A 3D graphics demo, minus the graphics. Sort of.

October 25, 2019 9:47 AM

"Zero was written for fun as well as to see how far one could reasonably push JavaScript performance."
posted by Sokka shot first (7 comments total)

Forgive me, I have only a couple years of High School CS under my belt and we basically only learned in Java. Isn't 3D doable with Java, isn't Minecraft originally done with it, or is this about using ASCII in the command prompt to make the 3d?
posted by GoblinHoney at 10:06 AM on October 25, 2019

This is about using Javascript to replicate what would ordinarily be done by a computer's Graphics Processing Unit (GPU). Why? Because Javascript is popular right now, and people like doing silly things to see if they can. It's rendered to the console, I think, also just to see if they can.

Oh, and it's important to note that Java and Javascript are two entirely different things. Javascript is named as such because, when it was created, Java was very popular, and they wanted to be noticed. They are not related.
posted by timdiggerm at 10:11 AM on October 25, 2019 [6 favorites]

Javascript is named as such because, when it was created, Java was very popular, and they wanted to be noticed.

I think there was also some kind of horse-trading with Sun and Netscape in play.
posted by thelonius at 10:26 AM on October 25, 2019 [1 favorite]

Now re-implement it in native Bash.
posted by sammyo at 10:29 AM on October 25, 2019

This is lovely and I applaud people doing out-there things with computers just because they can. In a circuitous way this has led to things like WebAssembly via asm.js. Sure, your idea is crazy. But is it crazy enough?
posted by sjswitzer at 12:07 PM on October 25, 2019 [2 favorites]

CPU 50%, GPU 20%.
posted by joecacti at 1:25 PM on October 25, 2019 [1 favorite]

joecacti, your terminal emulator of choice may use the GPU to place text on the screen, even if Zero itself doesn't use the GPU
posted by rlio at 4:42 PM on October 26, 2019