Dev tools · alternatives · 2026
24 alternatives to A physically-based GPU ray tracer written in Julia
We ported pbrt-v4 to Julia and built it into a Makie backend. Any Makie plot can now be rendered with physically-based path tracing. Julia compiles user-defined physics directly into GPU kernels, so anyone can extend the ray tracer with new materials and media - a black hole with gravitational lensing is ~200 lines of Julia. Runs on AMD, NVIDIA, and CPU via KernelAbstractions.jl, with Metal coming soon. Demo scenes: github.com/SimonDanisch/RayDemo
A physically-based GPU ray tracer that ports pbrt-v4 to Julia and integrates with the Makie plotting backend. It enables photorealistic rendering of any Makie visualization through path tracing. Users can extend the… Below are 24 products that do a similar job, ranked by how close each is in meaning and then by launch-day votes.
- 1PA
We have a black hole at home — with actual relativistic physics, live in your browser. I'm Sasha (Alexander) Plavin, an astrophysicist at Harvard's Black Hole Initiative studying quasars and black hole environments. I work with raytracing/radiative transfer simulations professionally, and wanted to make one anyone can play with — so I built this app. Put the black hole onto your screen (any browser), or directly into your room with AR or VR (requires WebXR, for example Chrome on Android, or any VR headset). When looking around, pay attention to unintuitive relativistic effects: rays…
Jul 2026 · blackhole.plav.in · its alternatives →
- 2
This is a GPU "software" raytracer (i.e. using manual ray-scene intersections and not RTX) written using the WebGPU API that renders glTF scenes. It supports many materials, textures, material & normal mapping, and heavily relies on multiple importance sampling to speed up convergence.
2024 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 3
An introduction to non-line-of-sight imaging, and how to create images of hidden objects around a corner in under 10 minutes!
2019 · analytech-solutions.com · its alternatives →
- 4
C++ Path Tracer from scratch with zero third-party libraries. - themartiano/luz
Jun 2026 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 5
GPU Raytracer from scratch in C++/CUDA. Contribute to jan-van-bergen/GPU-Raytracer development by creating an account on GitHub.
2021 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 6
I’ve been experimenting with Rust lately and wanted a project that would help me explore some of its lower-level and performance-oriented features. Inspired by Sebastian Lague’s videos, I decided to implement my own ray tracer from scratch. The initial goal was just to render a simple 3D scene in the browser at a reasonable frame rate. It evolved into a small renderer that can: • Run locally or on the web using wgpu and WebAssembly • Perform mesh rendering with a Bounding Volume Hierarchy (BVH) for acceleration • Simulate both direct and indirect illumination for photorealistic results • Be…
Nov 2025 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 7
Download Black Hole Vision by Alexandru Lupsasca on the App Store. See screenshots, ratings and reviews, user tips, and more apps like Black Hole Vision.
2024 · apps.apple.com · its alternatives →
- 8
Creator here. I built ChartGPU because I kept hitting the same wall: charting libraries that claim to be "fast" but choke past 100K data points. The core insight: Canvas2D is fundamentally CPU-bound. Even WebGL chart libraries still do most computation on the CPU. So I moved everything to the GPU via WebGPU: - LTTB downsampling runs as a compute shader - Hit-testing for tooltips/hover is GPU-accelerated - Rendering uses instanced draws (one draw call per series) The result: 1M points at 60fps with smooth zoom/pan. Live demo:…
Jan 2026 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 9RB
2016 · flannelhead.github.io · its alternatives →
- 10
Renders black hole gravitational lensing effects in an image canvas using WebGL, glfx.js, and numeric.js - cliffcrosland/black-hole.js
2015 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 11
Monte Carlo ray tracer developed using Rust. Contribute to Dalamar42/rayt development by creating an account on GitHub.
