Ever since a friend showed me that Claude Code was really good at building 3D web applications with three.js, I've been hooked. This might be an elder millennial reference, but I always think of the scene from the original Jurassic Park movie when Lex says "It's a UNIX system!". The thing that struck me the most was that she then went on to navigate the system with a 3D software interface.
I don't know about you, but when I think of UNIX, I think of a command line interface, not a 3D interface. The other thing that struck me was how intuitive the software looked. Each building in the park was represented on the computer screen as a miniature 3D model of itself. All Lex had to do was pan around the screen until she found the building she was looking for. I always wondered why real software wasn't made that way.
Fast-forward 30ish years and I think I know the answer. 3D programming is pretty hard. That's probably an understatement. Of all the software developers alive on planet Earth today, I wonder what percentage of them could build fully functioning 3D user interfaces.
Let me be the first to say that without the help of new AI tools like Claude Code, I would not be able to build working 3D user interfaces. I've built multiple games as hobby projects throughout my life, and all of them were in 2D. I did manage to build one basic canvas animation of circles moving in three dimensions, but the screen itself still looked flat because I was using circles instead of spheres.
These days I can build fully immersive 3D user interfaces using nothing but Claude Code and plain English. I don't need to explain any of the math, or the three.js API, or how to structure the JavaScript and HTML. Claude can do all of that for me, and it seems to do a much better job than I would have done on my own.
What this means is you can go from idea to a fully working 3D world in less than a few hours. With just a little foresight and planning, you can have Claude build the 3D controls in a way that is easily reusable. So while maybe the very first 3D environment might have taken a few days to complete, as the shared library of 3D tools builds up over time, that same environment might only take a few hours if you were to re-build it today.
Originally I was hosting these small custom 3D experiences from the devSteve.com website, but something about that didn't feel right. So far the goal of each 3D experience has been to honor a close friend or family member. Hosting an experience that is supposed to honor someone else shouldn't come from a domain with my name in it. Ideally there would be an agnostic hosting platform and domain name that would host these highly personalized 3D worlds.
In that spirit the SceneXP.com website was born. Now there was a place on the web that these new custom 3D experiences could live without any direct tie-back to myself. If the gods will it (sorry, I've been listening to The Odyssey on Audible) then maybe SceneXP will grow into something that fills a small niche on the internet.
Now that the site is launched, the next goal will be to open up the source on GitHub and invite other developers to contribute their own custom 3D experiences which can be hosted from the scenexp.com domain. It's doubtful anyone will, but at least the option will be there just in case there are a few crazy ones out there who want to join me in bringing more 3D interfaces to the web.