Newsletter – Issue 032

🔥 Headlines

🎾 Box3D (video, repo, docs) is the new 3D physics engine by Erin Catto, the creator of Box2D. It brings the Box2D architecture to three dimensions with a C API, continuous collision detection, multi-threading, and cross-platform determinism. box3d.js (repo) by Isaac Mason already ships WASM bindings with TypeScript types.

🔠 Glyph (announcement) is a GPU-first typography engine for the web by Justin Walsh from Poimandres. Bitmap, MSDF, and Slug fonts in one engine, with correct multilingual shaping (bidi, CJK, ligatures), justified paragraphs that wrap around shapes, and a lot more. It integrates with Three.js, R3F, TresJS, TypeGPU, or your own renderer.

🧮 math (docs, examples, announcement) is Poimandres’ new math engine by Isaac Mason. Allocation-free, monomorphic, tree-shakable, and renderer-agnostic, it covers vectors, quaternions, and matrices, shapes and spatial queries, noise, easing and springs, IK, colors, and seeded RNGs. And it’s simply npm i math!

🎓 NoGraphicsAPI (announcement) by Sebastian Aaltonen implements his No Graphics API blog post as an MIT-licensed C++20 library on Vulkan 1.4 and Metal 4: buffer objects, descriptor sets, and vertex layouts give way to GPU pointers and bindless heap indices. Not for the browser, but a clear picture of where GPU APIs are heading.

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🏎 Engines

• Three.js r186 (changelog, migration guide)
• R3F v9.8.0 and v9.8.1 – React 19.3 compatibility, Activity support, Strict Mode fixes, synchronous root config
• R3F v10 Alpha 4 – New TSL hooks, multiple canvases sharing one renderer, and a standalone scheduler repo
• Drei v11 Alpha 7 – More fixes and features have been ported to WebGPU
• Threlte Core 8.6.0 – New @threlte/core/webgpu export
• TresJS – Rapier Physics v1, core 5.9.0 adds MeshPortalMaterial, and cientos 5.9.0 adds Instances and Merged
• PlayCanvas Engine v2.21 (video) and v2.22 – Splat refraction, water, volumetric fog, parallax mapping
• Babylon.js 9.27 – OpenUSD scene loader, object ID geometry textures, and a GUI FlexPanel
• Phaser 4.2.1 – Stencil, ScaleManager, and ESM build fixes
• PixiJS v8.20 and v8.21 – WGSL shader overrides, WebGPU render bundles, TS 6 & 7 support, PixiJS 3D beta
• Needle Engine 6.0 Alpha – Spark-powered GaussianSplat component, WebXR anchors, and Three.js r185
• 🤺 Rapier 0.35 and 0.36 – SIMD always on, island-based sleeping, faster broad phase, and soft bodies (demos)
• Construct r495 – 3D rotation and a Billboard behavior. Beta r502 adds PBR 3D lighting

🛠 Tools

• minidraco – Faster than the WASM decoder, pure JS Draco decoder with a drop-in DRACOLoader by me
• three-flatland (repo, examples) – 2D sprites, tilemaps, and TSL effects for Three.js and R3F by Justin Walsh
• Silhouette POM (demo, post) – Parallax occlusion mapping that carves mesh silhouettes by SkyeShark
• N8AO 2.0 (announcement, demo) – Neural denoiser for sharper, temporally stable AO by N8
• three-avbd (demo) – GPU rigid-body physics on WebGPU with the AVBD solver (SIGGRAPH 2025) by sbobyn
• meshoptimizer 1.3 – Voxel remesher, normal generation, and better simplification by Arseny Kapoulkine
• Needle Mesh Baker (video) – Polygon reduction and texture baking in the browser, 100% local by Needle
• ⚡️ hyperpointer (demo) – Lossless pointer input collection and motion prediction to hide camera latency by me
• Colyseus 0.18 – Client-side prediction and lag compensation, 2.4x faster encoder, database, admin console
• 📡 gatho (site, thread) – Self-hostable multiplayer toolkit with rooms and Redis scaling by Isaac Mason

🎬 Videos

• 🎓 How to Blur Images at 20,000 FPS by Acerola
• 🎓 Your AI 3D projects look cheap. One word fixes it. by Wawa Sensei
• I Built a GPU Grass System in Three.js by Cortiz
• Zephyria Devlog #5: Making It More Fun and #6: A Cave Full of Enemies by Cortiz
• Intro to Three.js Shading Language (TSL) by Alvaro Sabu
• Three.js Journey: WebGPU & TSL (paid, well worth it) by Bruno Simon
• pmndrs at Three.js Conf by Krispy and Dennis Smolek
• Can You Vibe Code 3D Games with TresJS? by Alvaro Sabu
• Upgrading from HTML Canvas to PixiJS by Mordalon

✍️ Articles

• What’s New in WebGPU – Chrome 153-154, 151-152, 149-150, 147-148 by François Beaufort
• Learn WebGPU for C++ (repo) by Élie Michel
• Creating a Grass Field with TSL by Alvaro Sabu
• Blender to Three.js and Back: 10 Tips for a Better Workflow by Andrew Woan
• Exploring Procedural Geometry with Three.js (demo, repo) by Chiro Visuals
• 📡 128-Ticks Per Second Multiplayer in a Web Browser by GuavaGuy from SuperTripLand
• ❤️ Hordes.io Journal – Part 1: Alpha by dek

🎮 Games

• Dino Simulator by Story Giant Games – Simulator that lets you live life as a dinosaur.
• Petnest.io by Vectaria – Simulation game where you care for a growing family of pets.
• Boomy World by Obscure Interactive – Puzzle game where you boom your way out.
• Tower Destiny Survive by SayGames – Shoot your way through waves of zombies.
• Travel Merge by Potato Jam – Merge game to create delicious food.

• Bouncemasters by Famobi – Smack the penguin and bounce as far as possible.
• Claw Master – A unique combination of claw machine and RPG gameplay.
• Heroes Unite – Idle fantasy combat game with merge and upgrade mechanics.
• Crazy Chameleon – Hide and seek game where you try to blend with the world.
• Lumen by ShadowGames – Neon and light-themed Vampire Survivors-like game.

• Klocki by Maciej Targoni – Swap blocks to connect lines in this relaxing puzzle game.
• Pezzi by 5of12 – A musical puzzle game where you assemble blocks to build melodies.
• Froggie by Vergiu Games – Celeste-like retro platformer with an electro soundtrack.
• Back to Bed by Bedtime Digital Games – Guide the sleepwalker in a surreal world.
• Kickshot by Fer Factor – Kick down doors and clear rooms in a fast, on-rails shooter.

• Three.js Punk by Anderson Mancini – Cyberpunk driving game showcasing Three.js.
• Skate Soweme by Soweme – Skateboarding game. Press . to grind and , to kickflip.
• Out 4 Blood by Cesharpe – Multiplayer wave-survival shooter made with the Babylon.js Editor.

✨ Demos

• 💡 Real-time 3D Radiance Cascades (post) – Global illumination by Cody Bennett
• Bone Tide (thread) – Horde survival game by Konrad Reczko
• Tidewater (repo, post) – Coastal town by Dan Greenheck
• Utanomori (repo, breakdown) – Creative musical experience by mesq

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