In r/webdev, a framework-free real time flight tracker rendering 10,000 plus aircraft on a 3D globe goes viral, reflecting appetite for raw WebGL and performance-first builds.
I built a real-time flight tracker with Rust, WebAssembly, and raw WebGL — no React, no Three.js, no frameworks
renders 10,000+ live aircraft on a 3D globe entirely in the browser
raw WebGL shaders (no Three.js)
I built a real-time flight tracker that renders 10,000+ live aircraft on a 3D globe entirely in the browser — Rust compiled to WASM, raw WebGL shaders (no Three.js), and egui for UI.
The trickiest parts were curving map tiles onto a sphere (8x8 subdivided meshes with spherical coordinates), fixing mobile WebGL by adding explicit GLSL attribute locations
raw WebGL without three.js is a genuinely different beast. most people reach for a library at the first sign of matrices.
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