on what's going on in reddit: relationship between subreddits, topics, comments, users. Perhaps this structure can look like a forest where heavy subreddits look like big branchy trees and users look like bees adding comments. Big plus if this is rendered in real time, at least with 1 fps. It's not entirely impossible that this idea may be good enough for a little startup (afaik, YC offers 150k for 7% if the idea seems worth exploring).
- sdrothrock 7y agoThis is a really neat concept! I love how you can see other people and their literal sightlines. Some people have said that they wish movement was faster; I completely agree with that. I also wish that more of the interface were integrated into the "museum" -- it would be nice to be able to go to other subreddits from within the museum itself rather than having to leave and go to the address bar. I'd also like to be able to see comments somehow, since that's 80% of the experience of reddit for me! The movement speed is definitely a dealbreaker though.
- Stratoscope 7y agoYou really should not use this old-school QuickTime VR reverse-drag scrolling on a mobile device. That is not what anyone who's used a touch device in the last ten years expects. When someone drags on a touch device, they expect to be dragging the thing they see. You touch something on the screen, move it around, and that thing follows your touch. Whatever you touched, it follows your finger around. This site does just the opposite. When you drag on the screen, things move in the opposite direction. That's how QuickTime VR worked, but no one who is used to modern touch devices will be able to use this without being confused. Or desktop devices for that matter. There is a simple solution: just study how Google Street view works on both mobile and desktop devices, and do that. This could be a great site, and I would love to try it again if this one fundamental bit of navigation is fixed.
- Jaruzel 7y agoPLEASE someone (masterspy7 ?) make this into a proper VR app! I'd love to do this in my VR headset.
- masterspy7 7y agoI just added WebVR support! You can enable it by clicking on the headset icon in the bottom right
- FrankZappa42 7y agoLOVE IT :D
- aguzzi94 7y agoVery cool!
- krapp 7y agoCool... this reminds me of what "cyberspace" was supposed to be in the fever-dreams of cyberpunk fiction.
- atum47 7y agoI've been thinking about building something like this for ages now. Very well done.
- ebj73 7y agoActually much more interesting than i thought it would be. Great effort! :)
- dosy 7y agoCan this be multiplayer please?