Three.js Water 🌊, Vulkan Descriptor Heaps 🎮
🌊 Cutting-Edge Real-Time Graphics
Next‑Level Water in Three.js: Ray-Traced Caustics, Refractions & More
Yong Su’s new Three.js port of Evan Wallace’s iconic WebGL Water demo brings AAA-style water to the browser. The simulation features ray-traced reflections, refractions, caustics, configurable pool shapes, and a light-follow camera, all fully interactive. Devs can extend it with their own geometries and shaders by defining displacement, hit tests, and optics. The article also points to Three.js Water Pro for oceans and additional fluid simulations for further inspiration.
VK_EXT_descriptor_heap: Faster, Simpler Resource Binding for Vulkan Games
Vulkan’s new VK_EXT_descriptor_heap extension overhauls resource binding, replacing complex descriptor sets with app-managed descriptor heaps that better match modern GPUs. The model closely mirrors D3D12 descriptor heaps, making life easier for engines sharing a D3D12/Vulkan backend or relying on heavy dynamic texture indexing and ray tracing. The post explains how heaps differ from sets, how to map existing shaders, and how to debug them in Nsight Graphics 2026.2. NVIDIA provides drivers, tooling support, and an open-source vk_mini_samples “descriptor_heap” demo to get you started.
🎮 Games in the Browser & Beyond
High-School Dev Ports Half-Life 2 to Your Browser
High-school developer slqnt has ported Half-Life 2 to the browser in just three months, and it’s already gone viral. The classic sci-fi FPS now runs for free directly from your browser via slqnt’s site, with only small downloads and no installation. Built on the earlier Portal web port by Weliveinhell, the project is surprisingly stable, with only minor glitches and FPS dips. Some players have even managed to get it running on mobile.
Add Discord Proximity Voice Chat to Your Unity Multiplayer Game
Discord and Unity team up to show exactly how to wire up proximity voice chat in any multiplayer Unity game. Using the Discord Social SDK’s per‑user audio callbacks and Unity’s 3D audio, you route each player’s voice into spatialized AudioSources so volume and stereo position match in‑game distance and direction. The stream also covers lobbies, invites, friends lists, and rich presence, plus a ready‑made Unity sample and docs that can get you to working proximity chat in about an hour.