2020 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 12
I ported Microsoft's TRELLIS.2 (4B parameter image-to-3D model) to run on Apple Silicon via PyTorch MPS. The original requires CUDA with flash_attn, nvdiffrast, and custom sparse convolution kernels: none of which work on Mac. I replaced the CUDA-specific ops with pure-PyTorch alternatives: a gather-scatter sparse 3D convolution, SDPA attention for sparse transformers, and a Python-based mesh extraction replacing CUDA hashmap operations. Total changes are a few hundred lines across 9 files. Generates ~400K vertex meshes from single photos in about 3.5 minutes on M4 Pro (24GB). Not as fast as…
Apr 2026 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 13
Tabs, splits, and tmux work fine until you have several projects open with logs, tests, and long-running shells. I kept rebuilding context instead of resuming work. Horizon puts shells on an infinite canvas. You can arrange them into workspaces and reopen later with layout, scrollback, and history intact. Built in 3 days with Claude/Codex, dogfooding the workflow as I went. Feedback and contributions welcome.
Mar 2026 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 14
A ray-tracer with a simple scene description language for easily generating beautiful images. - diegomacario/Super-Sunshine
2017 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 15
I've been iterating on a small galaxy visualization project that originally started as a university course assignment, using only provided sample data (no real astronomical distances). Recently, I updated it to include redshift-based distance data, which makes the 3D structure more meaningful and closer to real large-scale galaxy distributions. Repo: https://github.com/Avicted/galaxy_visualization_raylib Demo video (3D navigation + galaxy structures): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fC83RDWuPvw Current state: - Written in C (C99 standard) using Raylib -…
2024 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 16
I saw a tweet that tinygrad is so good that you could make a graphics library that wraps tg. So I’ve been hacking on a gtinygrad, and honestly it convinced me it could be used for legit research. The JIT + tensor model ends up being a really nice way to express light transport all in simple python, so I reimplemented some new research papers from SIGGRAPH like REstir PG and SZ and it just works. instead of complicated cpp its just a 200 LOC of python.
Jan 2026 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 17
Back in the old days, people used to do general-purpose GPU programming by using shaders like GLSL. This is what inspired NVIDIA (and other companies) to eventually create CUDA (and friends). This is an implementation of GPT-2 using WebGL and shaders. Enjoy!
2025 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 18
Data visualisation and ray tracing in Python based on OptiX 9.1 framework. - plotoptix/examples/3_projects/moon at master · rnd-team-dev/plotoptix
2019 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 19
micro-gl▲101Run vector graphics on any computer (without GPU or FPU)
2023 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 20
Browse and share GPU-made GIFs. Explore GLSL shader experiments, search by topic, and open any piece in the editor to learn or remix.
2018 · shadergif.com · its alternatives →
- 21
Creating high-quality scientific figures can be time-consuming and challenging, even though sketching ideas on paper is relatively easy. Furthermore, recreating existing figures that are not stored in formats preserving semantic information is equally complex. To tackle this problem, we introduce DeTikZify, a novel multimodal language model that automatically synthesizes scientific figures as semantics-preserving TikZ graphics programs based on sketches and existing figures. We also introduce a Monte Carlo Tree Search-based inference algorithm that enables DeTikZify to iteratively refine its…
2024 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 22AG
This is a vector index I built that supports insertion and k-nearest neighbors (k-NN) querying, optimized for GPUs. It operates entirely in CUDA and can process queries on half a billion vectors in under 200 milliseconds. The codebase is structured as a standalone library with an HTTP API for remote access. It’s intended for high-performance search tasks—think similarity search, AI model retrieval, or reinforcement learning replay buffers. The codebase is located at https://github.com/rodlaf/BinaryGPUIndex.
2025 · rlafuente.com · its alternatives →
- 23
Since this is a major new release (three and a half years in development), I think this should be ok for Show HN. This release has lots of new material, fixes, and updates across the three books in this series. All three books are online and free, with accompanying code available from GitHub. Enjoy!
2024 · raytracing.github.io · its alternatives →
- 24
All sorts of POV-Ray related stuff by Michael Scharrer indluding a collection of scenes and scc5 re-renderings. Free source code is included for all items.
2015 · mscharrer.net · its alternatives →
Also compare
- Physically accurate black hole you can put in your room alternatives
- I've made a Monte-Carlo raytracer for glTF scenes in WebGPU alternatives
- Wave-based non-line-of-sight computational imaging in Julia alternatives
- I wrote a C++ ray tracer from scratch without AI alternatives
- Physically-Based GPU Pathtracer with Mitsuba XML Support alternatives
- a Rust ray tracer that runs on any GPU – even in the browser alternatives
Ranked by how close each launch is in meaning, then by votes. Prices were read from each product’s own site when checked and can change. Refine with your own description →