I love what is trying to be done here. Some feedback to improve would be to cut out a lot of the noise with the "Take tour". There are too many boxes and things changing on the screen to get a sense of what is happening. Also make it interactive rather than automatically switch onto the next subject. Being a passive observer to so much information trying to be conveyed is very confusing.
I really do like these kinds of approaches to showing the inner workings of different kinds of tech, so think this is on the good path to being a very useful tool, but needs some focus rather than more data/graphs/info boxes.
It's amazing 3D going on, and then 80% of the visual space is popups that completely block it. It'd be have a nice prominent ways of reducing the noise, and that pops were partially transparent.
This is good general advice. If your software needs a "tour," that's a good indicator you should work on your UX instead. If you're just excited to tell the user about a new feature, they'll discover it when they need it.
Not everyone will come to view this model from the same vantage point. Some will simply be curious about some famous software that they don't happen to use. So the tour is an excellent idea. Great presentation. Congratulations.
I imagined as soon I saw the initial visual that I would somehow be able to enter a query and it would walk me through the flow through the entire system starting from input parsing to all the way to delivering output and perhaps along the way understand some of the autonomous processes that happen in parallel that aren't query specific but run constantly.
What others are saying - fantastic attempt, but don't know where to start or where to end.
This is very similar to what I imagine whenever I get into a deep focus state debugging a program in gdb... I would love to experience debugging a program in VR with graphics like this,,, there would be no better way to learn a codebase. I wonder how good an experience you could achieve by generating a 3d map based on arbitrary code
Understanding how scheduling works inside a database used to require numerous architecture diagrams to explain. I was amazed when I saw PGSimCity — it presents such a complex technical implementation process in such an engaging way. Since it's already open‑source, I think the same idea can be reused in other domains, such as cloud computing, Kubernetes, and so on.
Considering that it has been vibe-coded with not even 48 hours passed: Is this truthful and accurate at all? Or will it lead to false conclusions and anti-knowledge?
At first sight, it looks super cool. Kudos for pulling this off. At closer look, feels very overwhelming. The claude tone doesn't help ease the nerves either. The text version is too verbose.
I have a pretty good working knowledge of the internals of Postgres, but this just confused me. I think it's too busy to understand. At the very least, it would be cool if there were a "slow down" button.
There are buttons on the bottom left: pause and two to adjust the speed (down to 0.1x).
Some parts of the city can be adjusted when you click on it (I just found the transactions/s)
I wonder if games can be developed to teach CS (OS, db, compilers) which are visual. Instead of reading a book on databases, perhaps tinkering with something like this would make learning easier. (I'm not a gamer, but I read about factorio kind of games on hn).
I assume this is done with the help of AI? I have done similar vibe project that explaining catastrophic forgetting with the help of AI. It's just so satisfying now that if you really want to learn something, you can always do it with the help of AI. Before, it's hard to find good resources, now it's not a problem, the issue now becomes one's own focus and agency.
It's a cool and very educative way to learn. But I wish there's like a live query thing going on so that it'd be easy to understand. I am viewing on the 27" 4K screen and it's perfect for it, like others said, I don't feel there's too much boxes and info at the same time. Although the site is going blank sometimes if I zoom in a bit too much. Really cool nonetheless.
Virtually it's so amazing to see. The layers are clearly separated and it does give a sense of the connections being accepted and processed in the central part.
The operation intricacies are a bit difficult to understand because the core looks a bit clogged up. Nonetheless, great work!
It surely is impressive,but it’s just that - components of db service as buildings/machine. What it needs is narrative, purpose, with main actors clearly defined - client and data. demonstrating what is involved in the chain when data’s written and requested.
This is really cool, I like having visualization to hold on my head!
Also (assuming this is LLM-generated, apologies if it’s not) seems like the future of learning/self-teaching… gonna try and generate similar things for stuff I’m learning
I would love this as an active visualisation of a live postgres. Imagine monitors with this stuff on, including replication from other postgresses, and whatever pgbouncer is doing on the front.
