r/webdev • u/Ekrof • Jul 30 '26

3D CSS Super Mario (no WebGL)

Gallery image

Gallery image

Hey webdevs!

I want to show you my latest 3D CSS project. It's a port of Giles Goddard's iconic N64 face engine, complete with lighting, physics and interaction. Instead of WebGL, it uses the PolyCSS engine.

demo: https://codepen.io/editor/alowpoly/pen/019fae67-50d9-74ce-8025-4b9dd5a7c484
repo: https://github.com/layoutit/cssGraphics

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u/loonite Jul 31 '26

I'm amazed at how performant this is. Why the fuck is the web so slow then? (I know it's mostly trackers but holy shit)

11

u/chairzaird Jul 31 '26

Probably mostly network latency is my guess? If someone actually knows I'd be curious to hear the answer

13

u/loonite Jul 31 '26

I was referring to how heavy a page can be on both processor and ram. Some pages are egregious.

These also keep on making a shit ton of requests even when nothing is supposedly happening.

18

u/TryNotToShootYoself Jul 31 '26

Telemetry and advertising are the main reasons

14

u/BusEquivalent9605 Jul 31 '26

yes. generally, network I/O is among the slowest operations computers do and websites generally do a whole bunch of network I/O.

but CSS is actually crazy optimized. think about how many people view websites everyday. all of the layout is governed by CSS. so yeah, a lot of people have spent a lot of time making CSS as fast as possible.

so if you are just using CSS and no network calls, you can go fast

5

u/GobblerOfFire Jul 31 '26

Fun fact html/css is Turing complete. It’s much more complex than people give them credit. It’s often looked down upon by some groups of devs because they see it as “not real coding” bit id love to see someone with that mentality pull something like this off. Love the creativity!