Alternatives
Products that do what ThinkInsideTheBox does
3D physics sandbox — runs in your browser, zero install
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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
- 2IB
I've been working on the Anukari 3D Physics Synthesizer for a little over two years now. It's one of the earliest virtual instruments to rely on the GPU for audio processing, which has been incredibly challenging and fun. In the end, predictably, the GUI for manipulating the 3D system actually ended up being a lot more work than the physics simulation. So far I am only selling it direct on my website, which seems to be working well. I hope to turn it into a sustainable business, and ideally I'd have enough revenue to hire folks to help with it. So far it's been 99% a solo project, with…
2025 · anukari.com
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I recently dug up an old project in an attempt to improve on it. It's a code sandbox for playing around with HTMX in the browser, that runs a mock server within the sandbox iframe. The server "framework" is loosely based on Django, so if you're familiar with Django, you'll immediately understand what's going on. I recommend clicking through the examples. Github repo: https://github.com/lassebomh/htmx-playground Probably my favorite part is the lack of HTMX specific code. It's designed to mimic the client and server, but really nothing else. In principle, this means that…
2024 · lassebomh.github.io
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Hi all This has been my hobby project for quite a few years now It started as a small engine to serve as a sandbox to try out new 3d graphics ideas After adding many features through out the years and re-writing the entire engine a few times, this is the latest state It currently supports loading models with animations, textures, lights, shadow maps, normal maps, and some other goodies I've also recently added voxel raymarching as an alternative renderer, along with a fun physics simulation :)
2024 · github.com
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The little particles will gravitate to your cursor (or touch location), and can even enter stable orbits if the conditions are right! Mainly an excuse for me to experiment with wasm and WebGL, but it makes for a surprisingly good fidget toy.
2024 · aestuans.github.io
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I was looking for a tiny library to easily transform both 2D & 3D objects with simple mouse / touch controls and a fixed camera, in the browser. Like a simple 3D editor but without requiring the user to be a Blender expert. Couldn't find anything lightweight, so I’m building one. Think Fabric.js but for 3D. Built entirely with Three.js / R3F. Borrowed some inspiration from VR/AR interaction systems for controls. Feel free to play with it and let me know what you think!
2025 · punk.cam
- 11OS
2019 · alexanderperrin.com.au
- 12IB
Mar 2026 · structuredlabs.github.io
- 13VC
Hi HN, I’m the creator of SynapsCAD, an open-source desktop application I've been building that combines an OpenSCAD code editor, a real-time 3D viewport, and an AI assistant. You can write OpenSCAD code, compile it directly to a 3D mesh, and use an LLM (OpenAI, Claude, Gemini, ...) to modify the code through natural language. Demo video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cN8a5UozS5Q A bit about the architecture: - It’s built entirely in Rust. - The UI and 3D viewport are powered by Bevy 0.15 and egui. - It uses a pure-Rust compilation pipeline (openscad-rs for parsing and csgrs…
Feb 2026 · github.com
- 14IM
I made this site using R3F (https://github.com/pmndrs/react-three-fiber), a React renderer for 3JS (https://threejs.org/). The celestial bodies are Three.JS meshes. I used loaders (namely 'useLoader' from R3F and 'GLTFLoader' from 3JS) to import 3D models, such as International Space Station. More on loading models in R3F: https://docs.pmnd.rs/react-three-fiber/tutorials/loading-mod... I've future plans for this side project. It would be great to hear from the HN community before diving into them. Enjoy! P.S: Getting an empty…
2022 · spaceinbrowser.com
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2017 · htmlpreview.github.io
- 20AR
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
- 21OS
Kshitij and Rahul here. We're building Playground, an open-source sandbox that lets your non-technical teams prototype directly on production codebases, without bugging you (developers) to spin up and maintain another repo. The repo is here: https://github.com/B1u3B01t/design-playground. We've been working together for six years. Last year we built an AI design agent because we thought designers were the biggest bottleneck. But we were wrong. After talking to teams, we realised designers, PMs, founders and even sales people all wanted to quickly change and explore flows…
Jul 2026
- 22HP
We're integrating with the awesome project Matter.js (http://brm.io/matter-js/) as a Physics engine for our HTML5 animation app. Here's a quick demo video showing it specifically in action: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LHI-hNjiors In developing, I'd often spend hours playing with it making complex rube goldberg setups and pinball machines :).
2015 · tumult.com
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2019 · github.com
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I didn't realize Universe Sandbox ran on MacOS, and I was in the mood to play around a bit. Some functions it's got: - Random system generation - Sonification is super fun too - Habitability Simulation (Just for fun, don't cite this please) - Replacing, spawning, deleting objects I've had tons of fun building this, so I hope someone else can share the joy. It's free and runs in the browser. I'd love to hear any feedback. I think this is at a state where I might leave it as it is, but if people are interested in other features, maybe I'll keep working on it. I've kept saying I'll stop working…
Dec 2025 · luna.watermelonson.com
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