Bravo! I have worked in observability for years and I have a deep desire for new visualizations technics inspired by video games. It would be great in XR as well.
Really great work! I've always wanted to build a CPU simulator(Full PC simulator) in this style. I still haven't fully figured out my own approach, but this will definitely be an inspiration for me. Thanks for making and sharing it.
Great work! When zooming out a bit, I'm somewhat sure that the 'blinking'/glitching is due to z-fighting. Just something you may want to look into (ie move 3d surfaces so that they're not at the exact same z)
Good point! To respect EA's trademark and the terms of their modifications to the GPL-3 license regarding the use of their SimCity trademark, I renamed the open source version of SimCity to Micropolis, which was its original working title. It would be safe to call this project "PGMicropolis" as long as it wasn't for profit.
At the time, there was a disk drive manufacturer by that name, so Will Wright renamed it SimCity.
Fortunately the guy who now owns the rights to the Micropolis trademark (and is an old school hacker who really gets it) was kind enough to allow us to use the name for non commercial purposes, under the Micropolis Public Name License.
>The Micropolis project operates under two important licenses:
>1. The Micropolis GPL License Notice - This is the GNU General Public License
with additional terms added by Electronic Arts to protect the SimCity
trademark while allowing the code to be freely used and modified.
>2. The Micropolis Public Name License - This license governs the use of the
"Micropolis" name itself, which is a registered trademark of Micropolis
Corporation.
>We extend our sincere gratitude to Electronic Arts <https://www.ea.com> for
their generosity in releasing the SimCity source code under an open-source
license, and to Micropolis Corporation <https://www.micropolis.com> for
allowing the community to use the Micropolis name for this open-source city
simulation project. Please respect both Electronic Arts' SimCity trademark
and Micropolis Corporation's Micropolis trademark by adhering to the terms
of these licenses. Additionally, we ask all users to please honor the terms
of the <https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-3.0.html> GNU General Public
License v3, which protects the freedoms that allow this project to exist and
thrive as open-source software.
More details, and another cautionary tale about accidentally getting sued for trademark infringement:
>[...] Here's more about my plans for making a multi player version of Micropolis with time travel, branching, and merging, by using github as a social network and MMPORG platform (when it's not down ;):
3.86B tokens to build a visual simulator of a database that runs on a fraction of that compute. we're using the expensive brain to draw pictures of the cheap brain.
I love what is trying to be done here. Some feedback to improve would be to cut out a lot of the noise with the "Take tour". There are too many boxes and things changing on the screen to get a sense of what is happening. Also make it interactive rather than automatically switch onto the next subject. Being a passive observer to so much information trying to be conveyed is very confusing.
I really do like these kinds of approaches to showing the inner workings of different kinds of tech, so think this is on the good path to being a very useful tool, but needs some focus rather than more data/graphs/info boxes.
It's amazing 3D going on, and then 80% of the visual space is popups that completely block it. It'd be have a nice prominent ways of reducing the noise, and that pops were partially transparent.
Yea on mobile especially
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maybe try adding tts to the tour?
This is good general advice. If your software needs a "tour," that's a good indicator you should work on your UX instead. If you're just excited to tell the user about a new feature, they'll discover it when they need it.
I think in this case a tour is fine and sort of the point. But I disagree with you generally.
Not everyone will come to view this model from the same vantage point. Some will simply be curious about some famous software that they don't happen to use. So the tour is an excellent idea. Great presentation. Congratulations.
I imagined as soon I saw the initial visual that I would somehow be able to enter a query and it would walk me through the flow through the entire system starting from input parsing to all the way to delivering output and perhaps along the way understand some of the autonomous processes that happen in parallel that aren't query specific but run constantly.
What others are saying - fantastic attempt, but don't know where to start or where to end.
try pressing T
That's fantastic, please tell me I was short sighted and missed this when I wrote my comment.
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How to rotate camera?
