ESCALIER: Institute for the Survey

High-Performance Creative Web Exploration

Twenty-eight risers, no summit, drag the loop and it confesses. The Institute surveys, catalogs, and preserves staircases that should not exist. Specimen Nº 001: a closed ascending loop of twenty-eight risers and no summit.

I built this project to test Twenty-eight risers, no summit, drag the loop and it confesses. The Institute surveys, catalogs, and preserves staircases that should not exist. Specimen Nº 001: a closed ascending loop of twenty-eight risers and no summit. The core engineering challenge was sustaining uncompromised 60 FPS rendering using Three.js (GLB 3D) while handling continuous user interaction without framework overhead.

WHAT I WAS TESTING: I focused on two core engineering benchmarks:

Precision implementation of forced perspective under continuous interactive user input

Sustained 60 FPS render performance and zero-dependency browser execution

THE TECHNICAL SIDE: Engineered directly in the browser with Three.js (GLB 3D), Forced perspective. The application runs without third-party frameworks or build-step dependencies, using hardware-accelerated rendering and custom event loops to achieve zero-latency response. Everything executes in the browser using Three.js (GLB 3D), Forced perspective. No third-party frameworks, no heavy runtime bundles, and zero external tracking.

WHAT I LEARNED: Balancing the mathematical rigors of forced perspective with tactile browser interaction required tuning event throttling and memory allocation to eliminate all garbage collection stutters. Finding the sweet spot between mathematical precision and frame budget took careful profiling, but the result runs at a steady 60 FPS even on modest hardware.

TRY IT YOURSELF: The live build is deployed on Netlify. Open it in your browser, test the controls, and observe the render response times.

If you are building high-performance 3D, physics, or creative web systems and want to collaborate, reach out here on Contra.