Dev tools · alternatives · 2026
24 alternatives to Ray Tracing in One Weekend v4.0.0
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!
Ray Tracing in One Weekend is a series of three free online books teaching ray tracing implementation through practical coding. The books cover the fundamentals of ray tracing graphics programming with accompanying… Below are 24 products that do a similar job, ranked by how close each is in meaning and then by launch-day votes. Ray Tracing in One Weekend v4.0.0 launched in 2024; newer entries below may have overtaken it.
- 1
I wasn't quite sure if this qualified as "Show HN" given you can't really download it and try it out. However, dang said[0]: > If it's hardware or something that's not so easy to try out over the internet, find a different way to show how it actually works—a video, for example, or a detailed post with photos. Hopefully I did that? Additionally, I've put code and a detailed guide for the netboot computer management setup on GitHub: https://github.com/kentonv/lanparty Anyway, if this shouldn't have been Show HN, I apologize! [0]…
2024 · lanparty.house · its alternatives →
- 2
I am excited to announce the launch of my e-book on Graphics/WebGPU programming! This project has consumed much of my spare time, during which I developed various tools to facilitate the publishing process, including a code playground and a static site generator that can reference sample codes. However, I'm feeling burnt out and ready to call it finished, even though it may not feel completely done. Avoiding another abandoned side project has been my primary motivation in reaching this point.
2024 · shi-yan.github.io · its alternatives →
- 3
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 →
- 4
C++ Path Tracer from scratch with zero third-party libraries. - themartiano/luz
Jun 2026 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 5
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 →
- 6
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 →
- 7
A ray-tracer with a simple scene description language for easily generating beautiful images. - diegomacario/Super-Sunshine
2017 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 8
I've been going through Cem Yuksel's "Introduction to Computer Graphics" course and thought that writing a volume renderer would be a good way to test my knowledge. It is a common technique used to render 3D medical data. Works by ray marching a specific step size, reading a 3D texture (e.g. MRI data), and calculating opacity values. Code should be easy to get started with for anyone familiar with the JS ecosystem. Questions for the HN community: I spent 20-25% of the entire time just setting up the project and fighting issues with the JavaScript ecosystem. This experience has made me…
2024 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 9AR
2018 · tylermw.com · its alternatives →
- 10IR
After 25 years of writing software, I was feeling nostalgic for the kinds of things that got me into programming in the first place: the old DOS demoscene. I spent a weekend seeing if I could recapture some of that INT 13H VGA magic using today's web tech, but with the old-school constraints of doing it from scratch. The result is this portfolio of ten classic effects running in a single HTML file. It's all vanilla JavaScript writing to a element, with no external libraries. It was a fun challenge to implement things like: * The color palette cycling and smooth fading in the Plasma demo. *…
2025 · jdfio.com · its alternatives →
- 11
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 →
- 12
http://www.hnshowcase.com Moses (nnythm) and I browse Hacker News daily. Show HN posts are some of our favorite parts of HN. We wanted to create a way to browse Show HN articles, even those that might not quite make it to the front page. We created http://www.hnshowcase.com last weekend to make discovering projects posted on HN easier. It searches all "Show HN" posts and generates a thumbnail view for each of them. You can sort by submission date, points, and number of comments, and navigate with left/right or j/k keys. We used the following technologies: HN Search API, Pyramid web…
2011 · hnshowcase.com · its alternatives →
- 13
RenderDay▲12Hey HN! I recently had to render my first longer Blender animation, and I found myself pretty frustrated with the existing render farms out there. Everything I tried was either buggy, overly complicated (I really don’t want to pick from a huge list of hardware options), or just *really* expensive. So, I did what anyone would do.. I built my own solution: https://renderday.com - a GPU-only render farm for Blender that’s super fast and dead simple to use. You just: 1. Upload your `.blend` file 2. Pick your settings 3. Get a price, pay, and render - done No subscriptions, no upfront…
2025 · renderday.com · its alternatives →
- 14
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 →
- 15AC
Hello HN. This is a project me and some friends built at university in 2017. It was originally built in a rush, but we've added a few improvements over the years. It's a fun game to host at a demoparty and project on a big screen - We did that at Instanssi many times. The implementation is still rough, and suffers from the fast pace of the modern web - The frontend is likely very outdated, and the backend is built with Vapor 2 and Swift 3.1, both no longer supported. You can host this yourself, but it might be a bit of a pain to set up. The WebSocket protocol is fairly trivial to work out…
2022 · pixel.vkoskiv.com · its alternatives →
- 16MF
2011 · demoseen.com · its alternatives →
- 17
A toy ray tracer in Rust. Contribute to Twinklebear/tray_rust development by creating an account on GitHub.
2015 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 18
UpToWhere▲28The idea came to me after spotting the sea peeking through mountains on a drive near Barcelona. It left me wondering what else was visible from different locations. Some of the features I later added include 3D maps, sun path calculation, adjustable elevation (calculate from a drone/plane POV), and mountain detection. To celebrate the launch, the first 100 HN users can get 1 month of free premium access with the code: UTWfirst100. I’d love your feedback, questions, and suggestions. What would you use this for? What features would you like to see?
2025 · uptowhere.com · its alternatives →
- 19IF
I was wondering whether it’s possible to successfully create a weekend project and if so, with which quality. Here at HN I’ve read many stories of random people (to me they are like teachers) creating “Show HN” projects in 48 hrs which are amazingly awesome and also hit the top site of HN. So here I’m presenting mine: http://keepandplay.com. This is actually not a weekend project, I tried for it to be, but I failed. It actually took me 5 days to have it as it is right now. So I’m still profoundly skeptic on how to realize a 48 hrs side project with the look and feel and quality I…
2016 · its alternatives →
- 20LT
2024 · rtx-on.steren.fr · its alternatives →
- 21WP
This was my recent weekend project, aimed at teaching me JavaScript, a bit of HTML5, and (mostly) WebGL. The orbital data are from NASA JPL. I was inspired in part by this Flash app: http://www.dynamicdiagrams.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/orrery_2011_bce.swf, but wanted to do something in 3D. Coming from the games-dev world, this is my first introduction to web coding. The UI is jquery. I mostly used http://learningwebgl.com/blog for the 3D stuff. Being WebGL, it will work mostly on Chrome, Firefox 4 Beta. Forget about IE. I needed to figure out how to render text to the WebGL canvas - I…
2011 · solar-system-explorer.com · its alternatives →
- 22
Hey HN!! Many of us enjoyed the "If YouTube had actual channels" Show HN post last week. As developers of a similar project, we wanted to share our approach to building a simulated live experience. We’ve spent around 18 months working on this and have managed to add some advanced features, including content-based interactivity. We are super excited to be releasing both the live stream and the code behind it. Our idea was to combine the communal watching experience of television with the modern trappings of the interactive web. If you go to the stream, you will be watching along with everyone…
2024 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 23
D5 Render▲19Real-time 3d rendering software with 10+ AI features
2025 · d5render.com · its alternatives →
- 24
With a community of over one million creators, we are the world’s largest platform to publish, share, and discover 3D content on web, mobile, AR, and VR.
2014 · labs.sketchfab.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 →