1 reply →
This is very similar to what I imagine whenever I get into a deep focus state debugging a program in gdb... I would love to experience debugging a program in VR with graphics like this,,, there would be no better way to learn a codebase. I wonder how good an experience you could achieve by generating a 3d map based on arbitrary code
Understanding how scheduling works inside a database used to require numerous architecture diagrams to explain. I was amazed when I saw PGSimCity — it presents such a complex technical implementation process in such an engaging way. Since it's already open‑source, I think the same idea can be reused in other domains, such as cloud computing, Kubernetes, and so on.
I've always wanted to do an explainer of the deployment system and state-tracking at Fly.io using Factorio as a visual metaphor.
Let's make a Factorio overhaul mod where your goal is to produce fly.io deployments!
Bonus if it actually deploys on fly.io. This is not possible with a mod alone.
I heard you have some free time now, so let's see it!
I keep wanting to build a Kubernetes visualiser. I know they exist, but the last time I looked they didn't look that great.
Considering that it has been vibe-coded with not even 48 hours passed: Is this truthful and accurate at all? Or will it lead to false conclusions and anti-knowledge?
Not entirely sure, but the person vibe coding this does know Postgres really well tbf
Glean anything or learn something in particular?
This is a brutalist gew-gah.
Nit, but there's no dash in gewgah.
LLMs aren't that bad anymore.
Like any tool they're as good as the wielder.
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At first sight, it looks super cool. Kudos for pulling this off. At closer look, feels very overwhelming. The claude tone doesn't help ease the nerves either. The text version is too verbose.
I can't believe "Rendering The First Frame..." is not "Reticulating Splines..." :)
Cool UI.
I have a pretty good working knowledge of the internals of Postgres, but this just confused me. I think it's too busy to understand. At the very least, it would be cool if there were a "slow down" button.
There are buttons on the bottom left: pause and two to adjust the speed (down to 0.1x). Some parts of the city can be adjusted when you click on it (I just found the transactions/s)
Ah indeed there is. Totally didn't notice that, thanks.
But even at .1x it's too quick. :) I should be able to fire individual transactions and watch them flow.
1 reply →
I wonder if games can be developed to teach CS (OS, db, compilers) which are visual. Instead of reading a book on databases, perhaps tinkering with something like this would make learning easier. (I'm not a gamer, but I read about factorio kind of games on hn).
I assume this is done with the help of AI? I have done similar vibe project that explaining catastrophic forgetting with the help of AI. It's just so satisfying now that if you really want to learn something, you can always do it with the help of AI. Before, it's hard to find good resources, now it's not a problem, the issue now becomes one's own focus and agency.
I don't know what I am looking at but it is fabulous.
It's a cool and very educative way to learn. But I wish there's like a live query thing going on so that it'd be easy to understand. I am viewing on the 27" 4K screen and it's perfect for it, like others said, I don't feel there's too much boxes and info at the same time. Although the site is going blank sometimes if I zoom in a bit too much. Really cool nonetheless.
> I wish there's like a live query thing
There is. "Run a query" at the top nav bar.
Virtually it's so amazing to see. The layers are clearly separated and it does give a sense of the connections being accepted and processed in the central part.
The operation intricacies are a bit difficult to understand because the core looks a bit clogged up. Nonetheless, great work!
This is very cool, just some UX tips to make it more legible:
1. remove ~50% of the UI since it covers too much of a laptop screen
2. improve the camera controls so its easier to pan and zoom.
We've got GPU accelerated PostgreSQL sooner than GTA VI...
UI looks great on a 32" monitor, idk what everyone's complaining about ;)
It surely is impressive,but it’s just that - components of db service as buildings/machine. What it needs is narrative, purpose, with main actors clearly defined - client and data. demonstrating what is involved in the chain when data’s written and requested.
Try the tour. It’s exactly that.
yep (via pressing T)
but I agree, could be better – thinking
This is really cool, I like having visualization to hold on my head!
Also (assuming this is LLM-generated, apologies if it’s not) seems like the future of learning/self-teaching… gonna try and generate similar things for stuff I’m learning
it is in the commit 'Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>'
I would love this as an active visualisation of a live postgres. Imagine monitors with this stuff on, including replication from other postgresses, and whatever pgbouncer is doing on the front.
