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AI · alternatives · 2026

24 alternatives to Equirect – a Rust VR video player

This is almost entirely created by Claude, not me. I know some people aren't into that. I was one of them 3 months ago. Since the beginning of the year I finally started getting more serious about trying out AI. The company I work for also had an AI week with lots of training. All I can say is I'm pretty blown away. My entire life feels like it changed over the last month from someone who mostly writes code to mostly someone that prompts AI to write code. And just for a tiny bit of context, I'm 60yrs old and have been coding since 1980. I get all the concerns, and I review all AI code at…

Equirect is a VR video player written in Rust. It plays equirectangular format videos, which are spherical videos designed for virtual reality viewing. The player is built to handle the specific technical requirements… Below are 24 products that do a similar job, ranked by how close each is in meaning and then by launch-day votes.

  1. 1IU

    Hi Hacker News, This is definitely out of my comfort zone. I just wanted to show you guys because I'm super proud of it. It's a 100% faithful recreation based off of the schematics, patents, and ROMs that were found online. So please watch the video and tell me what you think https://youtu.be/auOlZXI1VxA The reason why I think this is relevant is because I've been a programmer for 25 years and AI scares the shit out of me. I'm not a programmer anymore. I'm something else now. I don't know what it is but it's multi-disciplinary, and it doesn't involve writing code myself--for…

    Jan 2026 · its alternatives →

  2. 2

    Hey all! I've been using this stack personally for a while now and decided to automate it a bit by turning it into a template I can reuse. Hope others might find it helpful!

    2025 · bhvr.dev · its alternatives →

  3. 3

    Modd.io is a collaborative game editor that runs in browser. It's kind of like Figma for game dev. We made this engine low-code and multiplayer-first, so developeres can quickly prototype casual multiplayer games. I hope some of you guys will find this useful. Would love to hear feedback also. Thank you. Engine Demo: https://www.modd.io

    2023 · github.com · its alternatives →

  4. 4HO
  5. 5MA

    hi all, I've always wanted to make my own game, but couldn't afford a thousand-dollar adobe (flash+photoshop) license. I'm not a talented programmer, have no degree in CS. But I understand some elements of design. So I got me a copy of ImpactJS, and after about 5 months of steep learning curve (at least for me), I managed to come up with a game. I also integrated it with a highscore and badge system, similar to what you get at Kongregate. You need to login with Google/OpenID to earn badges/scores. link is: http://www.hotbazooka.com/privatejoe hope to hear some feedback/questions from you guys!

    2011 · hotbazooka.com · its alternatives →

  6. 6

    VRJAM16 entry that's basically Tetris with humans. ;)

    2016 · sygan.itch.io · its alternatives →

  7. 7
    Relativty▲158

    An open-source VR headset for $200

    2020 · its alternatives →

  8. 8AR

    I think it's finally time to lock version 0.2 of my 4d side project. (Since previous Show HN a couple of years ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37100760 I scrapped lots of stuff and concentrated on making a javascript "game engine") The sole purpose of this project is to explore whether it's possible to make the human brain spatially aware of four dimensions using Virtual Reality. It’s my first ever game project, my first time using Unity, first time writing C#, and my first anything with WebXR, so please be gentle! To manage expectations, it isn't visually pleasing…

    2025 · brainpaingames.com · its alternatives →

  9. 9

    So, after years of abandoning Rust after the hello world stage, I finally decided to do something substantial. It started with simple line rendering, but I liked how it was progressing so I figured I could make a reasonably complete PSX style renderer and a game with it. My only dependency is SDL2; I treat it as my "platform", so it handles windowing, input and audio. This means my Cargo.toml is as simple as: [dependencies.sdl2] version = "0.35" default-features = false features = ["mixer"] this pulls around 6-7 other dependencies. I am doing actual true color 3D rendering (with Z buffer,…

    2025 · totenarctanz.itch.io · its alternatives →

  10. 10TP

    Hi HN, I have been working on this website for a few weeks with some buddies of mine and would love if you checked it out. TuringJest provides a jackbox-esque experience with its two game modes. *One Shot Prompt* - Submit a prompt for all players (including the AI) to answer. - Answer your prompts in the way that you think ChatGPT would answer them. - Vote for who you think the real AI is. *Talk It Out* - Plan an event in a group chat with your friends. - Trick everyone into thinking you are the AI while voting for the real AI. Let me know what you think!

    2023 · turingjest.app · its alternatives →

  11. 11LP
  12. 12IC

    I saw this app youlearn.ai on YC and thought of building it. They are claiming to have 1M+ users with just one feature which is to convert your learning material into summaries, quizzes etc. I gave this a shot and cloned almost most of the features in just 9+ hours of continous vibe coding (with 20% manual though). Now I'm selling this on mvp marketplace. Might probably open source it in future or give it free.

