Show HN: A real-time 4D fractal explorer in the browser using WebGPU

https://bryanjj.github.io/nebula/

26•bryan0•1mo ago

Hi HN, I've always been interested in fractals, especially the Mandelbrot and Julia sets. A few years ago I created a 2d viewer of this inherently 4d space. But the other day I decided to ask Claude and GPT how to make this a full RT 3d explorer. A few hours later and this was vibe coded.

To use it you can use the mouse to rotate the fractal the the mouse wheel to zoom in and out. to map from 4d to 3d, one of the dims is mapped to an adjustable slider. the there is also a clipping plane slider to help visualize the internal structures of the fractal.

I have mixed feelings about vibe coding. It was amazing to go from an idea to live implementation within a few hours, but in my coding projects, I've always appreciated the journey and the learning, not just the final product. Vibe coding kind of skips to the end which is exciting and efficient, but just not as fulfilling as struggling through a project step-by-step.

Comments

frankhsu•1mo ago

A really cool experiment! And also a very interesting visualization tool.

Vibe Coding is very convenient for creating this kind of content, especially in Gemini 3 Pro mode.

I think you could have the Agent add some color adjustment sliders to the tool, and then add a "Download" button so that others can export the content from the canvas with one click.

FarhadG•1mo ago

Very cool and thanks for sharing. As you explore more cool experiments with WebGPU, be sure to submit the ones that would be a good feature to WebGL.com / WebGPU.com

thih9•1mo ago

Note: webgpu in Safari Mobile requires ios 26[1].

Sharing this in case others are waiting with this update like me.

[1]: https://github.com/gpuweb/gpuweb/wiki/Implementation-Status#...

eps•1mo ago

Not worth it. iOS 26 is horrible Ui-wise.

rectalogic•1mo ago

You can enable it in iOS 18 https://enablegpu.com/guides/ios/

fulafel•1mo ago

Seems 2026 could be the year of general cross platform availability in Chrome & FF.

tetris11•1mo ago

For Firefox/Fennec on Android, you need to enable `gfx.webgpu.ignore-blocklist` in about:config

Edit: oh, same link as above

tigranbs•1mo ago

Nice! I am surprised that the JS compressed chunks are not that big. I have checked, and the largest is ~340Kb, which is even smaller than a regular Next.js starter kit home page.

Traditionally, we have a ton of components for 2D UI, but the UX still sucks for the most part. I am not even sure what it will look like to create the 3D UX for anything other than the Games. For example, nobody uses Unity for desktop or mobile apps, because the freedom of a 3D environment isn't suited to regular UI tasks.

Nooshu•1mo ago

This is really cool, I've recently been vibe coding a 2D Fractal Renderer, mainly for experimentation on what modern API's in the browser can do! I plan to write a blog post all about it “soon”. For anyone interested, you can find it here: https://fractals.world/

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