Developer creates 3D code visualizer supporting millions of lines at up to 120 FPS

The phrase "it's a Unix system, I know this" from Jurassic Park has long been a meme among tech folks. Behind that scene was an actual piece of software, Silicon Graphics' File System Navigator for IRIX, running on a real SGI workstation.

The idea of browsing a file system in 3D space never really caught on, but modern machines now have enough horsepower to give it another shot.

Rik Arends, creator of the Makepad framework, built his own 3D source code visualizer that lets you fly through code like it's a game level. According to the developer, the tool handles a codebase of 2.5 million lines without breaking a sweat, holding over 120 frames per second in the process.

Ironed out the last performance issues with my full 2.5m line codebase explorer. 120hz awesomeness. Can only upload 60fps video tho. Much nicer uncompressed pic.twitter.com/LUsrmVaI6L

The video posted on X only plays at 60 FPS due to platform limits, but the navigation looks smooth. What's especially striking is that the source code stays fully readable instead of turning into abstract blocks and textures.

The first version of the visualizer needed 21 GB of RAM. After adding indexes and streaming compression, Arends cut memory usage down to 3.5 GB, though he noted the optimization work is far from finished.

As an experiment, he tried loading Chromium entire source tree, all 51 million lines of it, and it took about 60 seconds.

The practical value of this kind of tool is still an open question. Commenters suggested adding a timeline to track changes to files, along with a 3D view of dependencies between modules. A commercial tool called CodeCharta already does something similar, showing code changes and hotspots in 3D, though its camera flybys aren't nearly as flashy.

Arends plans to turn the visualizer into a full product and charge a small fee for it, even though he admits the practical usefulness of the visualization is limited.

Then again, someone could probably vibe-code an alternative in a couple of weeks.