    2025 · ai-tutor.mvpwrappers.com · its alternatives →

  13. 13

    This is my first Rust project which I got a bit carried away with. It was a great way to learn different parts of Rust and had jump some hurdles when building for WASM, like not having access to loops, std or DateTime. I'd appreciate any feedback of improvements, new features or themes to add. Thanks! Github: https://github.com/hseager/you-are-merlin

    2024 · hseager.github.io · its alternatives →

  14. 14UA

    Hello HN, Since the first time I used my Oculus DK2, I've been convinced that virtual reality could disrupt education as we know it and some amazing experiences like Apollo 11 (first kickstarter I back) just proved that... That's why I'm building Unimersiv, a platform dedicated to virtual reality courses on which VR developers will be able to share and sell their educational content. I envision a world where people will be able to learn anything faster (sports, sciences, history...) through their VR headset. I would love to know what you think about this idea, is VR educational content…

    2015 · its alternatives →

  15. 15

    iVROX VR player is an impressive VR, 360 video player

    2018 · play.google.com · its alternatives →

  16. 16

    VSCode extension with games (Snake, Plinko, slots), HN/LessWrong reader, and Pomodoro timer for AI coding wait times. Fake currency only. Marketplace: https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=TouchGra... Built in a week with Claude Code after seeing Chad IDE get ratio'd for integrating real gambling. Happy to answer questions or get roasted on the code.

    Dec 2025 · github.com · its alternatives →

  17. 17

    I'm an "ideas person" who messes around with AI on a low budget. I got tired of watching my tokens vanish and context windows filling up while agents fumbled around trying to find the right thing. Agents don't flail like they used to with shell tools, but there are still weak/blind spots and back-and-forth episodes — especially when using tools in combination/sequence. So I built "tilth" today. Or rather, AI built it — every line is Opus 4.6. I spent a lot of my precious tokens getting it to "not shit" (at least several of the different vendors' AI overlords assure me it's not…

    Feb 2026 · github.com · its alternatives →

  18. 18EA

    I'm excited to share a project that I've been working on mostly solo for the past year! It's called Elara, and it's a free open source game that teaches you how to code. You can play directly in your browser without downloading anything or creating an account. It's targeted toward complete beginners, but if you already have some coding experience, there are optional bonus challenges to really test your knowledge and problem-solving skills. If you like code golf, some of the challenges will be right up your alley ;) Under the hood, the backend/core game logic is built with Rust and…

    2023 · elaragame.com · its alternatives →

  19. 19

    Hi HN, When browsers killed NPAPI plugin support, thousands of early 2000s web games were effectively lost to time. Macromedia Shockwave, in particular, was a closed-source, highly complex, and largely undocumented beast. So a few friends and I spent the last two years doing something arguably unhinged: rebuilding the entire Director engine from scratch. Today, we're finally sharing dirplayer-rs. Repo: https://github.com/igorlira/dirplayer-rs We intentionally stayed quiet on this until we had undeniable proof that it was actually possible. With our latest v0.4.1 release,…

    Mar 2026 · github.com · its alternatives →

  20. 20

    Our first short film made with code and AI. Watch The Why: 98 seconds about engineers and purpose, rendered in Rust with fframes.

    9d ago · fframes.studio · its alternatives →

  21. 21

    I've spent 30 years making games as both a hobby and profession, working with Unity, Unreal, GameMaker, RPG Maker, Ren'Py, Godot, and many others. A few years ago, I attended a game dev meetup and met dozens of people with incredible passion for making games – but they were struggling because they lacked technical knowledge. That's when I decided to build a tool that anyone could use to create games. I started developing this as a side project, eventually raised ~$100K through crowdfunding in Korea, then secured ~$200K in angel investment. I assembled a team, and we've been building this…

    2025 · play-maker.io · its alternatives →

  22. 22NC

    Hey guys! I'm excited to announce our new venture, Novo. We've created a robotic arm motion simulation platform for high-end cinematic VR experiences. You can learn more about who and why we are here: http://novoreality.com/2016/11/16/novo-hello-world/ I'd love to hear any questions, thoughts, ideas, and feedback. Thanks!

    2016 · its alternatives →

  23. 23

    Hey, ever wanted to fully understand or tweak a nostalgic game that you love? So, I’m documenting my journey on matching decompiling a retro game, step by step, using AI and self-made tools. Three chapters are done, and the fourth is in progress. Matching decompilation is a fun reverse engineering challenge that paves the way to learn more about a game and fully customize it. Let me know your thoughts about my posts and the VS Code extension that I'm developing, called Kappa! Have you ever heard of matching decompilation, by the way?

    2025 · gambiconf.substack.com · its alternatives →

  24. 24

    Hey HN! I really like local apps for their simplicity and privacy and hate paying Saas bills and I wanted a way to start automating my life with AI so I started building Anything. Anything is built on Tauri so the front end is React and the "backend" is Rust. It's 100% local & 100% doesn't ask you to spin up docker to use. Another core goal of the app is to get away from "package bloat" you see in other general purpose AI oss projects where they have a package.json that is 300 lines long ( more on that later. ) Oh btw I suck at Rust! I learned Rust while building this so the code is _not…

    2024 · github.com · its alternatives →

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