3d retro graphics
Copy a demo, drop it on a page. Old workstation tricks, WebGL 1 or a 2D canvas. Licensed CC0.
Experiments
Retro techniques
Recreations of documented techniques and period looks. Each page names its reference, or says plainly that it is an interpretation of a style rather than a copy of one original.
01. PC demoscene · early 1990s
PlasmaColor-field oscillator running as a fullscreen fragment shader.
02. Screensaver and demo staple · c. 1992
Retro 3d starfieldPerspective starfield that stretches into a hyperspace tunnel.
03. Flat-shaded workstation demo · c. 1990
Retro torusFlat-shaded torus, wire overlay, and a ground grid. Drag to orbit.
04. Blinn · 1982
Chrome blobsRaymarched metaballs with a studio chrome environment.
05. Whitted · 1980
Reflective spheresA Whitted raytracer: three spheres, checkerboard, shadows, three bounces.
06. donut.c · 2006
ASCII torusA rotating 3D torus rendered with a luminance character ramp.
07. Wireframe sphere · vector-display era
Wireframe globeLatitude/longitude cage with a phosphor stroke. Drag to spin.
08. Stam · 1999
Fluid tankA stable 2D Navier-Stokes dye tank. Stir it with the pointer.
09. Particle flow field · interpretation
Flow fieldA thousand particles following a curling field. Pointer makes a vortex.
10. Jakobsen · 2001
Verlet fabricA hanging cloth. Drag a point to tug the weave.
11. Vector CRT look · c. 1980
Wireframe terrainScrolling vector hills. Pointer steers.
12. id Software · 1992
Wolfenstein raycasterA DDA raycaster. WASD to walk, pointer to look.
13. NovaLogic · 1992
Voxel SpaceA heightmap ray-column renderer. Pointer steers.
14. Super Famicom · 1990
Mode 7 floorAffine checkerboard ground, Space Harrier style. Pointer steers.
15. PlayStation · 1994
PS1 affine warpA checker cube and floor with screen-space UVs. Drag to orbit.
16. Atari · 1984
I, Robot polygonsFilled cubes and pyramids, painter's algorithm. Drag to orbit.
17. Newell · 1975
Utah teapotThe real Utah teapot: Newell's 32 Bézier patches, lit per pixel. Move the pointer to drag the lights.
18. Dot tunnel · demoscene, early 1990s
Dot/square tunnelA twisting square tunnel of dots. Pointer shifts the vanishing point.
19. Palette fire · demoscene, early 1990s
Palette fireHeat rises through a 256-color fire LUT. Pointer is a torch.
20. Lissajous · 1857
XY oscilloscopeA Lissajous figure with phosphor persistence. Pointer changes the ratio.
21. Amiga · 1984
Boing ballCheckered sphere, bounce, shadow. Click to kick it.
22. Trumbull · 1968
Slit-scan stargateA 2001 corridor from a moving slit. Pointer shifts the vanishing point.
23. Rutt/Etra · 1973
Rutt-Etra scanA video raster displaced by luminance. Drag to orbit.
24. Glenz vectors · Amiga demoscene, c. 1989
Glenz vectorsTranslucent filled polygons, additive. Drag to orbit.
25. Martin · 1986
Hopalong attractorA one-line iterator that fills a CRT. Pointer nudges a.
26. Penrose · 1974
Penrose tilingRobinson triangles, aperiodic, drawn once.
27. Braben and Bell · 1984
Elite planetA dotted sphere and a starfield. Drag to spin.
Modern experiments
Made in 2026 with the same single-file, retro-styled rendering. These illustrate recent mathematics and are not historical effects.
28. Illustration · 2026
Spaghetti vortexA concentrating 3D vortex. Trails spiral in as the core slims. Illustration, not a solver.
29. Stam 1999 solver · 2026 illustration
Dual tankSame 48×48 Stam twice. Left is bounded. Right is a lying legend.
30. Illustration · 2026
Spiral stretchA hopalong cousin: radius shrinks, z grows. Pointer detunes the shrink.
31. Hopf · 1950 · 2026 illustration
Burgers shockInviscid Burgers. Characteristics cross at a predicted T*.
For agents
The catalog is at /llms.txt and /api/v1/experiments. Source HTML is at /examples/{slug}.html, licensed CC0 1.0.