I love this, let's do all of Data Intensive Application SimCity!
Bravo! I have worked in observability for years and I have a deep desire for new visualizations technics inspired by video games. It would be great in XR as well.
Jira professional here, and OpenRCT2 has been my mental (and my agent’s) model for something similar.
Really great work! I've always wanted to build a CPU simulator(Full PC simulator) in this style. I still haven't fully figured out my own approach, but this will definitely be an inspiration for me. Thanks for making and sharing it.
Great work! When zooming out a bit, I'm somewhat sure that the 'blinking'/glitching is due to z-fighting. Just something you may want to look into (ie move 3d surfaces so that they're not at the exact same z)
Correct -- z-fighting on coplanar ground surfaces. Fixing with explicit offsets.
thanks
Besides the sadly obvious vibe-coding, just note that SimCity is still an active trademark from EA, so might be good to rename it.
Good point! To respect EA's trademark and the terms of their modifications to the GPL-3 license regarding the use of their SimCity trademark, I renamed the open source version of SimCity to Micropolis, which was its original working title. It would be safe to call this project "PGMicropolis" as long as it wasn't for profit.
At the time, there was a disk drive manufacturer by that name, so Will Wright renamed it SimCity.
Fortunately the guy who now owns the rights to the Micropolis trademark (and is an old school hacker who really gets it) was kind enough to allow us to use the name for non commercial purposes, under the Micropolis Public Name License.
https://github.com/SimHacker/MicropolisCore/blob/main/Microp...
Here's the explanation from the MicropolisCore repo's LICENSE file:
https://github.com/SimHacker/MicropolisCore/blob/main/LICENS...
>MICROPOLIS LICENSING
>The Micropolis project operates under two important licenses:
>1. The Micropolis GPL License Notice - This is the GNU General Public License with additional terms added by Electronic Arts to protect the SimCity trademark while allowing the code to be freely used and modified.
>2. The Micropolis Public Name License - This license governs the use of the "Micropolis" name itself, which is a registered trademark of Micropolis Corporation.
>We extend our sincere gratitude to Electronic Arts <https://www.ea.com> for their generosity in releasing the SimCity source code under an open-source license, and to Micropolis Corporation <https://www.micropolis.com> for allowing the community to use the Micropolis name for this open-source city simulation project. Please respect both Electronic Arts' SimCity trademark and Micropolis Corporation's Micropolis trademark by adhering to the terms of these licenses. Additionally, we ask all users to please honor the terms of the <https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-3.0.html> GNU General Public License v3, which protects the freedoms that allow this project to exist and thrive as open-source software.
More details, and another cautionary tale about accidentally getting sued for trademark infringement:
>Sam Earle's fractal neural network approach (https://github.com/smearle/gym-city
>[...] Here's more about my plans for making a multi player version of Micropolis with time travel, branching, and merging, by using github as a social network and MMPORG platform (when it's not down ;):
how do you know it has been vibe-coded? And why does it matter?
Because it reduces my trust in the truthfulness of the represented information.
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The AI generated text in the tour is a good clue. But I also don’t think the author is denying it.
Visualizing MVCC and transaction visibility would make this even more valuable as a learning tool.
The logo shape of the platform is a very niche touch, kudos
Amazing, great work. Keep polishing this up!
Wow, cool projects are so back again
Anyone else getting Reboot vibes?
Wow. Can’t wait to explore the architecture
Someone should make a movie called “Postgres” which is about people living within a Postgres city, in the style of Se7en.
“Every city has secrets. Ours have indexes.”
So much stuff to see but looks very cool!
thats cool. n1. spent 15min looking on it rn
I like the education tools being developed using coding agents, but there should be some review in the process.
Good luck continuing it, hope you generated something that can be iterated on.
Love this
This is amazing!
i understood all that.
maybe try adding tts to the tour? Lol
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3.86B tokens to build a visual simulator of a database that runs on a fraction of that compute. we're using the expensive brain to draw pictures of the cheap brain.
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