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Life & fun · alternatives · 2026

24 alternatives to Black-hole.js – Visualize black hole gravitational lensing in WebGL

Renders black hole gravitational lensing effects in an image canvas using WebGL, glfx.js, and numeric.js - cliffcrosland/black-hole.js

Black-hole.js is a WebGL-based tool that simulates gravitational lensing effects around black holes on image canvases. Built using glfx.js and numeric.js libraries, it renders realistic distortion and light-bending… Below are 24 products that do a similar job, ranked by how close each is in meaning and then by launch-day votes. Black-hole.js – Visualize black hole gravitational lensing in WebGL launched in 2015; newer entries below may have overtaken it.

  1. 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. 2RB

    2016 · flannelhead.github.io · its alternatives →

  3. 3

    Gravity WebGL experiment in the Solar System

    2016 · github.com · its alternatives →

  4. 4

    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 →

  5. 5

    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

    Feb 2026 · makie.org · its alternatives →

  6. 6

    I was wondering how I can arrange objects along a spherical helix path, and read some articles on it. I ended up learning about parametric equations again, and make this visualization to document what I learned: https://visualrambling.space/moving-objects-in-3d/ feel free to visit and let me know what you think!

    2025 · visualrambling.space · its alternatives →

  7. 7RT
  8. 8

    Hello HN! We’re a small creative studio specializing in real-time 3D experiences. Netlify approached us to design and build an interactive experience to celebrate reaching 5 million developers. Inspired by the classic game Marble Madness, we created a gamified experience where users control a ball through playful, interactive levels. The goal was to blend marketing content with the look and feel of a game to engage users. The app is built with Three.js [1], using our custom render pipeline and shaders, and uses Rapier for physics simulation [2]. The 2D content is overlaid on the WebGL view…

    2024 · 5-million-devs.netlify.com · its alternatives →

  9. 9IB
  10. 10

    The latest 3Blue1Brown video [1] about the M. C. Escher print gallery effect inspired me to re-implement the effect as WebGL fragment shader on my own. [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ldxFjLJ3rVY

    Apr 2026 · static.laszlokorte.de · its alternatives →

  11. 11
    AstroGrid▲113

    Explore the entire universe in your browser, in real 3D

    Apr 2026 · velonspace.com · its alternatives →

  12. 12GJ
  13. 13FT

    2021 · static.laszlokorte.de · its alternatives →

  14. 14

    Hey there, I'm a big fan of the game Factorio and the beauty of factories in the game. That's why I created a website to artfully visualize Factorio blueprints a few years ago. With the new 2.0 update, a few things broke. I took the opportunity to rewrite everything from Python to JavaScript and support Factorio 2.0 and the Space Age DLC. It's now also possible to easily modify the style of the drawings. Let me know if you find any bugs or if you have ideas for features.

    2025 · github.com · its alternatives →

  15. 15

    Contribute to westoncb/nonlinear-optics-sandbox development by creating an account on GitHub.

    2025 · github.com · its alternatives →

  16. 16

    I've created a web app for querying and visualization of ADS-B datasets: https://adsb.exposed/ Source code: https://github.com/ClickHouse/adsb.exposed/ The results significantly exceeded my expectations because the pictures are insanely beautiful, and the data is a treasure trove. It proves many statements that were not certain: - it is feasible to generate tiles by aggregation on a pixel level (instead of hexagons or rectangular grid); - it does not require JPG/PNG tiles - we can transfer raw bitmap data with zstd compression; - it is possible to…

    2024 · adsb.exposed · its alternatives →

  17. 17OI

    Things orbital and not.

    2016 · orbides.org · its alternatives →

  18. 18SP

    A visually stunning space pong game with black hole physics and gravitational lensing effects

    Jan 2026 · pong.priyavkaneria.com · its alternatives →

  19. 19

    Over the weekend I was discussing the latest news relating to open weights with some of my non-techie friends. After 30 mins of waffling, I realised it is quite a long and interesting story, with many twists and turns. I've always wanted to create a 'long scroll' story, but have never found a suitable story to tell. This felt like a fun weekend project to undertake. The story itself doesn't have too many scroll effects (which is probably a good thing), it was more about trying to tell a story with a certain style that wouldn't really fit on my personal blog. Would love to get your feedback…

    2020 · blog.scottlogic.com · its alternatives →

  20. 20

    Gravity-sensing box-shadow for Flat UI. Contribute to Gigacore/gBoxShadow development by creating an account on GitHub.

    2015 · github.com · its alternatives →

  21. 21

    Neural network 3D visualization framework, build interactive and intuitive model in browsers, support pre-trained deep learning models from TensorFlow, Keras, TensorFlow.js - GitHub - tensorspace-team/tensorspace: Neural network 3D visualization framework, build interactive and intuitive model in br

    2018 · github.com · its alternatives →

  22. 22

    A web-friendly way for anyone to build unusual displays

    2016 · googlecreativelab.github.io · its alternatives →

  23. 23

    Two clip-paths, over the navigation: - The first clip-path is a circle (top-left corner) - The second clip-path is a polygon, that acts like a ray (hardcoded, can be improved) The original work by Iventions Events https://iventions.com/ uses JavaScript, but I found CSS-only approach more fun Here's a demo and the codebase: https://github.com/Momciloo/fun-with-clip-path

    Feb 2026 · github.com · its alternatives →

  24. 24

    I made a GLSL shader that bends 3D space using a 4D hypersphere projection. The idea: 1. Project a model onto a 4D sphere 2. Rotate the sphere 3. Project the model back to 3D Code and details: https://github.com/bntre/CurvedSpaceShader Curious what you think.

    2025 · github.com · its alternatives →

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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 →