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Work · alternatives · 2026

24 alternatives to Rendering One Million Datapoints with D3 and WebGL

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…

Rendering One Million Datapoints with D3 and WebGL is a technical resource for developers working with large datasets. It combines D3 visualization methods with WebGL's graphics processing capabilities to handle… Below are 24 products that do a similar job, ranked by how close each is in meaning and then by launch-day votes. Rendering One Million Datapoints with D3 and WebGL launched in 2020; newer entries below may have overtaken it.

  1. 1

    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 →

  2. 2

    Many JS libraries exist to build graphs on the web (Vega, chartJS, Plotly...). They allow to make charts quickly. But you lose flexibility: you're limited by the options they offer. I just created a gallery with hundreds of graphs made with d3.js and React. - Examples are split by graph types - They all come with explanation and code sandboxes - Gradual complexity to ease the learning curve It took me ages to create this project! Feedback welcome!

    2023 · react-graph-gallery.com · its alternatives →

  3. 3P3
  4. 4RT
  5. 5

    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 →

  6. 6MG
  7. 7

    An interactive 3D visualization of the all the buildings in Manhattan.

    2018 · tbaldw.in · its alternatives →

  8. 8

    Here's a project I've been working on for a little while now. Ripl is a JS library that provides a unified API for rendering shapes on both canvas and SVG interchangeably. Over the years I've used D3 extensively to create data visualisations so I figured I'd have a go at making my own version with a slightly more modern API and stricter TypeScript support. I am aware there are already libraries that can draw to multiple contexts interchangeably, but I've added a few little niceties to Ripl that (as far as I know) some other libraries don't have such as CSS-like query selectors, DOM-like…

    2024 · github.com · its alternatives →

  9. 9MD

    We invested a lot of time hacking around with the Google Analytics API and D3 to build a responsive custom reporting engine that can render up to 20 charts and graphs on a single page in just a few seconds. Just released a product based on our technology. Looking for feedback. Check out Megalytic. http://megalytic.com

    2013 · its alternatives →

  10. 10FT

    2021 · static.laszlokorte.de · its alternatives →

  11. 11IR
  12. 12OI

    Things orbital and not.

    2016 · orbides.org · its alternatives →

  13. 13AS

    2016 · erkaman.github.io · its alternatives →

  14. 14

    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 →

  15. 15MF
  16. 16ST

    2015 · mattdesl.github.io · its alternatives →

  17. 17WP

    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 →

  18. 18

    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 →

  19. 19

    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 →

  20. 20CA
  21. 21IT

    Experiments in expressing statistical thinking with interactive design

    2015 · r2d3.us · its alternatives →

  22. 22

    An interactive data visualisation about Exoplanets by TK Vishal

    2019 · exoplanetexplore.now.sh · its alternatives →

  23. 23

    Publish and share huge 3D datasets online

    2018 · sketchfab.com · its alternatives →

  24. 24TS

    In this blog post, I will cover how to make a sparkline using d3.js . Our final product will look like this: For those who are unfamili...

    2016 · dataviztalk.blogspot.com · its alternatives →

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Rendering One Million Datapoints with D3 and WebGL…